The Drop

Aphisit's gift

2011-02-06T21:57:00.001-08:00

On 9 January 2011 the Abhisit government announced its “gift” to the Thai population. In a white box with a light blue ribbon was deposited the new policy, presented under the name of Prachawiwat, or progress of the people. The neologism carried nine presents to the people, allegedly addressed to expand social and labor security to the declared 24 million workers in the “informal economy”, to moderate the growing cost of living in Thailand, to guarantee access to credit to operators of taxis and motorcycle taxis, and to address crime. The Thai PM stressed that the gift would not cost much for the Thai population.

After a few days of confusion, trying to understand what the policy actually looked like, a large debate has been sparked in the Thai media and universities. Most of this debate revolves around three questions: How is the Prachawiwat different from Thaksin’s Pratchanyom? Is this a genuine policy or just an attempt by the government to win votes before the next election? Who will pay for this and how much? Unfortunately much of this debate has not yet reached the English-speaking media but in the next days a number of articles will be published on these discussions by major international newspapers. Leaving this task to people better equipped than me, I just want to present these nine gifts (I now sound like my Sunday school teacher talking about the Magi) and to offer my personal take on them without going into the details but rather focusing on their conceptual framework.

Presentation of the gifts

Gift 1: Expansion of the social security system to 24 million Thais operating in the informal economy (nok rabob), according to the government. This scheme provides two levels of social security based on a co-payment system between the workers and the state. The first level amounts to 100 baht per month, divided between 70 baht paid by the workers and 30 baht by the state. The second one amounts to 150 baht, in a 100+50 formula. Different from the actual welfare state scheme offered to regular workers and government officials these policies cover the cost for health care, death insurance (which could be collected after a minimum of 15 years of payment), and a retirement scheme.

Gift 2: Access to credit for taxi drivers, motorcycle taxi drivers, and street vendors for a minimum loan of 5000 baht at an unspecified low interest rate. The government will also provide a 5 percent discount on down payment on the taxi to drivers who have been operating for more than 3 years and a special loan for those with more than 9 years of experience.

Gift 3: New registration procedure for motorcycle taxi drivers with the purpose of eliminating local mafia influence over the drivers. The government will at first re-register the drivers who were registered in 2003 by the Thaksin government and then expand the process to the new drivers who have entered the system since. This policy will be first implemented in Bangkok starting on 15 February.

Gift 4: Allocating 20,000 new areas for street vendors in Bangkok with the purpose of making these places into tourist attractions.

Gift 5: Controlling the cost of oil by lifting the price control on LPG for the industrial sector but leaving it in place for private vehicles and transportation providers.

Gift 6: Providing free electricity to an estimated 9 million households who consume less than 90 units a month by raising the cost of electricity for heavy consumers by 1 percent.

Gift 7: Cut the cost of animal feed to make the final price lower and also make the change in prices public at all times to avoid speculation. Moreover the government will introduce an experiment of conducting the egg trade in kilograms and not in pieces with the purpose of cutting the price by 5 to 10 satang per kilo.

Gift 8: Increase the diversity and transparency in the trade of agricultural product with the purpose of giving better choices and prices to consumers

Gift 9: Increasing security and crime control, especially in 200 unspecified locations, in conjunction with an upcoming police reform.

Opinion

The package proposed by the Thai government does take some steps toward addressing growing problems of inequality and access in Thai society and it pushes the on-going path toward labor security in Thailand a step forward. However, in my opinion, the conceptual framework in which these steps are taken reaffirms conservative ideas about the relationship between citizens and the state, the relationship between the capital and the rest of the country, participation, and welfare schemes. These are conservative ideas that the majority of Thai society, including both the red and yellow shirts, seems to be questioning and trying to leave behind.

Let us first look at this idea of Prachawiwat, the progress of the people, as a “gift”. Anthropology, my discipline, has been long fascinated by the dynamics and implications of gifts and gift-giving. Out of the rivers of ink written on the subject two main streams of thoughts have emerged.

Firstly, the idea that gift-giving establishes or re-affirms an un-equal relationship between the givers and the receivers in which, by virtue of their giving, the former pose themselves as superiors. An example of this dynamic in international politics that left many observers puzzled, was the refusal of India, after the 2004 tsunami, to receive “economic help” from Western powers, particularly the United States. Proudly, the Indian government, worried by the position that aid will put them in, not only declined the “gift” but also offered economic aid to other affected areas, especially Sri Lanka. Despite the destroyed homes of many citizens the Indian government refused to be put in the position of a receiver and showed its strength and autonomy, framing itself as a regional power, a giver.

Secondly, the framing of a “gift” as an invitation to reciprocity, an act that puts the received in debt and therefore calls for another gift, to re-balance the exchange and further the social relationship. Examples of this are constantly visible in contemporary Thailand where small gift-giving is an essential part of daily life, office work, and new acquaintances. More than once I came across the story of a foreigner failing to fulfill this call to reciprocity be seen as “rude” or not “generous”.

In the context of the Prachawiwat scheme both aspects give government’s “gift” an eerie tone. Framing this policy as a present takes the functioning of a government out of the political arena. Withdrawing from an expanding discussion in the Thai political landscape over rights and duties, access and taxation, the actions of the state are pushed back into the realm of paternalistic politics. As a motorcycle taxi driver put it to me “I receive a gift paid by my taxes and I should also thank them.” In this realm an established benevolent and superior entity, the state, offers a present to a structurally lower receiver, the population. This relation, framed in the language of the patronage system, brings us into the second aspect of this gift-giving: what reciprocity is the government seeking? Often, forms of reciprocity between governments and population, or between clients and patrons, are based on “gifts” in exchange for “support”, meaning in this case electoral support or, at least, silent acceptance. This “gift-giving”, smilingly presented by an excited Abhisit as a cheap present, in many ways condense the conceptual problems with Prachawiwat and represent a major step back in terms of the conceptual framing of the relationship between the Thai state and its citizens. In this sense Thaksin’s Prachaniyom, if not framed in the language of rights, was indeed predicated on questions of access, access to a state-controlled capitalist system of capital, loans, and investments under the mantra of “transforming assets into capital”, but access nonetheless. With this new policy we are back to square one. This in general seems to me the biggest mistake for a policy that was presented as having its strength in participation and equality.

The second point of concern in relation to this new package is its disproportionate attention to urban areas, especially Bangkok. The government has pointed out that the reform will start from Bangkok and then be expanded to the rest of the country, without specifying when this is supposed to happen. Moreover, if we stop to analyze the nine gifts it becomes clear that few of them are oriented to a rural constituency. Some of them (2, 3, and 4) are obviously directed to urban workers and even the schemes connected to agricultural products focuses mostly on transparency and price control for consumers, without really addressing the problem from the perspective of the producers, who are increasingly squeezed between the raising production prices and the low selling prices. For these rural producers these policies will hardly do anything. In term of the social security scheme, the pearl of these gifts, from the direct admission of Ajarn Sungsidh, the head advisor to Abhisit on Prachawiwat, the proposed welfare scheme is will not affect agricultural workers, who represent the large majority of the 24 million informal workers presented as the beneficiaries of the new policies. At most, it will benefit 5.2 million urban informal workers. This disproportionate focus on the city – even though it is not surprising for government opponents such as a motorcycle taxi driver friend who promptly told me “Claudio, this is nothing new. These people have been convinced that the whole of Thailand is Bangkok for a long time” – seems at least short-sighted and at most suicidal, especially given the new movements and discourses that populate the broad Thai political landscape.

The third point is that the offers of Prachawiwat which are great when seen from afar are greatly scaled down when analyzed in detail. The social security scheme, presented by the Thai government as a visionary and unprecedented expansion of the welfare state to the informal economy, is, in fact, NOT a welfare scheme. The conceptual foundations of a welfare scheme are normally a holistic approach to labor security, education, health, retirement as well as its extension to the family of the assisted. Both elements are lacking in the case of Prachawiwat. What the Abhisit government is offering – undoubtedly a step forward in terms of labor security for informal workers – is a so-called “social insurance” scheme, meaning a system of co-payment between the private payer, and only the private payer, and the state with the purpose of guaranteeing health insurance, life insurance, and retirement money, based on a 3 percent interest rate accumulated over the years. No service is offered to the family of the assisted. This scheme offers nothing more than other private insurance would offer, apart from the co-payment help.

In conclusion, the package developed with the help of think tank that was offered a meager five weeks to come up with a policy theoretically effecting more than a third of Thai population, seems to me to offer, in practice, some interesting steps toward a re-conceptualization of the role of the informal economy in Thai society but without framing them in a solid and substantial plan toward guarantying access, rights, and responsibilities to the actors involved.

Filling the gaps

2010-12-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

I have been quite absent from the blog, mostly focusing on my research and redacting two months of posts into a manuscript which is up for review now.
I take advantage of this for putting up all my posts from April 10th to May 15th, which i did not had time before to check and upload. If you have time take a look at them.

October 10th- Democracy Monument

2010-10-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

(sorry again no time to put up pictures, will do as soon as i get a moment)

We woke up in the morning and decide to get out and check around as some twitters reported movement of riot police around Ratchaprasong. We drove through the empty Rachadamri, few people in red shirts walking around and police officers lounging around in the heat. The reported barricades going up around intercontinental hotel were not there. We arrive at an empty Ratchaprasong around 11 as a roar comes from Rama I, echoed by the cement ceiling of the skytrain rails.

From that direction a caravan of red shirts in motorcycles gets closer to the intersection, giving full voice to their horns. In front a man I met many times carries the head-bones of a buffalo painted in red with written in thai “stop double standard”, besides him an older woman sits on the back of a motorbike wearing a big plastic hat with the shape of Democracy monument . Around him a river of red flags and few Thai flags. We decide to follow them and drive back into Ratchadamri. It must be around 300 hundred bikes, many of them motorcycle taxis, either wearing the orange vests or recognizable by the yellow plates on their bikes. “It is a matter of ideology” a driver tells me later “some people put on red shirts and take out their vests, some other, like me, come to protest as motorcycle taxis, with the vest.”

As we drive around some people timidly applaud or waive to the caravan, to show their support, mostly vendors, tuk-tuk drivers, or motorcycle taxis sitting at their station. The procession drives down Ratchadamri road and turn left into Sarasin. There another smaller caravan drives in the other direction, dialoguing with us through the horns. Right again into Wittayu road, left into Rama IV, Sala Daeng then back in the direction of Ratchaprasong. On Rama IV small groups of police officers waive to the caravan and take pictures, smiling. As we drive around more people join in, enlarging the ranks of the caravan retracing the geography of deaths during the May protests. Along the way the procession stops often, to remain compact. Some people shout “Here people die”, the new slogan of the Red Sundays, or voice their disappointment. “Fuck the people who order the killing” they repeat over and over again.

In front of the entrance of Lumpini Park the caravan stops to join with another group of people waiting there, parking bikes on the concrete pavement in front of the statue of Rama VI. Some people wai to the statue as other organize the group and distribute small hand-drawn maps of the route to take. The new plan is to drive in the direction of Victory Monument before going back to Democracy Monument, where the caravan started. A couple of people offer me I ride as the group that was waiting at the park gets on the bikes. A young woman covers her face with a banner “May 19th. 91 people died.” The procession starts again, back into Ratchadamri road in the direction of Ratchaprarop. The bikes are now more crowded, kids sitting on the front and red gadgets everywhere. Down the road a small groups of people stand on the side carrying a big picture of Seh Daeng, which the people greet as they pass by. As the group arrives to Ratchaprasong, directed by a larger number of police officers it stops again underneath the flyover, hoping to get some relief from the intense heat.

A man on a big bike tells me proudly “I brought my son” pointing at a small kid clung to his waist. “He needs to see this.” People around distribute red roses before getting moving again. As we get out of the area in the direction of Ding Daeng more people appear on the street, cheering the moving protest. The caravan keeps growing in size. There must be about 800 bikes by the time we get to Victory monument. Two laps of the round-about. Red shirts and flags with the backdrop of two big pictures of the Queen and the metallic statues of military jumping out of the monument. Again and again the group stops to remain compact as a young woman, carrying a big red flag and a plastic uzi gun, shouts directions to the first lines that then pass it back to the rest of the caravan. Soon enough the procession reach Ratchadamnoen, stretching on the large boulevard. Few hundred meters before Democracy Monument, where again red robes have been tied to form a spider web, the caravan stops. Performance is always a part of politics, especially in this country. The large group of red shirts filling Democracy Monument starts cheering. On this other side the horns answer, as the bikes stand still. A long moment of staticity, two groups staring at each other in the heat.

Few minutes after the flows break open and the red shirts at the monument shout and cheer as the caravan parades on the roundabout before parking. The monument has been once again reappropriated and transformed by the red shirts. Two large plastic banners, held up by people circle the monument. On the lower level images from the April and May events, the dead, the injured, the military firing. On the upper level old pictures of 14th October 1973, black on white. From these banners to the core of the monument red robes create a web, tied by a group of older women sitting in the shadow cast by the monument’s wings. Around the monument people are starting to write messages on the ground with pieces of chalk. Behind them two women hold up two boards with written in English “Take your happiness back. Give red shirts life & Democracy” and “We need Justice”. Around them people are dancing in the street, with music pouring out of the speakers of pickups and cars parked around.

Soon the crowd starts growing and the ubiquitous red shirts merchandise start popping up on both directions in Ratchadamnoen. In few hours the foot paths are overflowing with t-shirts, flip-flops, Cds, books, food, music, wrist bands, mugs. I meet one of the book sellers I know who always puts up shop at protest and he tells me of the September 19th protest in Chiang Mai and being stopped on the way at a police road block where the officers checked his books and told him to keep fighting also for them. Behind us a police trucks pass by, with a big red flag attached on a side. I greet him and walk into Dinso road where the pictures of the people that died on April 10th are laid out on the ground with sparse red candles burning in front. A donation box sits among them, where people stuff bills to support their families, often left without a breadwinner. We walk around for a bit and decide to get back home, consumed by the heat, as the protest keeps swelling. It is going to be a long evening at Democracy Monument.

September 19th- Back in Ratchaprasong

2010-09-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

(Sorry no time to put pictures on now, i have to choose carefully)

We exit home around 5 into a very quiet traffic around Sathorn, took the skytrain and get off at Siam. As the train bent over Ratchaprasong intersection people gathered on the right side of the car to look down to a red river of people taking over the Ratchaprasong area from Erawan Shrine to Pratunam and from Wat Pratum to Chidlom.

Most of the sky-train commuters got off the train and walked into Siam Paragon, normally overflowing with people and Sunday events. We walked back in the direction of Ratchaprasong, meeting flock of people dressed in red leaving the area. As we walked over the skywalk a feeling of déjà vu fills the air. People dress in red everywhere, street-vendors calmly occupying big chunks of the pathways with tables and chairs and a thick smell of fermented fish. Some people free red balloons with white question marks on them inside Wat Pratum as other curious walk around the temple, revisiting the place of the tragedy.

We walk down into the crowd and we overhear all around us people recounting the story of the dead, of the snipers on the skytrain tracks, and the fear of the last days of the May protest. Along the way arriving to the intersection chalks outlines of dead bodies have been traced on the pathways, syncopating the walk to Ratchaprasong and laying silent on the concrete in front of the growing wall of design-inspired state propaganda. Messages of hope, tranquility, harmony, and security in English who seems to over-simplify the political conflict more than ease it. Among these messages an unsettling blue board repeats 6 times, in black capital letters:

EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.
EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.
EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.

In front of the poster two black chalk outlines seem to contradict the reassuring propaganda. Around the air is filled with Red shirt music, especially the hit รักคนเสื้อแดง. People gather around the few pick-ups with loudspeakers, specifically prohibited by Suthep, and dance as the sun goes down over the massive crowd. Over them the skytrain runs unimpressed, with its regular and mathematic frequency. Underneath the rail two red piece of cloth cover the sides of the skywalk. In white, again in English, written “Who is killer? Where is justice?” These questions, and tentative answers, fill the intersection and people’s conversations.

