ASIA HAND

Death before amnesty in Thailand

By Shawn W Crispin

BANGKOK - Spiraling street violence pitting government troops against anti-government protesters has raised fears of a wider, more anomic conflict in Thailand. As the death toll and chaos mount, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has indicated his willingness to use lethal force to restore order and narrowed the prospects for a political compromise that seemed within reach just over a week ago.

The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) protest group accepted and then backed away from Abhisit's proposed five-point reconciliation road map, which included a November 14 timetable for new polls. The tentative truce collapsed over issues of accountability for protest-related violence and the UDD's refusal to dismantle immediately its sprawling protest site in Bangkok's commercial heart.

Self-exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has bid to distance himself from the UDD as the violence has intensified, but his influence nonetheless looms large over the escalating crisis. The UDD's protest was launched just two weeks after Thailand's Supreme Court ruled on February 26 to seize US$1.4 billion of Thaksin's personal assets on corruption and abuse of power charges - one of the many reasons top soldiers cited as justification for the bloodless 2006 coup that toppled his government.

Three years and four short-lived administrations later and blood is now flowing freely in Bangkok's streets, with both sides to the elite struggle blaming the other for provoking violence that has taken over 60 lives since mid-March. While the Thaksin-aligned UDD has claimed variously to be fighting for democracy, social justice and equal opportunities for the rural poor, the street fight has erupted ahead of an uncertain royal succession complicated by competing elite visions for the monarchy's future role in Thai society.

It's unclear where the billionaire Thaksin comes down in that debate, but there are leaders and followers in the UDD who favor a diminished role for the institution once the ailing 82-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej passes the crown to his heir apparent son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. Abhisit's government has in recent weeks accused the UDD of plotting to overthrow the monarchy - incendiary charges UDD leaders have consistently denied.

Still, many royalists view the unfolding events in the streets of Bangkok with trepidation, fears that could yet motivate a more extreme crackdown on the UDD and sustained military influence over the country's administration. Nearly half of Thailand's provinces are now under emergency rule, which gives extraordinary powers to the military to maintain law and order.

Army commander General Anupong Paochinda has resisted a harsh crackdown that could spark a wider rebellion in the provinces that the military would be hard-pressed to control. His deputy, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, is believed to favor tougher tactics and according to one government insider has in certain instances bypassed Abhisit to assert his influence over the operation now underway to contain the UDD.

UDD leaders have repeatedly appealed to King Bhumibol to intervene in the crisis, as the revered monarch did to conciliatory effect in 1973 and 1992 after soldiers shot and killed pro-democracy demonstrators pitted against different military-run governments. The situation now is less clear-cut as the UDD protests against the legitimacy of Abhisit's coalition government that was cobbled together on the basis of democratic election results, and has lobbied King Bhumibol to grant a royal amnesty for the criminally convicted Thaksin.

King Bhumibol has not commented publicly on recent events, but sent a strong signal in favor of rule by law rather over privileged amnesties when in a nationally televised address he urged newly appointed senior court judges to rule with righteousness in the cases in which they adjudicate. After Thaksin systematically undermined the many checks and balances on executive power embodied in the progressive and now defunct 1997 constitution, King Bhumibol has emphasized the importance of an independent and moral judiciary.

A palace insider told this correspondent that King Bhumibol advised Abhisit in a meeting days before the UDD launched its street protests on March 12 that under no circumstances should Thaksin be granted an amnesty for his criminal corruption conviction. As behind-the-scenes talks have foundered, the question now is whether the government will move to add terrorism charges against Thaksin for his presumed role as the UDD's chief financier and strategist.

Sacrificial lambs
In the run-up to the first armed exchanges between troops and protesters on April 10, Thaksin told UDD protesters in a phone-in address to prepare for "sacrifices", a speech many foreign diplomats have flagged as significant. Underscoring his influence over the protest group, Thaksin has been directly involved in talks with the government, including a secret meeting in late April in Brunei, according to one diplomat familiar with the meeting.

Many analysts at the time viewed Thaksin's initial public support for Abhisit's road map as a substantial breakthrough, though he said at the time that the final decision would rest with the UDD's on-the-ground leadership. Abhisit's tentative plan included a possible amnesty for over 200 banned politicians, mostly from Thaksin's camp, that would have allowed them to contest the proposed new polls.

The proposed blanket amnesty, however, did not cover Thaksin, who in 2008 fled the country before a Thai court found him guilty on corruption charges and sentenced him to two years in prison. While more moderate UDD leaders seemed keen to strike a deal that would bring up the date for new elections, hardline elements attached to the group's militant wing argued to sustain the protest until Abhisit resigned.

Some analysts believe that Thaksin has an interest in ramped up chaos and bloodshed in the hope of achieving a more comprehensive amnesty that would not only absolve both sides of culpability for the recent death and destruction, but also restore his wealth, rights and legacy in the name of national reconciliation. His recent retention of Western law and lobbying firms and appeal to the United Nations to intervene signals a new Thaksin bid to internationalize the crisis while disassociating himself from the recent violence.

International reaction to earlier armed exchanges, including the April 10 melee between protesters and troops that resulted in 25 deaths and over 800 injuries, was restrained due to the shadowy circumstances surrounding the violence. Now with clearer cases of troops shooting and killing unarmed protesters, international rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have strongly condemned the military's crackdown.

The government claims it has carefully distinguished between innocent protesters and armed "terrorists" in its assaults. But as more UDD supporters are shot and killed the tit-for-tat risk rises of a larger rebellion that reaches beyond Bangkok and destabilizes through attacks on government installations and economic infrastructure in the north and northeastern provinces where Thaksin and his allies hold political sway.

One UDD co-leader, now living in self-imposed exile, told this correspondent in April 2009 that the group had funneled small arms to some of its supporters in northeastern provinces through neighboring Cambodia, where Thaksin now serves as an economic advisor to the government. Asia Times Online was not able to independently confirm that claim. The UDD claimed in a public statement before the current protests began that it had renounced its previous "call to arms" and professed non-violence.

But black-clad anti-government protesters' by now well-documented use of firearms and anti-personnel M-79 grenades against troops during recent street clashes have undermined those claims and raised concerns that UDD leaders may indeed have access to enough weaponry to make good on their threats to launch a "civil war" if their supporters at the main protest site are suppressed by force.

As the security situation deteriorates, some analysts have started to map potential conflict case scenarios for Bangkok and surrounding areas. One analyst predicts that Abhisit and the government would receive strong popular support in the capital's well-off central areas - including where the UDD is currently encamped - while surrounding lower-income districts and adjacent provinces would likely fall under the UDD's sway.

He estimated that police forces situated in Bangkok's outlying areas would "either be with the UDD or too weak to challenge [Thaksin-aligned] Puea Thai politicians" in a conflict case scenario and believed that rogue SWAT and Border Patrol Police officials had supplied some of the M-79 grenades used in recent protester attacks on troops and the scores of unexplained bombings across the national capital that have coincided with the UDD's protests.

"The country risks being divided into 'go' and 'no-go' zones depending on your politics," he said. "I don't see how elections would be viable or how democracy can function much longer in this environment."

Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.

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