We start talking to people here in there, most of them are from Bangkok and came out to show their support for the red and the fact that the red shirts are not gone and could easily take over this space anytime they want. Many people wear shirts with written “Red never die”. Even if at first gaze the atmosphere seem the same of the early days of red shirts in Ratchaprasong, the conversation run differently. Many people tell me proudly, staring at me “we have no leader; these are people that came autonomously, following their heart.” What is seen by many of the protesters as a new more participative phase is also peppered by new forms of search for responsibility and justice. Few people talk about Aphisit or government dissolution anymore, but questions about the real instigator and responsible for the May 19th massacre bypass the government to rest on higher authorities and more long-standing presences. People talk about entire institutional structures that keep people’s head down and get involved into politics to the point of celebrating “war victory rituals” after May 19th massacre.

Stories of the international relations to Saudi Arabia and the ‘blue diamond” fill people’s mouth, as an unspoken and unspeakable taboo finally being uttered. An upper-class young Thai man walks around with his eyes wide opened. “ I have waited for this many years” he tells me as he walks through the crowd, openly talking about subjects he normally only dares with his closest friends. It is surprising to hear some of these conversations in a public arena, filled with resentment and personalized attacks. Even more surprising is to see them written, condensed even just for a night on pieces of paper or larger state propaganda boards that surround Central World and will be promptly trashed or be taken away as soon as the crowd leaves the area around 8 pm.

Around the ratchaprasong sign a thick web of red threads is condensed and small pieces of paper are attached by the protesters to the threads, expressing opinions about the government and other state institutions. On the pavement, where the stage used to be in May, two big red candles light up two small cartoon boxes messages. “Take your happiness back, We need Justice”. Behind this on a wall is written. “Not Harmonize”. Not far away a small kid sits alone in front of myriads of small red candles, playing with the fire.

In the mean while the crowd is slowly decreasing as people start leaving and the traffic slowly by slowly moves back into the intersection. Buses are the first to arrive, tearing away, as they pass, the spider net of red yarns that the protesters have build from the skywalk to the whole intersection, resembling a mixture between the plastic cover present there during the last days of May protest and the Buddhist sai sin (สายสิญจน์ ). After them the motorcycle taxis arrive, moving from the outskirt of the protest to the core, trying to pick up the last passengers as other protesters help clean up the area, picking up trash, and cutting the red ropes from the intersection signs and the light poles. Finally is the turn of cars and in less than twenty minute Ratchaprasong is back to the usual space of traffic flow. Only reminder the huge wall around Central World filled with people opinions, written over the state “together we can” campaign, which is often played on by the messages that ridicule it of re-signify the content of the propaganda. Few hours later the boards will be removed to leave to the first morning sun just a wall of grey corrugated iron.

interview with Al Jazeera & other medias

2010-08-04T09:41:00.000-07:00

Another interview on my work, lately is a bit crazy this way. If you are interested take a look here. Also Thai PBS (here), Bangkok Post (here), and Matichon (here)

Interview on New Mandala

2010-07-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

Later i have been back to my research, having less time to write on the blog and less feeling of responsibility toward recording what i see and hear on the street. Today New Mandala has an interview on my research, if somebody is interested take a look here.

Ashes to Ashes

2010-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to go at the funeral of Seh Daeng, a royally sponsored event, due to his status as an army general, which feels in many ways like a closure of round 2 of the struggle between red shirts and the Thai state.

A body was burned, leaving an ash heap taken by the same wind that blew the fumes of more than 30 buildings around Bangkok, and more than 90 bodies around the country. Commodities and people, reduced to the same ashes back into the circle of life. Commodities that were supposed to protect the people from an attack by the state, at least in the idea of red shirt leaders, who decided to move the protest to Ratchaprasong, and then now rest with them, scattered.

I arrived through a congested Nakhon Sawan Road and park my bike besides a portable toilet truck. Around me large crowds of people completely dressed in black enters the gates of Wat Sommanat Wihan. Here and there a red hair slide, a red rosette, or just a small red ring completes the outfit together with a small beautifully white paper flower.

Outside the ubiquitous batteries of street vendors fill the street with smell of Isaan sausages and fermented fish. Around them few vendors sell pictures a Seh Daeng in a military salute and black T-shirts with his picture printed. A policeman stops to bargain with the older vendor for a T-shirt.

Other vendors, set on the sidewalk, sell red shirts’ gadgets, probably leftovers from the protest, given the discounted prices. At the sides of the gate two men, dressed with a Thailand Post Service’s T-shirt, sell for 2 baht each empty postcard to send to the pre-printed address of the newspaper Thai Rath. I am not sure why.

I walk in, passing through small groups of people speaking quietly. As I walk by I hear only snippets of conversation “Snipers…. Shoot… Aphisit… bodies… jail… invisible hand…” People around, with dark faces that match perfectly their outfits, speak softly, looking around and interrupting frequently their conversations to tell one another “You know right? But we can’t talk…” and smiling in sign of reciprocal understanding. I figured this is going to be a hard place to interview people so I just wonder around.

The atmosphere is quiet, with this small clustered groups getting denser as you get closer to the stage and the inner temple, until ending in an endless see of black. For one day red and black shirt really are the same.

In the compound people look for a place from which to see the few LCD monitors around that broadcast the ceremony by climbing the white walls of the temple as others just sit on the usual tinfoil mats, waiting to give their final greeting to Seh Daeng, or walk around in silence.

I decide to sit there, accepting the impossibility to get closer to the ceremony, and start chatting with an old couple, sitting on a rare patch of green. The old man offers me to sit and start talking about the violence of the army. “ I was a soldier” he says staring at me under his sunglasses “and I have never seen this behavior. This is Thailand now. This is what this government is doing.” He looks around as he speaks as if somebody could be listening to him from inside the temple. “Now we cannot talk, it is dangerous. Even now they may be recording us and then come to arrest us. We all want to talk, we all have many things to say but now we cannot.” He keeps repeating this but he can barely curb his passion. Fear and wanted to voice his truth mix in the conversation, syncopated by a repeated “Fuck.”

It is harder to talk to red shirts now because of the specter of repression yet the fading of a unified rhetoric, previously broadcasted 24/7 by loudspeakers, makes conversation more personal, less standardized. We talk for a while with him and his wife which after few minutes pulls out of her bag two pieces of paper and asks me to write down my website and phone number for the two of them. “Aphisit in all of this has no real power, there is another hand, a hand we cannot see and we cannot talk about that needs to be cut off.” In front of us a man is talking loudly to some journalists and for a second it feels like back in Ratchaprasong, where such performances of anger where promptly offered to everyone willing to stop and let people express their feelings. I greet the couple and move toward the temple.

A young woman stops me and invites me to interview a group of four well dressed and well spoken women, standing in the shade. I start talking to them and in few minutes the roles reverse. I find myself interviewed on media circulation internationally and what I have seen during the protest. A man walks through and tells me in English “We just asked for democracy and for the government to step down and have election but he only gives us bullets. Who is the terrorist? Who is the criminal?” He wais and walks away.

A small crowd gathers. The most vocal woman of the original group, who works at Bangkok Bank (“I am very sad there” she says “but is my job”), asks me “If you were Thai, what would you do now?” Moment of silence around. A bigger group forms around waiting for some answer and rapidly disperse as I babble something about needing to find out the truth first. The bells that signal the end of the ceremony ring around us. Saved by the bell.

I suddenly find myself into a moving river of people dressed in black, pushing softly each other toward Seh Daeng’s coffin, directed by a voice that repeats with irony to follow the directions of the officers, at least for today. I feel lost in this advancing endless see of people, silently moving with small white paper flowers in their hands glittering in the sun.

It takes about an hour to reach the body, hidden behind a curtain. I stop watching the hypnotic movement of people around a golden urn, on which they rapidly depose the flowers. Few seconds and they are out in the sun, scattered and ready to go home. Some people stop in small group to discuss. Temples are becoming again a “safe area” for red shirt, one of the few spaces where they can gather without having to worry about the Emergency Decree.

As I walk out a woman I met in the train going back to Udon after the dispersal calls me. She was without shoes then, she is very elegant now in her black dress and black shoes. “I came all the way from Udon to be here today” she tells me and she walks away into the crowd leaving.

Back to Bangkok

2010-06-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

I got back to Bangkok a couple of days ago, in this odd state of apparent calm and return to normalcy. It doesn't take long, however, to realize that things are not back to normal. Whispered here and there words of strong criticism or open satisfaction fill the streets. New tides of state propaganda and media repression is growing, it was much easier to read websites about Thailand when i was in Italy. On the other sides rumors of disappeared bodies, of unspoken brutality, and creative retelling of events proliferates, feeding an unhealthy feeling of suspicion. In a day I have heard people on both sides of the spectrum, red and yellow, say referring to the others "they are not people, they are animals." Dehumanizing your neighbor, your colleague, your servant, your friend it has never been a good sign, anywhere.

Despair

2010-05-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

A terrible bereavement just struck my family. I am leaving Thailand, not knowing for how long. I apologize but the blog stops here for now, i need some time for my own grievances.

Hope

2010-05-25T11:38:00.001-07:00

And then you get this and believe that everything is going to be fine. Thank you!
From an anonymous reader:

"I'm planning on taking my little girl on a walk from CTW to Wat Patum on Visaka Bucha day. First, to tam boon. Second, I want her to see the place. I took her on a walk around Rajaprasong, in the early day and I want her to see it now. I hope it will not frightened her. I want her to remember the result of hatred and violence. She won't understand it all, eventhough by now all children in Thailand have been exposed to verbal warfare for years and having to stop school many times as a result.

My hope is with all the digital evidence (lacking during the Black May and October 1976), her generation will not repeat our mistakes."

repression, silence, and paranoia

2010-05-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

As the protest, at least temporarily, died out the city goes back to its normality many things are left behind to be reorganized, collected, or just thrown in the trash. A battery of Bangkokians, driven by their love for the city and huge banners around the city with the script "Together We Can" went out this Sunday to clean up the streets and scrub away the graffiti left behind in the center of the city.

At its core sit the remains of Central World, which still spread its smell of burning ruins, around it. The regained traffic of the city, once again covering the twitter of birds, slows down in front of this spectacle of destruction, in front of a sleepy police post on the side of Gaysorn shopping mall.

Motorbikes stop everywhere in front of the long corrugated iron sheet that surrounds what used to be a jewel of the city. People pull out small cameras and cell phones and take pictures, before leaving again, absorbed in the flow of traffic.

Down Rama I a crew of cleaners collect the last debris from inside Wat Pathumwan, throwing in a large truck the stones prepared by the protesters for a final as desperate battle. Near them the calm pond where allegedly the government officials have found a small arsenal of weapons rest immobile, without a wrinkle. On the overpass toward Herny Dunant signs of a gun battle are left on the bars, pierced by small bullets, apparently coming from the street.

Who shoot them? What happened here? How did the wat became the theater of violence? All these questions and many others fill the streets and the private houses, in need to be reorganized, collected, or just thrown in the trash, as much as other more physical yet less heavy leftovers.

People around the city are trying to do this, to clean up and scrub the pieces of truth lying around in the dust, covered in a sea of lies and partial realities, on both sides. Today I went to a meeting in Thammasat University, where a group of scholars is trying to create an information center, a place to collect news from the dead, the injured, and the people who disappeared. In a large conference room about 20 people sat, talking about how to go about it. On a big white board they were scribbling the challenges and risks of this kind of job in an environment where the truth can be a dangerous waste.

“Be careful on your blog” Somebody told me today “You know a lot of people are getting interested. Just be careful, don’t speak publicly.” He silenced for a second. “You know self-censorship, just a little bit. To be safe.” I don’t feel angry or scared, I just feel sad for this country and thought about laudable efforts of this group in Thammasat, trying to balance a quest for truth with the fear of repression. So many people among the protesters lately have told me sentences like “I have seen too much, but I don’t want to talk about it now, it can be dangerous. Better wait to see what the government will do. Then I will talk.”

All around this the state is sharpening its instruments of fear, shutting down websites, calling up people to the CRES, and confiscating personal computers (here). Covering people’s mouth with hands is always a tricky effort, you tend to be very close to their teeth.

Coming home- May 21st

2010-05-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

We got off the train in a small station. About 20 people sit in the little chairs in front of the station as the train leave. We greet the others and walk out. A small red dirt road goes into the country side.

It is raining outside, an omen of luck and an indispensable factor for the economy of Isaan. We will discover later that it has not rain for a while, making this event even more mythical. Outside the station 4 tuk-tuk are parked, nobody driving them. We sit there waiting for the husband of the old woman to come pick us up.

The man who speaks Japanese almost cannot stand, worn out by a whole night of drinking. He is nervous and he keeps speaking rudely to everyone in the group. People try to ignore it, squatting on the ground and smelling the scent of rain. The young man walks to me and bring me on a side. “I don’t like people who drink. They always treat people badly”. We stand there in the light rain, smoking a cigarette. I feel very fortunate of having met this man. In his face, signed by the stress and difficulties of his life, from losing his parents when he was young to being now alone in the world in his small farm, I see the signs of a new Thailand to be: thoughtful, compassionate, yet firm in its ideals.

The drunken man pushes one man, as the other try to calm him down. “We are among us” they say. One of the women sit on the ground, singing a sad song in her beautiful voice. Around occasional cars drive pass us.

A grey pick up pulls into the dirt road and stops in front of us. The husband gets off. An old man with grey hairs and a black sleeveless shirt. He stares at his wife from underneath the car door. She stares back, with a smile. We get on the pickup, four people in the front and eight on the back and we drive away.

The youth with a fascination with Bangkok, sits close to me, in a black shirt with the face of Nattawut pasted onto the body of a muay thai fighter, hitting with a kick a man with the face of Aphisit. He says he is worried that he may have troubles if we run into a military road block wearing that shirt. The man who told me he would protect me in this strip takes off his white shirt and proposes to exchange. He puts on the black shirt and stand up, shouting in the small village “Red shirts are back”, with his fists in the air. Some people from the street applaud.

We drive carefully as the people fight with the wind to light their cigarettes. The guy picks up one of the bottles of water in front of us and dials a number on the imaginary key pad. “Hello Aphisit” he says “how are you my friend?” people around laugh “I haven’t see you in a while. How are you?” he turns to me “We studied together in England” he whispers covering the bottle with his hand. Another laughter. “Hmm…Hmmm…where are you now?” “Really? Why aren’t you home? Ohhh… you can’t go back there… the population doesn’t accept that you kill them… hmmm… what buffalos” Everybody cracks up as the people inside open the small window to hear what is going on. “Yeah…Yeah…that is very bad. I see…” He stops for a second listening to what Aphisit is saying. “I just wanted to ask you a favor. Could you please send a helicopter to pick me up? Hmmm…Hmmm….Why can’t you? Ohh…they are all busy flying over Ratchaprasong.” Again people crack up as he also burst into laughter. People around clap. “You should do this on TV, maybe for People Channel.” I tell him. People around are clearing their tears with their thumbs and index fingers.

The guy is an endless well of comic relief. As we drive he carries two bottles on his hands, calling Aphisit, Suthep, Anupong, and Prem. It is hilarious and my self-appointed personal guard delights the small crowd that starts laughing as soon as he picks up another bottle, before he even says a word. He stands up and shouts “People don’t be afraid, the red shirt are back”, imitating the rhetoric of the red shirts leaders on stage. We stop in a sleepy petrol station and he gets down of the truck, dancing to the tunes of a small radio. Again everybody laugh.

We drive off again and stop in a small market. As we park the car a policeman comes around and asks them some news from the red camp in Bangkok. Two of the people in the truck stand in front of a small temple in the parking lot, praying. We enter the market and buy grilled chicken, papaya salad, and two leaves envelops full of bugs and fat ants. “They are delicious” the woman says “Try some”. Their taste is quite blunt but I nod smiling. We get back on the pickup and drive home. The woman without shoes carries a small plastic bag. “What did you buy?” I ask. “A phone charger” she answers “but it cost 120 Bath so I cannot buy shoes now”. Strange priorities, I think. “She hasn’t been able to call her mom” the young man says as if he is reading my mind. “She must be very worried.”

We finally get home, tired by the long trip. It is a big brick house with a nice fence surrounding it, not very far from the main street. Again, these are definitely not the poor Isaan farmers that the media describes. We get off the car and carry our stuff inside the house.

The woman’s daughter comes out, with a big smile, to greet her mom as her dogs jump on her, unable to constrain happiness in the presence of strangers. We walk inside the fence and sit on a wooden sala in front of the house. As the women go inside the house we freshen up with some water collected in a big jar outside the house. “It’s rain water” the young man keeps repeating to me.

We go back to the sala and sit there waiting for food as a dense silence descends upon the group. A silence that only the country-side can offer. Everybody looks down. An older man starts talking, without raising his eyes in a hoarse monotonous voice. “They killed so many of us. We will never know how many. They just shoot at everybody they could.” His eyes are glued to the mat, his voice very low. “But we will not stop, we will keep fighting. We cannot lose.” I have no idea if the others are listening. “I am not from here, I am from Surin but there is nothing going on there so I came here, to see what is going on and what will happen next. I am not sure how or when but we will keep fighting. We cannot lose.”

The silence is broken by a voice from inside the house. “Chicken. Who can help cutting it?” I stand up to help as the man does not seem to notice I left. Soon everything is on the small mat and we start eating as the guy who speaks Japanese, back into a decent state, puts on a VCD of April 10th. Not the best choice for this lunch. Right after lunch the young guy tells me we should go.

I pick up some stuff and greet everyone, thanking them for their help in the last day. We exchange phone number and they ask me to let them know if something happens in Bangkok. We hoop on a motorcycle that the woman offered us, driven by the youth now in the other guy t-shirt. He drives us to the big street nearby and leaves the two of us there, waiting for the bus. We stand on the side of the street talking about our lives, our passions, our fears. I know this guy only since yesterday but I feel very comfortable with him, and he seems to share the sensation. Once in a while he pulls out a binocular from his pocket and looks at the street, hoping to see the bus coming. “It is arriving” he says “pick your bag”.

A slow old blue bus trot in our direction stopping few meters away. As we get up from the back door the woman who makes the ticket runs out of the front door and jumps on him, hugging him tightly. “I thought you were dead” she says with a broken voice. “I thought I will never see you again”. She squeezes his shoulders, passing her fingers in his long hairs. “I went to the station three times asking for you. They told me to wait for the names of the dead to come in”. He turns around to me, as her face sinks into his chest. “She is my sister” he tell me trying to avoid tears. “He is a journalist friend.” “Hey” she says. “I thought I will never see you again.” They stand there, embraced, looking away from each other to hide the tears that fill their eyes. I walk a bit and sit down, leaving them this moment, as indifferent people sit in the crowded bus. “I am here” he tells me pointing at a small two-storey concrete house at the side of the road. “Thank you so much for everything” I respond as he gets off the bus. I wave to him from the car window as he puts foot on his land, finally.

Free Zone- May 21st

2010-05-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

I woke up with the most stunning of sunrise reflecting on the wet rice fields outside Korat. Everybody around me seems to be awake already, eating their breakfast or still sipping from a bottle. The man who can speak Japanese stands in front of the window and shouts in English “We are in the Free Zone”. I grab my camera and start shooting out of the windows, in the silent car covered by the noise of the train.

“This is not very beautiful” a man tells me “You can’t even see the sun coming up.” It looks gorgeous to me. The moment is magic and the lights enter the car absorbed by the dark orange robes of the two monks sitting down the alley from us.

“We are in the red zone” Seth says staring at the red sky out of the window. The people in the train do the same.

Finally the faces relax as their fill their noses with the fresh smell of country side. Another round of food is served.

Seth and Mariko propose to have another round of interviews around. A man sits close to us as Seth starts asking him questions. We have a very long talk in which he lay out the foundations of the red shirts movement, from the 2006 coup to the present, criticizing the double standards in this country and the lack of fairness in the system. He speaks softly no anger in his voice just a very sober analysis of the history of the relationship between poor and rich in this country and the demands of the people that feel excluded from the system. Education recur as the main source of inequality.

Seth asks back “But life in Isaan is better than it used to be 20 or 30 years ago, right? You have television, electricity…” “Yes we have a better life, we are richer, and we have things we didn’t have in the past.” “So life is easier now?” I ask. “It is not, life is more difficult now. When I was a kid life was easy, you just make rice, fish and you could live there. Now is different. The whole world has developed and also Isaan but we are slower than Bangkok, so we remain back.” “So what changed now?” “In the past he says, 5 or 6 years ago, things were better, we could get money and the government had got policies for us. Now this government is not interested in us.” He keeps comparing the present with the time when Thaksin was in power somehow managing to never name him.

“Did you go around while you were in Bangkok?” “No” he answers “I stayed in Ratchaprasong only, walking up and down the protest area” “Did you like the Ratchaprasong area?” “No” he answers decided “the buildings there are too tall. You could not do anything. Snipers were there and there was nothing we can do.” He answers, mixing urban design taste and protest strategies. We keep talking for a while (I will try to post the whole interview when I have time to transcribe it) until he says he needs to go to the bathroom and walks away.

I start chatting with a younger guy, probably around 16 years old who sat through the interview listening. “I like Bangkok” he says with bright eyes “You can go have fun wherever you want. There are so many people.” “Would you want to go back if you have a chance?” I ask. “Yes” he says feeling the attraction of the metropolis that millions of people around the world share with him, including me. I turn around and fall asleep again.

When I wake up the train is stopped, in the middle of nowhere and some people have gotten off, waiting underneath small trees at the side of the train tracks. Some other people are walking through the field to reach the road to try to catch a ride to their villages, others just lean out of the windows.

I guess we have been there for a while. I get off with the young man with beautiful eyes whom I met first at the train station. He pulls out a binocular and look pass the train to check if there is some sort of military block. We stay there for a while, burning in the hot sun.

Suddenly the crowd revives. Two young men start fighting in front of the train. Apparently one of them has been bothering and insulting the other on the train all night long, inebriated by alcohol and now in the hot the nerviness has exploded. People start to calm them as the drunken one picks up a big rock and run toward one of the window. Other people get out of the train. The small scuffle goes on for a while including some kicks and a hilarious chase in the nearby field, with many people falling on the ground, that ends with the drunken guy and three of his friends arriving to the street and hitching a ride. They have been some very hard couple of months for everybody and the tension of the last days is slowly releasing.

The train starts moving backward, gets a new locomotive and restarts again in the right direction. We are close to home. The atmosphere gets again tense as news come in that military are waiting at the train station in Udon. After talking to each other they decide to get off in different small stations before Udon so to leave the soldier puzzled over the disappearance of the red shirts.
The young man and the other people I sat with in the train station the day before invite me to go to the house of one older woman, rest a bit, and eat together before heading with him to the house of my motortaxi friend who lives in the country side outside Udon, where I will sleep that night. I accept.

Besides all their sorrow and sadness for what happen in the last days and for having to leave the city without having achieved what they went there for the happiness and relief of arriving home after months of being away spread on their faces as many people put their heads out of the windows and simmer the wind of home. Smiles are back on people faces. “I haven’t seen my husband for two months” the old woman who will host us says as her beautiful wrinkles curve around her mouth. We stop in a small train station and get off, about 20 of us. For the first moment in the last days the tourist adds of “Land of Smiles” does not sound like a bad joke.

Long night- May 20th

2010-05-23T00:03:00.000-07:00

Everybody takes a place on board, leaving bags and bottles of water on the benches to save their place. Outside on the train platform, a small group of younger protesters sit on the ground, as one of them walk around, bear torso covered in tattoos.

The night falls on the city and given the curfew the streets around the station sound empty. It is like this small group is isolated for the world today, connected by an extreme sense of solidarity and feeling threatened from the outside. The few bills that people still have in their pockets are shared to buy cigarettes and whishy, indispensable for what it look like a long night. Food and drinks are provided and stored in the first car. All the way at almost every station a refill will be delivered by someone and then distributed among the protesters.

As I wait outside, talking to some of them who try some words in English and then, relieved, jump in long political tirades against the government as soon as I tell them I can speak Thai. The young group sitting on the ground is loud, seemingly the only ones enjoying the moment. Above me many heads and hands hang out of the squared windows, waiting to leave. “Enough already with Bangkok” a middle aged woman says. In the meanwhile two friends,a reporter and a videographer from the New York Times, arrive at the station after I call them, hoping this moment will be covered by international media, and not just a random blog.

As they arrive Mariko sets up her camera and a middle aged guy throw himself in front of it, inebriated by the alcohol that is running and will run all night long in his veins. “We are not terrorists, we are not terrorists, we are not terrorists” he shouts. “We just want democracy, why Abisith kills us?” He speaks English quite well but the words come out as in a machine gun, short mechanic single shoots. He is overexcited, jumping around like a kangaroo, mixing moment of euphoria with fall into thoughtful silence. He is wearing a worn white shirt and a black hat, with a big blue towel tuck under it. Big amulets come out of the shirt. He switches to Japanese and has a long conversation with Mariko. Surprises are always dressed in unexpected clothes.

From the train more people are tucking their heads out of the window, watching amused the guy drawing big circles with his hands as he speaks. Mariko noticed them and ask me to translate as she asks some questions. She walks to two women and tuck her camera underneath the window. “When did you arrive in Bangkok?” “How do you feel now?” “What do you think you will do next?” “How are you feeling about going home?” Who is waiting for you there?” “What will be the first thing you do when at home?” With some variations these kinds of questions will be asked to the people around. This two middle aged woman are around since about a month and a half, stably at the protest site instead of going back and forth from home. They voice their dissatisfaction with the leadership who has abandoned them in the most difficult moment and the sorrow of leaving Bangkok, with many dead bodies left in the streets and an unchanged situation.

It is interesting that the more peaceful (santi) sections of the protest in this day have voices their disappointment with the leaders while the more “harco” –the thai version of hardcore- instead seem to be less prone to critique the leaders and understand the necessity of their move at this time, often part of a “lose a battle, win the war” logic. “What did you like the most about staying at the protest?” Mariko asks. “Sleeping in front of Erawan” the answer together and smile. “Fighting for Democracy” the drunken man puts in their mouths. “The weather also” they say, “it wasn’t too hot in Bangkok” maybe thinking about the dry landscape of the Korat plateau this time of the year. “Who was the best person you met?” “We love Thaksin” they answer coyly. “But he wasn’t there” I add. They laugh. “Yes, it was good to meet people from all around the country who are fighting for democracy”. “What will you do now?” “We will go back rest a little and then keep going with our fight, we still don’t know where or how, maybe we will need new leaders but there are already younger leaders.” We thank them and get on the train, where the people have reserved two benches for us.

The long rows of hard chairs are half filled with people, mostly sitting eating something and preparing for the night. It is already 10pm, accumulating delay. Right before the departure the MP from Khon Khaen gets on board and walks through the cars, followed by three guards saluting everyone and wishing good luck. “It is not finished” he reassures them as he rapidly passes through. Seth, the other journalist, asks me to get his card so I get off the train and reach him on the next car. “What do you think will happen next?” “It is really hard to say. People are angry. It is hard to know what they will do.” He says in spotless English. “But I can reassure you that this people are not defeated.” He walks away.

We get back at our seats as the people around are stocking us with water bottles and food. A man, who was sitting close to the young man I talked to at the train station, tells me to be careful with water. “Always turn the bottle around and see if it drips. If so do not drink it, it may be poisoned.” He tells me mindful of the incident with coffee at Sarasin a week ago.

Sadness and dissatisfaction mixes with fear and paranoia on this train, fuelled by inability to trust a government that in the last two days first offered them a safe area inside a temple and then attacked it, leaving people dead. In some occasions extreme paranoia is what keeps you alive. This feeling will accompany us for the whole trip, with rumors of possible attacks and army blocks, spreading inside the four cars.

Besides us the old woman I met before sits with the two women we interviewed. Mariko almost cries when she sees her, touched by the coincidence of finding her again after the craziness of last days.

We have a short interview with her as she imperceptibly moves her toothless mouth and the words are amplified to us by the other two women and another man who sits close to me. “I am a fighter” she says “and we will fight again for democracy.” The train is now starting to move into the darkness of the empty city.

As we move the young man comes to me and tells me to close the windows until we get out of Bangkok and be careful on what we see outside. Somebody could throw stones or worst, to the train. “When we live Bangkok you can pull the window down.” Many times in these few days in Isaan Bangkok has been described to me as the dangerous area, the head of the nation who pretend to think as the others do, the city of privileges, an ungrateful product of the work of Isaan people, or just a place where life is hard, everything is business, and people do not care about each other. The body of this macrocefalic nation is now kicking, asking for some form of autonomy.

Seen from Isaan this conflict, often described as a class struggle, seems to be more organize about regional identity and forms of social inequalities that are economic, legal, and cultural but that divide along territorial access to resources more than class lines. Many of the protesters I met in Ratchaprasong in the previous days, whom I visited while in Udon are small shop owners, tourist guides, small business people, farmers with a relatively productive land and concrete houses. This regional growing lower middle class mixes with the poorest portion of the population, sharing its demands and requests for social equality.

The demands, even if voice under the word democracy, when broken down and unpacked revolve around what we would call a “social equality” agenda, much larger than a quest for new political structure. As one man in the train put it in along and fascinating interview with me and Seth “what we mean by democracy is fairness (kwaam yút-dtì tam). We want fairness in three ways: legal, political, and educational.”
We pass Bangkok and nothing happens so we take a walk around the train, safely leaving out stuff with our friends from Udon.

Mariko meets another woman whom she has met before. She wears a oversized blue shirt and long worn out jeans. They greet each other. She looks a bit slow with her head but her heart is overflowing with emotions. She immediately starts talking about the night before at the temple, of the fear, the darkness, the shoots and explosions all around, the dead bodies. “I have cried so much that I have no tears left” she says with profound eyes. They stare at mine, completely dry.

Seth tells me to ask her what she has ever taken the skytrain. Why a question about the skytrain now? I think but I do my role as a translator and I go ahead. The answer is fascinating and condenses all the perception of Bangkok as a dangerous foreign space. This is why he is a world famous journalist and I am not. “I have never taken the skytrain and I have never gone up to take a look at it. It means nothing to me, it is just something build to make the life of rich people easier, as if it was not already easy.” Place of inequality, transformed into a source of death. This theme will run among many of the conversation on the train.

As we walk back to our seats an old man stops us. He is bear torso, with a grey t-shirt on his shoulder “See you again next year” he tells us in English. Back to Thai. “This is not finished yet, is not even half of it. We will come back over and over again. We are not satisfied and we cannot lose.” He looks up with a confrontational face. “Red shirts cannot lose.” “How are you feeling now?”. “Normal. He answers with an angry face. “It is like the last year, I was here as well on a train going back but we will come again. The fight doesn’t stop here.”

We walk back to our seats. A drunken police man walks passed us shouting “We just get killed, this is what we get. Let’s go home now.” He stops. Tears in his eyes. “Look I am crying” he shouts before covering with his hand Mariko’s camera. Soon after he is back asking our tickets and asking to see our IDs. A man of the Udon group comes around. “Don’t worry” he says “I will look after you along the trip. I have already accepted to die, I can very well die protecting you.” He walks away with the officer. The train ride proceed smoothly but slowly.

The young man comes to me and asks me to walk with him. “There are news that there maybe some attack to the train. Newin’s people will be waiting for us, maybe shooting at the train.” Again the red shirts worst nightmare, Newim. He tells me to stay calm because people around will be vigilant. The tension is palpable, at least among the young guys who sits in between cars looking out for strange movements. Guards are perceived as needed at every step. ‘Where do the news come from?” I ask. “There are military on this train, red shirts, who are dresses as civilians and they have told us. We have to be careful until we reach Korat, after that we are home.” Korat, also called the gate of Isaan, for them is also the gate of the safe zone.

Nothing happens and slowly people fall asleep around in the car we are in and everywhere they find a place.

The next car, mostly with younger people and more hardcore reds is sleepless. “I can’t sleep” an older man tells me “just to many images in my head”. The sleepless night is helped by whisky that flows around changing the smell of people’s breaths.

I remained there for a while and walk up and down the train chatting to people awake. An man in his forties pulls out of his pockets picture from the time he was a soldier.

“I am a black shirt, I was a mercenary before.” He says staring at me. I go back to my seat and fall asleep, cradled by the train.

events at Wat Pathumwan- reports

2010-05-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to make sense of what happened on Wednesday at the Wat Pathumwan there are around some first hand accounts in english, here, here , and here

UPDATE: also a video available here and a video interview to witnesses in Thai here

Before Departure- May 20th

2010-05-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

I arrived at Hualongpong train station around 4pm. The huge hall was full of people, with a compact crowd sitting in the middle of the station on the ground, underneath the huge painting of Rama V. I ask around if the train with the protestors already went away. Most of them already left but the train for Udon is leaving at about 8.25.

I walk back to the people sitting on the ground and ask around who is going to Udon. Pretty soon I am seated with a group of about 20 people, directed to Udon. They come and go, taking off their shoes before sitting on the ground as if they are still in the We Love Udon tend near Lumpini Park. They all look demoralized, worn out, and unsure on what next.

I start talking to a young man. Long hair and beautifully shaped dark eyes. He speaks quietly in a polite but firm voice. As the people around him listen, occasionally throwing some sentences into the conversation. He is from a small village closed to Udon. He has been at the protest for than two months leaving behind 10 rai of land from which he gets enough rice for him and for selling, making some extra money and food by raising chickens and fishes. “I wasn’t here last year” he says staring at me “but this time it was too much so I came to Bangkok to protest.” “Had you been in Bangkok before?” I ask. “I used to live here, I worked as a security guard. Life here was too chaotic for me so I decided to go back home and live in the country side.” He does not have a family or kids.

“ I haven’t thought about a girlfriend since a long time” he continues. “It is difficult with women, you never understand each other and I want to have a calm life”. “What about your parents?” I asked. His eyes become opaque for a second. “They died 25 years ago” This makes him 9 or 10 when his parents departed. “We have been alone since then. Me and my two sisters. One is married to a Farang and lives in Finland now, looking after her husband’s strawberry farm. He has a problem with alcohol but she has a good life. I even learned some Finnish, so I can talk to my niece, when she comes to visit. The other ones is still in Udon. She is married so I live alone now.” “Are you happy about going home?” He stops for a second. “We came here to bring democracy and we go back without having obtain that. Many people died. Soldiers killed us. We are all very sad.”

I turn around and the small crowd is listening, looking down for a moment. An older woman takes up the conversation. “What is this? Killed indifferently by soldiers. We are Thais and we get killed by snipers whose weapons are paid with our taxes. Is bad, very bad. The government has double standards.” One after the other everybody says something about what just happened asking my opinions on the present events and how the “people of the world” feel about Thailand.

Two men in black shirts come around. “We will fight again” they say, trying to raise the morale of the group. “It is not finished” the young man echoes “We are going home now but no one has won or lost yet.” “What next then?” “We will keep fighting against this government and the ammat. Maybe not in Bangkok but we will divide in small groups all around the country and keep burning things if we need to. There is nothing else we can do. The government doesn’t accept our requests and kill the population. We are unarmed there is nothing else we can do and now we know that peaceful protests don’t work. Peacefully we just die.” The conversation dies out and a dense silence falls over the small group as an old woman repeats with a soft voice “We won’t accept this, we cannot accept this. Red shirts cannot lose.” This return has the bitter taste of a defeat. Days and days spent in a hostile city, in the middle of buildings overlooking them, symbols of a life they cannot partake in and from which death, by hands of snipers, descended upon them.

A younger woman comes around, distributing food to the group and asking if everybody is ok. Behind me a woman sits in her dirty clothes without shoes. “They remained in Ratchaprasong” she said. “I run to the temple without shoes and I was too scared to go back to get them.” The young woman keeps walking around delivering small packages of rice and pork. “The people in Bangkok have helped us” the young man breaks the silence “Many came to bring food, water, and to offer money. This time the government have seen that is not only about Isaan or Thaksin and that the population will not accept everything they do. We did not obtain democracy but we have not accepted what the government did. This will go on.”

The young woman comes back distributing medicine to anyone who wants them. “You see” another woman says “if we didn’t know her we wouldn’t take the food or medicine. They already have tried to poison our drinks in Sarasin some days ago. We need to be very careful. The young woman walks back to other three friends, all dressed in white and wearing a hat. I stand up and go out to buy cigarettes.

As I enter again into the station the clock hits 6 o’clock and the speakers broadcast the national anthem. Everybody stands up for the anthem, straight to the ceiling in this enormous hall. As the anthem ends one guy of the red shirt group shouts “Ohh, Ohh, Ohh” as they did in Ratchaprasong every day after the anthem. “Ohh, Ohh, Ohh” the red shirt answer timidly.

Around the atmosphere is grieving, many tense faces and wet eyes in the middle of the few bags and objects that they have been able to retrieve in their escape from the advancing tanks of the military. “What do you think about the leaders?” I ask. Here a big conversation erupts. Somebody says “You need to know when to stop. The military would have killed us all, so they need to surrender.” Others, instead, say they are dissatisfied with the leaders who run away when the military attacked. “We are not satisfied” the young man says “we don’t know what we will do next or who will be the leaders but there is no problem, we have many leaders, in each village. I promise this is not finished.” Again the situation calms down and I get out of the station with him to pick up big plastic bags full of food, delivered by a taxi outside the station. We distribute the last ratio of food and water, as people store both for the long trip ahead.

An older woman stands up in the middle of the crowd, as people around her applaud. She is 82 and she has been at the protest since the 16 of March, sleeping on a mat on the street. “She is the oldest person in Ratchaprasong” an older woman says to me as she listens carefully to what the woman says in her barely perceptible voice. “We will continue to fight for democracy” she repeats out loud as smiles come back for a minute on people’s faces.

Soon after a well dressed man in his forty comes around to greet people and tell them that they are not alone and that there will be other way to fight to obtain democracy. “He is the Phua Thai MP in Khon Khaen” a man says in my ear. The man walks around the small crowd stopping to talk to some people for a second and hugs the old woman, after waing profusely to her.

It is time to board and everybody moves to take their place in the four special cars at the beginning of the train reserved for the people of the protest.

“Aphisit is so generous” says a man as we step onto the empty car “He kills us first and then reward us with special cars.”

Ratchaprasong: the day after- May 20th

2010-05-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

I wake up and decide to go to Ratchaprasong to see what is going on there and the extension of the damages left by a day that is going to raise a lot of questions over the role of the military, the police, the black shirts as well as the real amount of deaths. All questions that seem to revolve around Wat Patumwan, a large temple between Central World and Siam Paragon, in a place when you wouldn’t expect to have a temple with a small village behind. In the late morning of the 19th this Wat became a theater of operations that transformed it from an alleged safe buffer zone for kids and older people into the stage for underground operation, meeting place for a small group of armed black shirts, and death place for at least 6 people, allegedly shot dead by soldiers hidden on the skytrain tracks.

I arrived from Henry Dunant and walk to Rama I. I am with two friends, a Thai guy and a French woman. Along the huge empty street many sewage holes are overflowing with water, creating bobbles on the sidewalks and spreading on the street.
Right before the last red shirt barricade, that still blocks the entrance to Rama I, a line of metropolitan busses is waiting the people who took refuge in the two safe zones and now are grouped in the Police Headquarters waiting to make their way back home.

At the side entrance of the Headquarters a big group of people waiting sit on the ground with lost faces, directed around by women officers of the Border Police. A tall monk is standing close to them, staring passed the officers talking in a loud speaker in front of him, into the emptiness.

Scared eyes look at me, many of them filled with tears as the police tell them that everything is ok and soon they will be sent to the train station or to Mochit to board on busses. We decide to keep walking.

We pass through a small military check point and walk to the side of Siam Paragon. The atmosphere is completely surreal. Contrary to what I had heard Siam Paragon is intact but the building in front is completely burned down, water dripping everywhere as a small group of soldier sat on the handrail, their weapon on their shoulders.

Around the normally shadowed area underneath the skytrain seemed completely dark. The lower part of the skytrain’s truck is pitched black, dirty water overflowing everywhere, embracing all the objects left by the protesters, who sought refuge in the Wat and in the police Headquarters, right in front of the temple. In this silence of death, a loud rhythmic sound fills the air: the continuous and enervating buzz of the alarm of Siam Paragon, accentuating the already post-atomic feeling. Military and police and a few journalists walk around with wide opened eyes. I proceed in the direction of the temple. On the side of the street a small box full of slingshots and Molotov cocktails in small red bull bottles lays in the middle of the street, too visible to not be purposefully left for journalists.

The smell of fire fills the air as the sound of the alarm slowly fades. I enter the small temple, as one of the people I am with needs a bathroom. We walk into the front area, where some objects are left, mostly helmets and clothes. Police is everywhere sharing the space with monks and a few curious walking around. The back of the temple is covered with mats left there. A group of policemen sit in the shadow, in full riot gear. It is the first times since the beginning of street fighting that I am seeing a tear gas launcher, and always in the hands of police.

Two man sit separated from the group. “It must be hot in that uniform” I start to chat. “Yes, is very hot and very heavy”. They both want to talk, maybe even need to get things out of their system. They say they are on the side of the people and themselves have been under the fire from the military. “We have to hide as well” he says. “We are sent here with no weapon and risk to be shot at by the army. Yesterday” he says “I saw a sniper pointer on my body. We couldn’t do anything else then hide.” He speaks nervously, showing all his frustration of having to be her to clean up the mess that somebody else did. I greet them and walk away, ready to see Central World, of which a section apparently has collapsed.

I arrived to the ZEN section and the scene is stunning. The building has been burned completely, broken glass everywhere in the front. The orange SCRITTA ZEN WORLD was darkened by the flames and now says “Zen Word”.

The interior is completely devastated and the huge windows that cover the building are destroyed, popped one after the other. On the ground pieces of glass everywhere. On the side of the building only a part of the huge banners that were there is left. “WOW” it says, before turning into a melted grey mass of plastic. Above it an untouched banner says “Peace”. Chance plays strange tricks. This side looks like a huge black eraser has been passed over ZEN. In front of the building a huge pool reflect the destruction. I am sure around me there are noises, but someone in my memory the silence was absolute.

We keep walking around the building and arrive in front of the stage, left there completely empty, mats still on the street pavement. We turn around. The scene is apocalyptic. The central section of Central World is just gone. As if a giant spoon when through this delight of Bangkok’s landscape. It is breathtaking. It defeats language.

I keep taking pictures, completely out of what is going on around me. My Thai friend snaps me out of it. “They say is dangerous to be here. The army is coming back. We need to go.” I turn around. A police officer is delivering this message from a truck that drives around. We move fast through the destruction, in a deep silence. My Thai friend looks shaken. He just repeats “Fuck” over and over again. We get back to the Police Headquarters. He wants to talk to police, deeply surprised by what the police officers at the temple have told us.

We walk back and get into the big open space in front of the police building. It is half full of people, most of them from Bangkok who wait to go back home. We sit with a small group, close to the entrance. Two older women give us some water. Their faces do not smile. Just stare around with wet eyes. A man sits on out left side on a portable chair. He lives in Din Daeng he says and hasn’t had a chance to go home since a week, too dangerous to go in that direction.

“Why are you still here?” we ask. “Police tell us to stay here. Things around are not yet safe. Before we did not believe the police but now we believe them. This morning the police told us to not go out and grab our stuff, to remain in the area and not trust anyone. Two men did not trust the police and believed they could go home. They got out and were shot dead in Ratchaprasong. So now we stay here until they tell us to go.”

He has grey hair, a grey shirt and his eyes, squared into thin metallic glasses, move restlessly. “Yesterday we stayed at the temple.” He speaks softly. “We stayed close to the monk, thinking it was the safest place but they have no problem. The soldiers shoot also the monks. In Din Daeng they were shooting also at monks.” He stops. “Where is the fairness? We are the pacific group, we have no weapons. Look around you. Yet the army shoots at us.” We sit down close to him. His wife passes around biscuits that are given to us. “Only dictators kill like this. Snipers against people with bear hands. There is no fairness. Look at the dead. When a yellow shirt died they gave national funeral and money to the families. If we die nobody cares.” “How do you feel now?” I ask. “Look around you, look at people’s faces” He says.

I look around. Lost faces all around that turn into a short smile when they notice I am staring at them and then go back to their tense expression. “We will not accept this” he adds “We will fight again”. We stand up and greet them, wishing good luck. My Thai friend, surprised by the role of police and the complete trust given to them to the protesters walks to a police officer standing in a white shirt at the entrance of a small building. “The people really believe the police” he says to the officer. He laughs as a woman with a small baby in her hands asks for the bathroom and is directed inside the building.

The big space outside the police headquarter is full of people sitting everywhere ready to be sent off. The people from other regions have been already moved elsewhere, here is almost only people from Bangkok.

We chat up with some border police officers from Tak. They are the one who are checking everybody’s documents before directing them to the right busses to go home. “We came here about a week ago. The other night we had to hide like everybody else behind the wall of the Headquarter. There is nothing we can do, we have no weapons”. It is strange, it feels like hearing red shirt protesters talk. We greet them too and move to the side of the building that opens to Henry Dunant and the loudspeaker says that the people from Bangkok can go home too.

The small space we passed before coming from Henry Dunant is full of people sitting everywhere waiting to go home. As we pass there a woman voice says. “People from Udon, your bus is ready”. A small crowd steps up and moves toward the gate. A disorganized line of border police officers, mostly women checks everybody’s ID and write down on white papers their name and provenience, before letting them out of the gate.

It is very interesting how women are used by the government when the situation needs to be handled with calm and there is a potential for conflict. Right outside a big pick-up distributes water to the protesters. Few of them take it. It feels like an exodus.

Composed and silent lines of people carrying whatever they could grab before then got dispersed walk down the big empty streets, big plastic bags on their backs and lost faces. The Udon group stands on the sidewalk waiting for their bus. An older man leads the group with a pack of water bottles under his arm and a big grey bag. “We want accept this.” He says “We will continue to fight. Maybe not here in Bangkok. We will break down in small groups all around the country. It is far from the end of this.” He wears a light blue shirt with a cat in a graduating gear with written “Congratulation. You have proven that you can make it with nothing more than…”

They get on a old public bus and drive to the train station, on their way back home after about two months in the city. This twelve hour trips will be a time to reflect, to process what happened in the last days, or just to sit in silence. I go back home, grab a small bag, and drive to the train station.

After the dispersal- Part 2- May 19th

2010-05-22T06:13:00.000-07:00

I went out again in the late afternoon, trying to get to the Ratchaprasong area before the sun goes down and the curfew kicks in. I drove toward Silom and pass walking the first military road block in Soi Convent. The Thais passing through were register by a soldier sitting on a small table on a side of the street.

I ask the two soldiers who stand at the road block if it is true that they burned Central World and Siam Paragon. The young officer with deep dark eyes looks at me confused. I ask again. “I don’t know where these places are” he answers “I don’t know Bangkok”. Great way to keep your soldiers safe in a conflict occurring in an urban setting. I pass them and walk to Silom. The street is completely empty and very dark. Three armored vehicles are park in the middle of the street on the other side from where I came from. Some soldiers sit around them, with their uniforms half taken down laughing. A line of military walks down from Ratchadamri with very tired faces. I smile at them, they don’t smile back.

The Sala Daeng intersection is completely different from last time I was here. The tires and bamboos sticks that used to be a barricade sit in huge piles on the side, close to the statue of Rama VI.

Three bulldozers are pulling them up and let them fall into dark green trucks. The asphalt is carved by the signs of caterpillars, plastered into the thin layer of burned rubber. I sit there for a while looking at the mechanical force removing the weak defense structures. A bunch of men in BMA workers vest direct the movement with their hands, covered by the noise of engines. How many of them are red shirts supporters not only defeated but also busy clearing the area, I wonder unable to go talk to them.

I walk down Ratchadamri road. The place is surreal and feels haunted. For the first time since I came to Thailand I can hear the twitter of birds in this area, normally covered by the noises of traffic and for the last month by the broadcasted speeches. The place feel like the people living in it just disappeared suddenly. Everything is left there. Clothes, fans, Tvs, motorbikes, unfinished food, half cooked rice, piles of vegetables, half opened tends, monks clothes, wallets, documents, bags, red paraphernalia, medicine, sealed water glasses still cold . Everything as in a crowded scene, just with people erased. That deafening sound of birds, echoing in the emptiness.

I walk through Ratchadamri, leaving behind me a burned toilet bus across the street after Chulalongkorn Hospital. On the other side of the street a giant pile of black bags of garbage stands attracting flies and an incredible number of grey pigeons, picking some leftover food coming out of the pile.

Along the street few human pigeons do the same, going timidly through the stuff left over picking up the best pieces and putting it in their bags. A man, also wearing the BMA vest, notice I am staring him as he puts a electric plug into his black and white bag. “Recycle” he tells me breaking the silence and making his way through some bags. Further down three man pile on the back of a pick up all the electric appliances they can find. Most common item the fan.

As I walk down the road, passing Surasin a group of military sits on the left side of the street. I greet them and they tell I cannot go further as the area is not secured yet and there are still snipers around. Four of them sit around. Behind them, in a small space between two buildings about twenty protesters sit on the ground, their hands tied by a black plastic cord.

One guy pulls his hands up and get them close to the mouth of another prisoner who smokes a cigarette from his hands. As I move to take a picture a soldier gets close to me and picks up bullet near my feet, hiding it in his pocket. I look around and find another one, take a picture and then pick it up.

I go back to the soldier and ask “Is this a M-16?” he looks at me without saying a word, takes the bullet , turn around, and hides it in his pocket. “Can I have that as a souvenir?” I ask. “How about one of this” showing me the plastic cord with which they arrest “as a souvenir?” I get the message and walk back. A young guy walks down Surasin and a military officers in plain clothes shouts at him “Come here or I shoot” holding his phone attached to his paint. “I shoot”. The guy keeps walking. A soldier in uniform pops out. The guy now starts running into a soi.

I walk back to the entrance of Lumpini Park. Their police officers are going around taking pictures of red shirts posters and graffiti left on the wall with their cell phones. A young police man picks up a red shirt with a picture of Thaksin doing the Karabao sign. He smiles at me and walks away with the shirt. Other two policemen are collecting red paraphernalia. They see my camera and ask me to take a picture with the two of them holding a red shirt bandana with written Truth Today. “We are completely red shirts. The police officers are red shirts” they tell me. “Please report the real news, please help us.” They walk away with the bandana rescuing “insignificant” pieces of history left behind by the reds.

Back in Bangkok

2010-05-22T06:07:00.001-07:00

I just got back in Bangkok, very very interesting trip in Isaan. Too much to write about. It will probably take a while. For now i will post the notes from the 19th and 20th here in Bangkok. Tonight i will try to at least get the first part of the trip.

second apologies of my blog

2010-05-20T01:38:00.000-07:00

Today i won't be able to post today. i just got back from the Ratchaprasong area where i have been yesterday and today. The destruction is unbelievable, it makes your stomach close and makes you breathless. The central part of Central World is just gone, collapsed. I am now going to Hualonpong train station, probably grabbing a train back to Udon Thani with the protesters who have been moved by bus from the Police Headquarters to the train station. I think is the most interesting place for me to be now, on the train talking to them. So today no time for posting here. I have a lot of notes and i will catch up as soon as possible.

After the dispersal- Part 1- May 19th

2010-05-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and red that the protest site was under attack from the military. Turn on tv to see tanks moving into the barricades and taking them down. Panitan face on every Tv channel reassured the population this was done for their own safety and that the situation was under control. I watched out of the window and a big smoke column was coming from the direction of Rama IV. Seemed hardly under control.

It was not the usual black smoke from tires but a bigger grey cloud. I waited for the sounds of shots to go down and grab my bikes, in the direction of Ngan Dumplhi. I arrived there and the street is just destroyed. Few people there, people I have never saw before who walks around taking pictures and helping put out small fires.

The street is covered in filth, food everywhere fermenting in the hot sun. A small crowd hidden behind a wall stares at the tall building overlooking the soi, trying to spot snipers. The soi is completely opened in the front, no tires left. The building that at the corner with Rama IV, an office of Kasikorn Bank, has been completely burned, leaving an empty blackened shell with electric wire swinging from the light pole to the street.

The building is dripping with the water that has been thrown at it to put out the fire. Very very close to the electric wires. In front of the burned scheleton of a building, two men sit, one guy is a local resident, the other a Thai journalist and the casually discuss about what is going on around the city. I talk to them for a while and then walk with the Thai journalist down Rama IV.

As you get out of Ngan-Dumplhi, a barricade of tires sits in the middle of the street, down Rama IV. We passed it and walk into a destroyed area, burned buildings and phone boots, smashed ATMs and a thick layer of burned gum everywhere.

My shoes stick to the pavement, before washing in dark water pool. People around are taking pictures, walking around in a stunning silence. On the street banks branches and 7-11 have been surgically burned, somehow managing to keep the buildings around undamaged. The street is completely covered in debris and the rests of burned tires create bass-relief of weird black intersecting circles. I keep walking down the big road, a man is taking pictures, stops and stares at a burned phone booth thrown on the ground. Somehow he does not seem to be able to stand that vision, while was indifferently photographing burned buildings around.

He stands there, silence around. I stand close to him. “How do you feel about what is going on?” I ask. “Very bad” he says without taking his eyes off the phone boot. “very very bad" he repeats. “and now the leaders fled, it is freedom. Everybody can do whatever they want.” He moves to staring the street, the tension accumulating on his forehead. He snaps out. “Where are you from?” he stares at me. “I am sorry, an Italian journalist just died.” “I am sorry to, for many Thais”. I walk away leaving him standing there, stamped on his face the same worries you see around on people from both sides of the political spectrum or just on friends as they sip a beer. I keep walking with the Thai journalist. We passed in front of Lumpini Tower, where yesterday great political conversations were going on, now remains complete emptiness and scraps. The small guards house where yesterday people were lounging starts burning in front of us.

Three guys run to the place using fire extinguishers, trying in vain to put the fire off. One of them stops to pick up his phone; another guy from the close by Soi Sawan Sawat picks his fire extinguisher and takes his job. “Lower, lower” a man shouts. I squat thinking he is talking to me. A huge splash of water comes from the nearby garden, passing the firing house. I feel really stupid. I get into the garden from a opening in the corrugated iron. Four men hold a fire hydrant coming out of Soi Sawan Sawat. Soon the grey smoke turns into white, as the fire goes out.

I walk through the park to the soi. There another small crowd in looking around, for the first time in days I see women among them. I walk toward the highway bridge in Rama IV. “This section is really empty” the Thai journalist says “it scares me”. We walk there attracted by a huge smoke cloud, the one I saw from my home. A power plant down in the direction is on fire, cutting electricity all the way to Sathorn, and the flames extended to a nearby building.

Two fire fighters truck stand in front of the building, not even wasting water to try to put it off. Underneath the highway bridge people take picture as a crowd of about 15 police officers stand there, chatting with locals. On both of the columns that sustain the bridge a large white cloth has been attached. In red painting, a haunting but polite question: “Father, where are you?”

I stay there for a while watching the smoke slowly embracing the building, occasionally revealing the high flames behind it. The small police boot that was used as a “war room” before is also on fire. I walk to a motortaxi driver asking him what is going on in other areas. “The protest has been cleared. Buildings are being set on fires around the city” he tells me “Central World, Siam Paragon, Siam Center”. “Really?” I ask dumbstruck. “I am sorry” he apologizes to me for a reason I do not understand. I ask him to drive me back to Ngan-Dumphli to grab my bike.

As he drives back in the back Sois infested with garbage that has not being collected in almost a week a plane pass over our heads, saying something I can understand. I get dropped in front of my bike. An older woman walks passed us. She looks like the people one normally meets when walking this Sois. Street-vendors standing on sidewalks selling food or drinks. She is in her fifties, dark skin and thin hair turning grey. She is wearing a white apron with small red flowers. The small plain passes again. “The leaders of the protest have already surrounded, the military are retreating, please stop” comes out of the loudspeakers in a woman voice. I ask the old woman “Do you think the people with accept this?” “They will” she says “It is finished.” She does not look comforted or relieved. I walk to the beginning of the Soi. A man with a big fire hydrant is putting on some small fire and throwing water on the tires barricade in Rama IV to prevent it from burning. He then stands in the middle of the street, pouring water on himself.

Everybody around calls him by name and direct him to a small fire inside the Kasikorn Bank building. I ask a motortaxi if he thinks the people will accept what they just said and go home. “We live here” he says “we are people of the area who came to take a look and look after the place. The fighters went away hours ago in Klong Toei.” What will they do now or as a Thai friend put it tonight, “How can I sustain my life style now? How can we restore this country?” remain the questions that keeps people awake in Bangkok tonight, blocked inside their house by the government’s curfew.

Dispersal of Ratchaprasong or just another step closer?

2010-05-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

Reports are coming in that the military moved into the red camps with armored vehicles and are also moving on the skytrain tracks (picture here). To follow the events take a look at reuters live report
Big columns of smoke coming from the Lumpini area, reports of red shirts pouring gasoline on some buildings in the area, and noises of helicopters all around.

For English language live coverage see Al-Jazeera here

Update: Thai media report four dead, 50 injured across Bangkok in crackdown today until now. Total death tool since the army moved to the protest 67 deaths and more then a thousand four hundred injured.

Analysis: How to make sense of people demanding mass killing by the military?

2010-05-18T11:24:00.001-07:00

Today was a day for Thai society, on a very small scale, to take a breath and look around. I had my second illuminating discussion of the day with a student of Chulalongkorn University. The central question was: How do we make sense of people around us thinking that red shirts deserve to die by the hands of the army?

Interestingly her first response was looking at class background and her different upbringing: coming from a struggling family that understands what it means to suffer inequality. Her friends have been, as she put it, “raised in good families” so they find it hard to understand what these people are asking for. The concept of “good people” (poo dee) in Thailand, especially in how the concept of such has been used by this government in its attempt to create a “Moderate Society” (MoSo), could easily be the argument of a whole book in its complexity, huge disciplining role, and hegemonic power in rephrasing economic domination. The question then becomes how does a “good person”, a moderate member of society, come to think that the state has the right, or rather the duty, to kill people for disrupting life in a commercial area of the city? Or, to put it in the way our friends who stand with the military would, how is it that a “peaceful nation under the genius excellent king” comes to be so divided? How did suddenly the land of smiles turn into the land of tense faces?

These questions are running through Thai society in these days, on both sides of the red/yellow division and repeatedly asked and discussed with friends or young foreign researchers like me. As she put it, “people around me are feeling sad and depressed” and these feelings are flowing around, carved in disoriented faces. What happened to us?

First of all let us take a look at the textbook perception of Thailand as a unified peaceful nation. Thailand had 10 coup d’états since 1971, the highest rate in the world. It has suffered from a long-standing insurgency in the south, washed in the blood of thousands of citizens. Thailand is ranked 9th in the world for numbers of murders per year and the 14th for murders per capita. Thai murderers like gun powder: Thailand ranks first in the world for percentage of homicides committed by firearms.

The idea of the peaceful unified nation, evidently more a way in which Thai society thinks of itself than a social reality, sits at the roots of the modern Thai state, organized around the triad “Nation, Buddhism, and King” proposed by King Rama VI and repeated over and over again in every school of the Kingdom. Since then the concept has been purposefully broadcasted through a series of purposeful techniques, from textbooks to nation-wide campaigns, from tourist slogans to TV advertisements. The MoSo campaign, launched by the actual government with the support of Internal Security Operation Command(again another book should be written on ISOC from its anti-communist origins to the present roles), is a good example of one of these techniques. The latest chapter of a centuries-long attempt to transform individual behaviors desired by the state into a perceived national character. As always, hegemonic projects remain incomplete and, in need for constantly filling its own cracks, end up tripping on them leaving people puzzled, suddenly facing a ravine.

It is an interesting conversation and she keeps bringing questions to the table, echoing conversations that you can hear everywhere around you. But then what position do we take if one says, 'so, that it's old system, rotten, we're living in, and nothing we can change'? "It's one of the questions my best friend asks me,” she adds. The conversation gets philosophical. It is the old Hamlet question: is it better to accept a known reality, with all its pitfalls, or to jump into a new stage, taking a step into the dark? Humanity divides over this question and Thai society is no exception. “Yes,” she replies in her ardent activism, “and there are people who don't believe they can change, they have power. We create the system not just let the system control us. Many NGOs work for the grassroots but they don't believe in the people”. Silence for a second. “I think many people believe things can change but just don't want them to,” I reply. “I think if we look at yellow shirts in this case as people who don't believe they can change stuff we are making things too simple, assuming that deep inside they think things need to be changed. Many people want things to be the same and not only for personal benefits, maybe also for that very human fear of the dark.” “I see your point, but that seems to be very passive though.” She says, discouraged, “Or very active in preserving things.” I intervene. “You can say anything but that some of them have been passive. They actively took a position, went to Silom to protest, press the government, put themselves at risk at Victory Monument. They actively want things to remain as they are”. She pauses. “So some people want to be ruled and some people don't want” she concludes dissatisfied.

Discussing in the middle of the conflict- May 18th

2010-05-18T02:11:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up with the sound of rain, ticking on my windows. A nice change. I got out in the terse sky, free from the particle of burned tires and shoots. I drove toward Ngan-Dumphli, passing in an empty Suan Phlu were most of the shops have been closed, especially the ubiquitous 7-11, windows covered with newspapers.

The situation in Ngan-Dumphli is stable now with people hidden underneath the tires barricade, few journalists around, and no sound from the military whom they say have moved back to the Lumpini Area. The athmosphere is much more relaxed, people tuck to the wall jocking around for the amusement of journalists. A man is carrying a yellow helmets on a stick and putting in out of the barrier, hoping a sniper would shoot. A couple of young man throw fireworks on the street and even adventure in the middle of Rama IV to have a better shot. A guy in a green and white helmet shouts to the foreign journalists in English “do you want to see our snipers? Take your camera, we will give you our snipers, take picture” as the people around laugh loudly. A guy pulls out a small metal tube and launches from it a small firework.

“Snipers, snipers, tell the world” the guy repeats. People crack up squatting at the barricade. “Wait, wait, hey you want to see m-79. Here M-79” He turns around to a very young guy and tells him in Thai to pick a shot from his bag. He search frantically in the bag and runs to the middle of Rama IV. Bigger firework, very loud. Again everybody laugh.

I walk back and people are discussing about the snipers present in the zone. I show them my picture from yesterday and they ask me to stay here for a while to try to take a picture. I wait, hidden behind a wall but I see nothing. From the back of the soi a man dressed in black pulls out of his back pack and hand-made rocket launcher and aim at the building. One only shot explodes in the air.

He moves down the wall as everybody squat. “They know we are shooting” they say. The young man runs up and down the wall looking for a good spot for a second launch. Another loud bang.

I decide to go to Sawan Sawat to check the situation and get to Lumpini Tower from the small garden beside the soi. I arrive there and the barriers has grown becoming a cornered bunker. Behind it nobody stands. I get back into the soi and enter the park from a small opening in the corrugated iron that surrounds it. A man sit close to the entry. I ask him if is possible to go there and he stands up. He is completely covered in filth, a local homeless as many others around who are finding a social role in this conflict, helping carrying tires, getting free food, or just hanging around. He tells me “it is impossible for us, we don’t have money, we don’t have connections. There are no connection” I turn around puzzled. Two friends sit on a small table eating. They sign with their fingers movement close to the head that is a bit touched and they tell me to go in.

I step into a small park where some shack have been build. On the ground a mixture of garbage, empty glass bottles, dirty teddy bears. A scary dog sits on a broken sofa, outside a shack. I move in silence and see others walking through the park in the direction of Lumpini Tower.

I turn left, underneath a long tree branch and pass the first tires barrier outside the soi where I was yesterday. The wall of Lumpini Tower is in front of me. A large iron grating rest on the wall, making an unstable latter. A man pops out from the top of the wall and signs me to come. This really feels like urban guerrilla. I walk up the grating and find myself at the entrance of the building on the side of Lumpini Tower. Three men sit on plastic chair, lounging and laughing.

I sit down at the entrance of a small security guard house that has been taken up by them as a relaxing area. They make fun of me for moving carefully, “no danger here”, they say calmly. An older man completely covered in black stains takes a splinter out of his plastic flip flop and prepare his slingshot, holding marbles in his hand.

From this area I take some pictures of a devastated Rama IV the men there tell me to go in the middle of the street. I tell them I prefer to live and the laugh telling me that every time they start shooting the farang journalists are the first to run away. I decide to keep going toward Lumpini Tower as only fireworks sounds fill the air.

I walk to the next wall. Latter going up, another grating going down.

A man showd me the signs of bullets on the buildings on the opposite side of Rama IV. “That side is more dangerous than here” he says, as I notice a big group of journalists in flank vests on the small soi at the side of the building. I walk up to the entrance of Lumpini Tower. The monumental patio outside it is swarming with relaxed red shirt sitting, eating, and smoking as they discuss. On the western corner of the patio, behind a thick column, a group of three young Thais sit around two women, one a German journalist and the other a young Thai asking questions to these guys. The period of calm gives a chance to talk to each other finally. I sit on a huge flower vase and listen to the conversation, translating from time to time to the German journalist in exchange for using her pen. Sweet deal.

The man talks about the problem with this government, their inability to meet ends, and the lack of fairness in the system as well as in the actual situation. The woman responds “what about the pictures of armed red shirts, of people carrying heavy weapons?” A vocal man who set up stages for a living stands in front of here with a imposing posture. “Where are these pictures? I want to see them can you give them to me”. “The website is blocked in Thailand” she replies. “How did you see them then?” “I haven’t seen them.” “Uhhmmm.” The guy turns, looking with a smile with the people around him. “You like yellow shirts” he pushes “you watch ASTV right?” “I know ASTV is partisan and has a vision, I am interested in listening both sides, in understanding”. “Tell me then why is it the ASTV, which supports the yellow shirts, is opened while the red television is closed?” Check.

Another man steps up “We don’t have connections” he tells, turning around and walking away. They are grilling her, she came here to ask questions and the situation has reverted. Is great to hear somebody who sits middle way, believing parts of the government version discuss with people that few years ago never would have confronted her with this tone. “I want to hear something” the man says “give me one reason why support the yellow shirts” he raise his voice “One reason”. She interrupt him and say “Please put on your mask you are splitting on me”. Feeling pressed I guess. He puts the mask up and then takes it down. “Ok. I will speak normally”. He repeats “Give me one reason why you support the yellow shirts.” She gets silent for a second and squeezes her dark eyes, framed into large squared brown glasses. “I am not yellow, my parents are yellow. I just want to understand.” “You are yellow” he insists. “Brother” I tell him, “if she was 100% yellow she would not be here. At least she is trying to see with her eyes.” “Yes” she steps up “if I were yellow I would do this” as she moves her body standing on her tiptoes making a disgusted face. “You see” he says calm “if they didn’t want to kill the population they would throw teargas and then come here and pick us up, put us in jail but instead they shoot at us. It would be simple to disperse but they do not.” Checkmate.

He keeps going. “There is no fairness. This way is going to be a war. Do you think that if Abisith attacks Ratchaprasong and kill 500 or 1000 people he could remain?” “No” they both say together. “It would be war” he concludes. A moment of silence. “You see” he adds “this is democracy. Discussing this way.”

A younger man, motorcycle taxi in the area, calls me and asks me to take a picture with the zoom of a tall building behind the area to see if there are snipers. I walk with him. Nothing on the roof. I show him again the picture from yesterday and he asks me to give him my website so he can copy the photo. I write down the name on a thin rolling paper, greet them, and make my way back to the grating. “Be careful” we echo each other.

Naked for Life

2010-05-18T01:49:00.000-07:00

Just received this, i am writing unfortunately i cannot go:

Subject: ขออนุญาติประชาสัมพันธ์

เปลือยเพื่อชีวิต

ตั้งแต่วันที่ 14 พฤษภาคม 2553 จนถึงปัจจุบัน รัฐบาลภายใต้การนำของนายอภิสิทธิ์ เวชชาชีวะ ประกาศกระชับพื้นที่ชุมนุมเสื้อแดง โดยสั่งให้กองกำลังทหารติดอาวุธสงครามเต็มรูปแบบ ส่งผลให้มีผู้เสียชีวิตจำนวน 36 คน และบาดเจ็บกว่า 200 คน

การใช้อาวุธโดยการยิงไม่เลือกเป้าหมาย ไม่สอดคล้องกับกฎการใช้กำลัง และมาตรสากลใด ๆ ไม่ได้เป็นการยิงเพื่อป้องกันตนเอง หรือยิงเพื่อขู่อย่างที่ศูนย์อำนวยการแก้ไขสถานการณ์ฉุกเฉิน (ศอฉ.) กล่าวอ้างแต่อย่างใด ดังจะเห็นได้จากภาพข่าวของสื่อมวลชนทั้งในและต่างประเทศ

การยิงผู้ที่ไม่มีทางสู้และไม่มีอาวุธเป็นการละเมิดสิทธิขั้นพื้นฐานที่ไม่อาจพรากไปได้ของมนุษย์คือ สิทธิที่จะมีชีวิต (right to
life)

พวกเราผู้ชุมนุมและผู้สนับสนุนเสื้อแดงรวมตัวกันเปลือยกายเพื่อเป็นสัญลักษณ์แสดงออกให้สังคมรับรู้ว่า พวกเรามีเพียงตัวเปล่า ไม่มีอาวุธ และไม่ใช่ผู้ก่อการร้ายตามที่ถูกรัฐบาลกล่าวหา
สถานที่สามเหลี่ยมดินแดง (ใต้ทางด่วน) เวลา 16.00 น. 18 พฤษภาคม 2553
รายละเอียดติดต่อ ขวัญระวี 0811483432, kwanravee@yahoo.com

Naked for Life

Since 14 May 2010, the Abhsit-led coalition has launched full scale warfare against its own people resulting in nearly three dozens of deaths and more than 200 injuries.
The shooting of live and rubber bullets by the security officials has been conducted incessantly and recklessly against unarmed people who are not able to pose any risk to the officials. Such an act is considered “a gross violation of a key human right—the right to life” according to the statement by Amnesty International released on 17 May 2010. It grossly contradicts to the “rule of engagement” touted by the Center for Resolution of Emergency Situation (CRES).
We are Unarmed and not a Terrorist (WANT)
Venue: Samliam Dindaeng, 16.00, 18 May 2010
Contact: Kwanravee 0811483432, kwanravee@yahoo.com

Great blog to keep an eye on

2010-05-17T22:28:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for reports and photos from the ground, you need to take a look at this blog http://www.vaitor.com/. The guy is around all day long sending amazing pictures and reports. Really in the middle of things with unmatched courage. Respect.

media circulation and refraction

2010-05-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning with a cluttered mail box. Some academic friend apparently refer my blog to Bangkok Pundit and he wrote a post on this blog (http://asiancorrespondent.com/bangkok-pundit-blog/motorcycle-taxis-new-blog-and-the-police). Next thing i know mails start coming in. Again clear sign of thirst for news and direct accounts. Media-sphere can sometime be a very warm place. Thanks for the support everyone, particularly to BP and to Jennifer Gampell for her suggestions. If the blog is more readable now is thanks to her.
Going out now, more in the late afternoon.

Victory Monument and snipers- May 17th

2010-05-17T11:06:00.001-07:00

I decided today to take a tour of the peaceful areas so I left the house hoping to visit the five reported stages that the red shirts have put on around the city and take pictures of the monks chanting in Victory Monument. I drove down Sathorn where the empty road was dotted of burned phone boots (where are the phones?) and somebody put a statue of two people in black twisted in a fight at the corner with Soi Convent.

I then drove down Narathiwat and turned into Surawong, emptied out with small crowds of people watching the situation. First military check point. I passed through easily with the excuse of visiting a friend house. Down Surawong turned into Rama IV in the direction of MBK. Second checkpoint. The street is completely empty, just some soldiers here and there and a column of smoke coming from Sala Daeng. Then got out of the military zone at the corner with Ratchatewi, this time after being checked by soldier as a young Thai man opens his motorbike’s seat to reveal a compartment full of 10 bath coins, wrapped in plastic bags.

Down in the direction of Hualompong and then into Rama VI until Aree, then back to Victory Monument. As I pass chanel 5 station, the police is setting up a road block. At the entrance of the highway right before Victory Monument as big crowd of motorcycle and people starts moving frenetically, bringing plastic barriers and wood in the middle of the street and piling them before starting to burn the pile. “The army is coming” shout a motortaxi driver as many people move in the direction of Victory Monument. Goodbye peacefulness today.

I drive into the back soi, to try to cut into Victory Monument but end up in a small closed community where police officers in anti-riot gear lounge inside a compound, taking pictures of what is going on in the street. I drive back and cut into Victory Monument as a barricade is created in the middle of the street with whatever is available and a big fire set in front of it.

The round square is surreal, completely empty with few groups of curious standing on the long overpasses that surrounds the empty roundabout. Again stillness is accentuated by the memories of this buzzing transportation node. A long line of police officers in uniform with no weapons or protection crosses the roundabout and stop underneath a tend on the northern side of the square, they arrive quietly saluted by the crowd. I ask around and a woman tells me that they came to prevent the army from attacking from Phahon Yothin. She also tells me that the only way out of the area is toward Ratchawithi, as the other two exits are blocked one by a military line and the other by the heavy fighting in Din Daeng.

Slowly the police officers take position in rows and move to Phahon Yothin were the fire is now releasing black smoke. The police scatter beyond the barricades and start taking it off as the crowd looks trying to understand their role. From a small gate beside the highway entrance the groups of anti-riot police exit from their refuge and take position at the right side of the crowd. An older policeman tells people around to let them do their job and reassure they are here to protect the people. A loud applause follows his words. The police take charge of the situation, rapidly removing the barricade and putting off the fire.

Never in my life I thought I would see the police dismantling a barricade just built being cheered by the same people who put it on, standing cheerfully around. Only smoking debris remains in the middle of the big road as the police takes again position in rows and the anti-riot group goes back to where they came from. An older police officer, who act as the person in charge, stands in the middle of the street and tells a small crowd formed around him mostly by motortaxi drivers to be calm. If they don’t stop the street the military will not arrive. “Do you believe me?” he ends. “believe” is the common answer as people applause and cheer the police battalion moving back into Victory Monument and leaving the area.

I decide to take a look in the direction of Ratchaprarop, without getting too close. At that side of the roundabout a much bigger crowd is chatting and sitting on at least 500 motorcycles parked everywhere. I have never seen this many motortaxi drivers around protests since the violent turn. I recognize many of them in the crowd and greet some of them. We exchange information about what is going on in different parts of the city for five minute and greet each other, but only after having wished good luck and reminded ourselves to be careful.

Same unspoke routine over and over. I decide to keep going down the street when in the small soi people have stored big objects to put up more barricades. In the empty street, crowded only on the sides, a guy on a motorcycle stands in behind the barricade, as if was speaking to the phones (here what they do with the phones inside the boots) that compose this motley barricade. I walk pass him, smiling at the odd scene and walk down.

I arrive to soi 6 and sit there for a while, as the smoke coming from Ratchaprarop hugs the flyover. On a side of it a small group of people hides behind the street, rolling tears into the smoke, I guess to be picked by other hands down the street. As I stand watching the scene in Soi 6 two men come to me and say that the soldier shooting down Ratchaprasong are not Thai, but kmer send by Newim. "How do you know?" I ask "We just know, we have seen them. Go there and see yourself". Around people point in the direction of the Century Park Hotel that overlooks the area.

They ask me to take a picture in that direction with the zoom to see if there are any snipers. Lucky shot. I zoom with my camera and there they are at least two shapes that look like military guys, looking down at the street, kneeling in the plants that come out of the higher balcony.

Immediately the news runs around and I get assaulted by a myriad of people asking me to take a look, too fast to declare that the balcony is full of snipers and you can see them very clearly. As soon as they pose their eyes on the small camera screen people turn around saying out loud “it’s full of snipers, at least five or six” I keep repeating that at most it would be two but it take the instant to turn around for the story to grow bigger. Images in this situation come to play a strangely authoritative role. In a time where manufacturing pictures or just selecting what to show seems not only easy but diffused, an epoch of spin doctors and intrusions on the media-scapes is funny how images, often blury ones become the higher form of truth. Nowhere else more than in that small soi close to a cloud of smoke I have felt this.

The people who want to watch seem to never end. Again, again, again. My camera on play keeps turning off so I have to zoom again as people ask me to take pictures of my camera screen. Pictures of pictures, often taken with a small self phone camera. Small pixeled images of truth, the first victim in this kind of situations. People here seem, however, to be decided on not losing it, in their tenacity to hold on to a trace of it, stored in their self phone or memory card. Soon a camera crew comes around and wants to shot the small camera screen. I show the picture over and over again, moving from being sure of seeing snipers in it and thinking is just some strange shadows.

After a while I decide to walk back to Victory Monument. I see there a motortaxi driver whom I have met before at the protest site, as people distribute food and water, just arrived from a pick-up. I tell him that I am surprised to see so many motortaxi drivers around and he tells me that it has always been like this in street protest since 1992. “I was there” he says “hiding in a temple as the military shot people in the street. This time is not like that. On that day the soldier would fires straight at people, so many. You could just run away.” Funny to have this conversation on the 17th of May, in this bloody anniversary of the events of eighteen years ago. I ask his phone number to interview him on those events. “Call me later on” he says “now there is no time and besides that interviewing now is a very dangerous thing, you may get shoot”. His sour smile fails to open up in his face as he thinks at the recent death of Seh Daeng.

I show him the picture I just took and in a second another flow of people comes around, taking pictures of my camera screen, asking me to send it to the red shirt leaders and to put the picture on the internet. A guy walks to me and ask me if I would stay long enough for him to come back with his computer. People starving for “evidences” or just crumbs of it. I notice however how many of them do not really look at the picture to see something but rather to find something and see what they want to, as the older woman who showed me the Xerox copy of a picture of alleged bodies of military killed by other soldiers. A Thai journalist arrives and pulls out a small notebook. I pass him the picture, happy that we would take up the pressure and requests that come with that blurry frame.

I decide to drive away as people thank me and offer me food and water. I grab a bottle of water and drive back to the Rama IV area. Here in both Ngan-Dumphli and Sawan Sawat the situation is stable, military shooting, protesters hidden behind the corner of the sois and tire barricades. I stay there for a while watching the tense faces and words of people who are being shot at, but mostly close to, since three days, almost getting used to the sounds of shots and explosion but still interpreting them for the new comers. Rifle, rifle, M-16, M-16, M-16, us, us, us, sniper. A large tires barricade has been positioned across one lane of Rama IV 20 meters east of Sawan Sawat and behind it about 15 men hide in silence eating grilled pork and sticky rice. Cameras and self phone taking videos everywhere. One man completely covered in black stains from managing tires asks me where I am from and tells me he is a supporter of Inter Milan. We are on the same side I tell him. A younger man on his left tells me he likes Manchester United. Bullets pass over our heads. “Red devils” he laughs as he show me a foulard of the UDD wrapped around his waist.

Around Bon Kai and Klong Toei- May 16th

2010-05-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

I got out in Suan Phlu, completely calm during the day, and found a woman selling sweet bread who told me that the people in Bon Kai cannot exit their home to buy food so she is roaming the area selling food door to door. I greeted her and drove to Ngan-Dumphli. The soi was more filled with people than yesterday, maybe also for the later hour. Everybody was tucked again to a wall on the right side of the soi, to hide from snipers. The front of the soi had been closed with a barricade of tires, this time not burning. Without smoke is possible to see the other side of Rama IV, where a similar group of red shirts was cluttered at the beginning of a small soi.

From a nearby house a family was leaving the house, with some belonging stuffed into a big green bag, moving for some days to friends’ house in another part of Bangkok. Many people in the area, Thais and foreigners, are doing the same, scared away by the potential expansion of the conflict, or stocking food and beverages in the house, ready to be cut off from the rest of the city. The people hidden behind the barricade throw once in a while a firework in the direction of a building on the other side of Rama IV, where they say snipers have been seen. Every successful shoot is met with a cheer from the other people and a clap to the launcher. On the other side the military, about a 100 meters away down Rama IV keep shooting in this direction, without really doing much damages. “They have finished the rubber bullets” one man tells me, as he pulls down is white mask “now is just the real ones”. The motortaxi guy who has been organizing the movement of people there is still shouting directions to everybody, from few meters away. The groups at the front is made up of six or seven young Thais in black shirts and an equal numbers of journalist in blue bullet proof vests and a blue reinforced helmet.

The number of journalists compared to the protesters gives the scene a funny taste, perfectly emblematic of the incestuous relationship between reality and perception through media. After a while a tuk-tuk stuffed with food and water arrives in the soi and drops four big bags filled with the white carton containers filled with rice and plain omelets. I sit there for a while watching the people taking turns in the front and coming back to eat something as a young man arrives with about ten fireworks.

I decided then to move down to the Rama IV intersection toward Klong Toei. Here about 500 people are gathered, too far they say to be reached by the bullets of the army, but constantly watching the buildings, especially the Siam Commercial Bank down Rama IV, from which snipers have been shooting the day before.

Early in the morning, an old man says, two people have been shot here by a yellow shirt guy from one of the building. The area have been totally claimed by the protesters who have build tires barricades on each of the four entrances and exits to the elevated highway and two lines of barricades extending for the whole of Rama IV.

Three of those barricades are burning, as people from the side of Rama IV, protected under the highway make tires roll to the people hiding behind the barricade who constantly refurnished the burned ones. On the back, in the direction of Klong Toei a line of parked motorcycles divide the “dangerous area” from the “safe one” as people explain to me, but the distinction seems hardly real. Behind this line a huge crowd of probably a couple of thousands of people stretches down the road where a rudimental stage has been set a couple of days ago. Motorcycles are parked everywhere peppered by some cars and taxis.

The police booth right under the highway has been claimed as a sort of “war room” in which some of the leaders discuss and come out occasionally to direct the constant delivery of new tires with big pick-ups and to tell the crowd to take it easy and stay calm. As I talk to some motortaxi drivers whom I know a big pick-up brings food to the area and a motortaxi drivers uses a traffic cone to direct people into making a chain to unload the food and tell everyone to come get their portion, one box each and one water bottle. As the process goes on another man in black gear comes around and start calling people to take their bikes and go with him to an undisclosed place. He wants fifty of them. The call awakes the crowd as people frantically run to take their motorcycles and join the group that is forming underneath the highway. Every new bike is welcomed by the cheering crowd. The people around are shouting not to take pictures in this moment so I take away my camera and walk around, as people are covering their license plates with opened boxes and the motortaxis in the crowd take down their vests. One man in the middle of the group tucks a big axe into his paints pushing on his bear torso and puts on a military jacket to hide it. As they get ready as the deaf sound of a sniper gun, a scream. and people running away from the corner with Rama IV breaks the moment. An ambulance car drives through the crowd hastily and picks up an injured man down Rama IV, I run in that direction but is too late to see where he was hit.

When I turn around the small motorcycle battery is already gone. I decide to drive back in the direction of Bon Kai, as the red light of sunset refract and disperse into the smoke coming from that direction. As I drive there a black guard with a visible headphone coming out of his ear stands in front of a tires shop, maybe patrolling their tires source. I arrive from the back streets of Soi Ngan-Dumplhi the air is filled with the scent of burning tires. Here the scene looks exactly like yesterday in Ngan-Dumplhi : a small soi with a thick wall of smoke and fire at the end and constant launches of Molotovs to keep the tires burning. Again the sound of bullets from the military fills Rama IV. The only difference is that here people seem not to be concerned of snipers and move freely in the soi. I sit there for a while as the darkness conquers the area. Shapes of man carved into the red flames.

I decide to go back to Ngan-Dumplhi and check the situation there. The soi now is almost empty and totally dark, no fire, no light. I sit with a group of people on motorcycles that sit middle way through the soi and tells me is too dangerous to go forward. Today all of this back sois are filled with people, discussing or just listening to the evolving events. An older woman comes to me and shows me a xeros copy of an indistinguishable picture of dead bodies, claiming they belong to soldiers who refused to shoot and were brought back to their military camps and shoot dead. To me it looks like some grey image with a couple of distinguishable faces. She asks me to take a picture of it and tell the people in the world. I tell her I can barely see anything and I go back to the motorcycle crowd. One of them offers to show me where the snipers are and give me a tour of Soi Goethe, explain to me how to recognize what weapon the people are using. Short dry sound, sniper. Longer clear sound, rifle. Dry loud explosion, M-79. As he explains he mimes with his mouth the sounds and translates the noises that we hear around. He speaks quietly, hiding in the blackness and moving careful wherever a wall of a residence ends. A loud explosion sound fills the air. “This is us” he smiles “when is this loud is just fire-crackers”. The soi is interrupted by low barricades made of sand backs, covered with dark green cloth. “To prevent the army to come here from Sathorn soi 1” he says as he points in silence to a tall building on overlooking the area. “They are there” he whispers “be very careful”. This section of the soi, right before the Goethe Institute, is really dark I can just feel people wearing black moving around me but without really seeing them. I don’t like this place so I decide to go back and go check again at the Rama IV intersection.

The situation is pretty much the same as before but the crowd is much smaller and the frequency of the shootings has relaxed. The tenth person today (prize) comes in my direction and asks me if I think that the UN will intervene and I give my standard answer now, explaining the problem for the UN in intervening in internal matters. He looks at me discouraged, lights a cigarette and stares into the empty. I leave the area, way too dangerous at this point, and walk down in the direction of the stage. People sit around a small stage made up of what looks like a very big table where speakers, mostly organizers from the nearby slum, step for a short while demanding that the government “stops killing the population”, spaced out by red shirt songs, to which some of the listeners sitting on the street pavement around the stage dance.

The atmosphere is similar to a village fair in the middle of this gigantic city: street vendors, families hanging around, people sitting on motorcycles, and a constant flow of people walking up and down. I see there a couple of motorcycle taxis whom I know and chat with them, showing my pictures and explaining what I was down Rama IV, everytime this happens a small crowd comes around to watch the pictures, ask information, and tell me that in Ding Deng some soldiers are not Thai but Khmer people brought in by Newin and paid to so a job that fellows Thais refuse to. Whether true or not, these rumors tells, as the other myriads flooding around the protesters, are a fantastic commentary on collective fears, nationalistic sentiments, and perceived enemies of the red shirts and their personal attempts to make sense of the ongoing situation. I walk to the stair and a local Klong Toei organizer tells me that they are going to build stages like this all around the city, as they already did in Victory Monument, he claims, reproducing and fragmenting the peaceful protest in Ratchaprasong.

The peaceful village fair atmosphere, however, takes a minute to transform in dense and silencing fear. As I stand behind the stage the light goes out, as in the rest of Rama IV, and a loud explosion breaks tears the joyful mood. Silence comes, with people frantically taking the speaker down stage, and stand up from the pavement. The minute of dense tension, with people running around is eased by the return of the light, as the next speaker comes to the stage.

Update Ngan-Dumphli May 15th

2010-05-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Silom has been closed since Narathiwat with military checking who gets in and out. Surawong has been also closed but it is possible to pass through the block with a motorbike going in the direction of MBK. This whole section of Rama IV is completely empty, dotted with orange plastic barriers, razor wires, and small groups of soldiers sitting in the shadow. The place is surreal as compared with normal life but the atmosphere is relatively relaxed. I drove down the empty Rama IV, passed Wat Hualampong where monks walk pass three green chairs where military sit in full gear, guns sitting at the base of a tree and three motortaxi drivers on their bikes waiting for clients that I doubt will ever arrive. At the intersection with Ratchathewi orange barrier and razor wire block completely the street. I tried to go back and a soldier told me just to get on the foot path and drive back to Surawong. I am not sure if some teargas was used here before but the air hitches. I drive back return to Narathiwat. Sathorn also now is completely closed all the way, but here police patrol the area. Back into Soi 7 and Suan Phlu when now just a small group of tuk-tuk drivers are stopped at the intersection. I decide to go check the situation in Ngan-Dumphli. As I drive in that direction many people are getting out. I arrive to the end of Ngan-Dumpli. The narrow soi seems completely closed from what look like a localized storm cloud.

The thick wall of smoke almost covers completely the small space between the buildings on Rama IV. The crowd is much bigger than in the morning and the tires have been piled up. Molotov as well went “pro”. Larger bottles and higher success rate. Tires are constantly made roll into Rama IV and light up with a small battery of Molotov, to cover the visibility to the army toward the other red barricade situated 300 meters down Rama IV in the direction of Klong Toei.

Everybody is wearing a white mask covering their mouths that are distributed by a guy on a motorcycle down the soi and pushed toward the left wall of the soi, as they say two people have been shot dead and a paramedical injured there from the buildings overlooking the soi before I arrived. Three bullets holes in a window on the right side of the street seem to confirm gun shots coming from there.

Down the soi three cars of fire fighters wait to see how the situation evolves. At the corner with Rama IV about 50 people squat behind a wall of tires, cover and dispensary for future burning. Some of them throw Molotov to keep the tires burning and stone with slingshot in the direction of the army. I have not seen any other weapon. The army is responding with whatever they can. The dry sounds of shotgun and the louder echoes of grenades fill the air, mixed with the smell of tires and petards thrown by the reds.

I stay there for about an hour and a half, watching the sun go down and the intensity of the shoots increase. Behind the line an older man, in dark gear and a helmet, as most of the people there, direct the movement of the people and the positioning of the tires. He is a motortaxi as well, he recognizes me (I am researching the multiples roles of motortaxis in the city) and greets me, tells me to be careful, and reports the dead of two people earlier on, shot in the head (I later got confirmation of this from a journalist who was there when it happened). Suddenly a wave shakes the crowd and everybody start running back into the soi, following the fire fighters cars. I decide to remain here so I do not know what exactly was going on or for what were they running. Rumors are there was a house on fire but I have no idea. The situation remains stable for a while with people on this side keeping the smoke as thick as possible and the military shooting in this direction and small explosions in the middle of Rama IV near the soi. On the opposite side of Rama IV in a small soi and in a building, constantly chipped by bullets another group of red shirts (none of them wears red at this point) are communicating with this side about their situation. The motortaxi driver who directs the operation shouts “speak in Khmer so they can’t understand”. Not sure if is effective with the military, it definitely is with me. As the lights goes down most of the journalists start going away, it is not the right day to be around once the night arrives.

As the sounds of explosions and the flashes get closer to the beginning of the soi I decide to go back home. Enough for now.

Ngan-Dumphli/Rama IV- May 15th

2010-05-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Rama IV/ Soi Ngan Dumphli
In the morning Suan Phlu is restored to normalcy and the small crowd at the beginning of the soi is gone. Sathorn Soi 1 first remains closed around Lumpini Tower with about 20 soldiers resting in the shades cast by the walls around the building. Soi Ngan Dumphli, differently from Suan Phlu, is transformed by the on-going fights. The soi is relatively empty and the large majority of motor-taxis, normally sitting at every corner. seems to be gone, not clear where. As I get closer to the Rama IV intersection a small crowd of people, about 50, sits on their motorcycles and on the ground, in front of a burning plastic rubbish bin. Rama IV looks like a post-war zone. A garbage collection truck is smoking in the middle of the street in front of the side entrance to Suan Lum night bazar. Behind the truck the army has set a small protection wall with black sand bags. A tense silence fills the huge empty road covered in debris, burning tires, and broken glass from small hand-made Molotov and shatter phone boots.

Sporadically a man walks out of the small crowd and shouts, amplified by an orange traffic cone,”buffalos” or “animals” to the army to which the soldiers reply with a short rounds of rubber bullets in the air. The silence is restored by the soft sounds of rubber bullets falling on the ground. On the other side of Rama IV, toward Klong Toei, four big truck tires are burning filling the air with thick black smoke. Inside Soi Ngan-Dumphli, back from the crowd a small group of motortaxi drivers drinks beers and show me the signs of bullets on the walls around the area. As I talk to them a younger man in black gear walks pass me carrying a small plastic bag filled with empty small red bull bottles. A hole has been carved on the top, from which small pieces of cloth come out. The guy sits on the sidewalk at the entrance of the soi and start filling the bottles with petrol.. The scene is grotesque. The Molotov keeps smashing on the ground with no effect as the crowd voices its disappointment and laugh. The guy keeps making them trying to find a working mixture. They seem all but highly trained paramilitary forces.

In the middle of this an older Australian man walks slowly in the middle of Rama IV trying to take pictures with his small self phone. He walks toward me asking if I know how to do them and after I show him he walks back happily, ignoring my call to be careful, as some people hide behind the smashed phone boots throwing small stones at the police with slingshots.

Update from Sathorn- May 14th

2010-05-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

the situation got increasingly tense. The crowd of red shirts supporters in Soi Suan Phlu grew in size. About 50-60 bikes are parked around the corner of Suan Phlu and many other people gathered there, out of curiosity or support for the red cause. The public lights have been cut off from the whole of Sathorn until the Narathiwat intersection and the cars and bikes coming out of Suan Phlu are asked to put on the lights for their own security. The crowd is tense (i almost got into a fight for a picture i then deleted), some tires have been put in the middle of the street in front of the Shell petrol station (probably not the best place) and set on fire giving to the street a gloomy look and smell. The motortaxi drivers are now taking care of organizing the traffic out of Suan Phlu as a small crowd of farang living in the area walks around. The soldiers, still located in the proximity of the Australian Embassy is shooting at the protesters side once in a while but mostly pointing at the air. Every round of shoots is met with a loud noise by the cheering crowd. Down Suan Phlu the echoes of the shoot makes an uncommon background for the apparently normal daily life of the local dwellers eating at street vendors. At the front of Suan Phlu some younger protesters shout to the others to change their shirts and dress in black as a middle-aged man shoots fireworks at the army side. A young taxi drivers is listening with a small red transmitter to the hospital radio, feeding people informations about injured and on-going fightings. On the back sounds of rounds fill the air. Now the numbers in the crowd are quite stable and seems like everybody is waiting for something to happen. This is going to be a long night, even in a peripheral area of the confrontation.

Sathorn Road- May 14th

2010-05-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

As the army is sealing the area around the protest sites with razor wires and small groups of soldiers across the streets, small but growing groups of motorcyclists are gathering around the army blocks. I drove around and saw similar situations in Rama IV road, Silom, and Sathorn. I stopped in Sathorn, at the entrance of Suan Phlu. The atmosphere is surreal. The normal traffic has transformed into an empty space filled with air of imminent violence, ready to crack open. The motorcyclists i talked to, most of them motortaxi drivers say that “the population is not accepting the actions of the army and government”. Rumors run into the crowd of people being killed and their body being hidden by the army. In front of the Australian Embassy, right in front of the U-turn military in full gear stand in the heat facing the small crowd of motorcycles, most of them motorcycle taxis wearing their vest, that is growing at the entrance of Suan Phlu, horning and shouting to the soldiers from afar. The military side is even more tense that the other one, prohibiting people from taking pictures and shooting videos. They move frantically and keep changing the position of the razor wire while the other soldiers hide, with their weapons pointed at whatever moves close to them. Behind them fighting are going on at the Rama IV intersection, the center of confrontation now, as noise of loud explosions come from the direction of Silom, grenade deflagrating and echoing in the empty streets. The side of the motorcycle grows moment after moment as the action of the military push more people into the streets. This is the perfect recipe for a really nasty ending. Everybody there stands on their motorcycle in the middle of the street watching carefully every movement of the soldiers, ready to react or just cover somewhere. Soi 1 of Sathorn is completely close to the traffic and one motortaxi says the army is shooting rubber bullets at motorcycles between Ngan-Dumplhi and Rama IV. An older motortaxi, sitting inside Suan Plu on his bike, half looking at the situation and half picking up clients who go in the direction of Narathiwat tells me tonight they are going to set on fire buildings all over the city. This is a nightmare for the army now surrounded by the this small but growing crowd of young man mostly that are forming all around this area and growing steadily. In the meanwhile news arrives that another groups of red shirts are gathering in Kloeng Thoei, ready to pull an attack to the army. The situation now looks like concentrical circles of alternating red shirts and army, decreasing in density as you go out, at least for now.

first apologies in the blog

2010-05-17T10:39:00.002-07:00

I decided only recently to put on a blog, i was trying to start from the beginning at put on the blog all the notes that i wrote down since April 11th but events are going on as we speak and it is very hard to find the time to organize all the material i have, i will jump directly to the present and then fill the gaps day by day to keep up so my apologies for the many empty entries now.

going home to the village in the core of the city

2010-05-17T10:39:00.001-07:00

A mixture of tension, fear, excitement, and boredom is conquering the protesters in the last days. Day after the other a usual pattern of oscillation in presence, predictable discourses, and sleepless nights is taking over the rhythm of the protest and the daily lives of many of its people, mixing in their normal schedules. A large group of the people in protest leaves every morning, at the first sun up, directed to work or to some other activity in the city, only to be back in the evening to the Ratchaprasong area. Behind these fluctuations and daily diasporas stand a myriad of stories, lives, and motivations. Regional migrants back to service the city that is slowly eating their lives and their home towns, visits to relatives, small businesses taking advantage of the presence in the city, necessity to support the family beyond political convictions or just curiosity toward the wonders of the metropolis brings people out of the protest area and then back. Some come back for political ideals, democracy, equality, some come back to get a free dish of food, some for wanting for once to be part of history, to touch it, to make it, some other to go to somewhere different on a date with the girl from the shop next door, some other to “go home”, as they put it, to win the nostalgia of their lives in the village by going to the village, or its tent, in the middle of the bustling metropolis.

Every night, after a long day of works in the streets, waiting for clients sitting on his old bike, my friends Adun stretch his back, makes down his vest, greets its colleagues motorcycle drivers and goes “home” to see friends from his village, eat with them and sit in the village tent, chain smoking cigarettes, with a background of political speeches he barely care for. “I have heard them before” he tells me smiling “They always say the same thing, I agree with them but I’d rather talk to people from home, hear news of what is going back there and have nice food. I am here anyway and I am ready to help if something happens.” Many like Adun have supported the red shirts since a long time, in the private space of their homes and ideas, but never came to smaller protests before. Now the gravitational force of acquaintances brings them to the protest, distractedly politicizing them. After all political participation is not taking place in the world of old German philosophers who starve their family to death as they receive money from a rich friend to write ideological pamphlets, but in the world of people who struggle everyday just to meet ends, that work and save money to send them back to their families, to get a piece of modernity through unnecessary objects, to send their children to a decent school, and to have some extra money at the end of the week to drink with some friends, bet on sports, or waste it on something else.

It is these people silent torments, daily struggles, growing dissatisfactions that, when vocalized, create political movements and take their chances of changing history. At times all is needed for making this step is a friend they haven’t seen for a while, a distant aunty who is sleeping at the protest, the longing for a home-made papaya salad from their village. Tonight Adun called me, “come with me home” he tells me, his voice struggling to beat the noise of traffic around him.

We enter the protest area with the bikes, him, me and three other motorcycle taxi drivers, none of them wearing their vest. “It is too dangerous” they tell me. We drive through the protest, enjoying the feeling of being in a small caravan, getting close to each other to talk as we drive. On the wall at the northern side of Lumpini Park a painted stencil saying “Red Land”. We park and walk back to the stand from Bangdung, Adun’s district in the Udon province, stopping shortly to the stand of another driver. On one corner of the tent, a small crowd gathered around a large TV screen, showing still pictures of bullets and bullets wounds. A man in his fifties, well dressed and with a charming look, describes, talking in a microphone, each bullet type, its range, deadly potential, and shows pictures of the damage that it causes to a small attentive crowd. As a vocal market seller at a village fair, he senses the feeling of the crowd emphatically alternating information, pictures, and passing around the real bullets, sealed in two hermetic plastic bags. On the stand in front a small projector broadcast images from April 10th , but with no sound. Warfare education, when I have seen this before things ended up turning ugly.

We walk away and sit down with some people in the stand. Immediately food and hot sticky rice is brought to us and we sit, eating as a man from the village who worked in Phuket for many years talks to me in a mixture of English and Italian. Cosmopolitan villages, someone would say. Adun goes around greeting people, leaving me to my conversation. Around us sit a group of men in their forties whom I have never seen before at the tent, as a small older crowd sits few meters away, pondering if to get closer.

As we eat the conversation turns to a young man, dresses in black who speaks about the imminent violence. “We are ready to fight” he tells all of us with deep eyes. “We are organized and we have no fear to die.” As he say this another guy of the same age arrives with some cans of beer, hidden in small plastic bags. “Drink” he tells me “but keep it in the bags, the guards don’t want us to get drunk.” Adun looks at him with a mixture of respect and derision. “I have known him since he was a kid.” He tells me as a half-smile bend his lips on the side. I walk away and sit with the older crowd. I have seen two of the women before, but the older men look unfamiliar. I ask them. “We just arrived yesterday” they say sitting cross legged and battling over the noise from the speakers on stage. “Somebody came around at the village and told around that they needed people at the protest as our tent was getting emptier so we decided to come to Bangkok. They organized a car from the village and brought us here.” “Did you also get some money” I ask. “No, no money but we had a free ride and here we don’t have to pay for food or sleeping.” “I have been back and forth already three times” an older woman tells me, as she tucks in her sarong. “The first one at Saphan Phanfa, and the other two here. I stay for some time and then go back home when I miss it or I get bored. There is not much to do here.”

A constant refill of people is organized from the countryside, where the grassroots movement permeated capillary the territory. A phone call from the referent at the protest and some organizer spread the word that new people are needed in Bangkok, some volunteer steps forward and the crowd is kept constant at the protest. “We came for the many others who cannot, who have a job, or have to look after children. We are old so we can come but we are here for our children and nephews too.” Points out at me an older woman “It’s this your first time in Bangkok?” “I ask. “No I have been here before, my daughter works here, but I don’t like the city. I came to support the red shirts.” I turn to the larger group. “So do you like being here?” A moment of silence. “It is boring” breaks from her silence another woman, as they all laugh embarrassed. Behind them Veera, one of the leaders, is on screen, his words resounding from lines of loudspeakers down Ratchadamri road. The two men of the group look up for a second. “Look at this. He is a good speaker but also boring. He sounds like a monk. When Nattawut is on stage it is more fun.”

I go back to the other group of people and chat for a while sitting on mats as slowly the stands gets quite, around sleeping bodies fill the space. Adun hits the mat and I greet him and drive back home passing the small groups of sleepy people, still carrying bamboo sticks, behind the barricade facing Silom road.

Women in protest

2010-05-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

Day after day, as discourses, threats, rumors, and promises run around almost un-listened to and the vision of people cooking sticky rice protected by the shadow of a multi-millions shopping mall becomes normality, life at the protest goes on as usual. New rounds of people from Isaan keep arriving to refurnish the outgoing flow of the last days, making the area a bit more crowded than lately. More than a month has gone by and there seems not to be any visible resolution. The government will probably not allow the protesters to obtain dissolution, scared of the precedent that would be set, and the red shirts will not lose face and just leave. This realization has been spreading lately, reviving the negotiation among the two sides.

The back stage has been also transformed, to accommodate this new phase. Chairs have been moved around creating a small conference area, with a large table covered by white cloth over a backdrop with black and white pictures of the people who died on the 10th and a huge banner: “dissolution” topped by “so that our friends didn’t die for nothing”. In the last days many of the interventions, especially the more mass media oriented, have been delivered by the whole group of leaders and broadcasted from here, instead of from the stage, changing the incendiary rhetoric and posture on stage to a more “civilized” and calm poetics, with the leader talking calmly sitting at the table. In a time of resuscitated negotiation, sitting on a table becomes a physical and metaphorical strategy.

Around this new space, leaders and their guards sit around, chatting and queuing on small plastic chairs underneath the stage before stepping up. The international spokesman is sitting in front of cameras pointing to him, with no operator behind. When he finish he proudly shows the system of broadcasting by which any intervention posted real time on the UDD Thailand facebook page, to bypass state censorship to the red TV and radio channels. As usual the spokesman makes introductions and then walks away. Few minutes after, I find myself working as a translator for a Spanish documentary-maker who is exploring the roles of women activism in the red shirt movement.

We jump over the metal fence that divide the stage area with the crowd sitting in front, mostly composed of women, and sit there for a while interviewing three middle age women. The three women scream at us to pass the noises coming from the stage as they crowd around the camera, taking turns for the spot light. All of them are actually living in Bangkok, even if were born outside the city. One of them is the wife of a doctor who, has she says, support the cause but does not have time to come to Ratchaprasong. “The involvement of women in the red shirts” she says surrounded by a sea of ladies “is first an answer to practical problem. As our husbands have a fix job they have no time to come here, so we come to support the red shirts for all of our families.” She looks around to the other two women confirming with their head and giggling among them. “Women are better at dyeing” add half-jokingly one of them, as she stares at me. “It is the same among red and yellow” she picks up the other “as women we know what the problems are. We see our kids’ daily life, the house, the education. As our husband go to work and come back home to drink we see every day the inequality of this country.”

As we discuss for a bit, more people around get into the conversation, if just for a moment. As we talk fruits, booklets, and water was constantly distributed from the lower stage to the people in front. Among us pieces of paper go around as everybody writes their name and phone number. Another person adds to the group, a middle age lady-boy working in an office. The group is now composed by four women: the lady-boy, a talkative lady with short black hair and thick eyebrows, a silent but expressive darker woman, whose face and restless eyes give to intend the complexity of unspoken agreements that filtrated their discourses and the doctor’s wife, who keeps showing us her ID from the We love Udon group, hanging from her neck. We keep talking for a while. Behind us a woman sit on a small chair with a huge hat shaped as a copy of Democracy monument. Around the crowd grows as the sun goes down, ready for another evening of political discussions and songs. I appreciate their resilience but I do not think I can stand another night of the same discourses.

Caravan meets the army

2010-05-17T10:37:00.001-07:00

The sun comes up in a almost silent Central Business District. On a side of the barricades few soldiers keep awake, touching their tired eyes as their comrades’ sleep, hidden in the space between buildings, in the parking lots, or inside empty apartments. Few soldiers come out of a underground parking lot in Sala Daeng soi 1 and orderly take position underneath the skytrain. Around there few people walk down Silom, emptied of office workers and vendors. On the other side, the protest moves its first morning steps. Slowly crowds of people stand up from their mats, quietly walk to the bus transformed in public bathrooms or to hand-made cubicles where, behind a blue plastic sheet, some people are taking a shower. Around a pungent smell of steaming sticky rice fills the air where normally the nose only picks fumes of smog. Some younger protesters, relieved by the sun, hurry up to their village tent, ready to hit the mattress after a long vigilant night. Another day starts its course in the protest, tense calm.

Few hours later motorcycles start converging at the corner between Ratchadamri road and Sarasin. At first just few dozens of bright orange motorcycle taxis’ vests lead by a middle age man sitting on a bike with a two meters high Thai flag attached to it. He looks around from behind his aviator sun glasses, face covered by a white medical mask. His vest brings effigies of the opposition party. On his back three sentences: “We love the King”, “Non-Violence”, and “We are Thai, We think differently but we are not divided.” As the minutes go by lines of bikes forms as more and more motorcyclists join the group that slowly moves at the intersection with Wireless road. Here the caravan, now composed of about 500 bikes often carrying two passengers, stop for a long while to prepare and discuss the direction. Some motorcycle taxis, following the direction of the middle-age man start collecting names and license plates of the drivers, “in case somebody gets arrested” he tells me one of them, bend on his bike seat jotting name after name on a small notebook. I see the orange vests disappear around me, carefully folded away, as people around cover their license plates with boards or plastic bags. “This way they will not know who is whom” he tells me satisfied a man as he take pictures. On my left a monk lights a cigarette, puffing smoke around him. After about an hour the caravan finally starts moving, compact, through the city. I get on my bike and follow them.

The heat is merciless as the caravan keeps stopping to remain in lock step, moving in the direction of Ding Daeng. As the bikes cross the Central Business District the passersby look rather confused, often meeting the moving convoy with scared gazes and perplexed eyes. Few people in the street cheer up the protesters and offer cold drinks meet the moving convoy. The situation in the street changes suddenly as soon as the caravan passes an invisible line that divides the commercial area with the lower income residential apartments in Din Daeng road. From here on hordes of people reversed in the street to cheers, greet, support, or just salute the convoy that grows at every corner as new bikes and pick-ups join in.

“Red areas” and “Yellow areas” are becoming a new way of organizing space in the city, determining levels of comfort or danger, depending on your affiliation. “Sure they bring food to the military” somebody told me yesterday, “is Silom, is a yellow area, but let’s see what would happen in Lad Prao. Military there have to be careful on how they move when they enter red areas.” In these days, all around the city, wrist bands and small flags are taken off or put up depending on the area, as a new geography, often overlapping with the geography of inequality, is reshaping dwellers’ perceptions of their city creating new borders like the one we just passed.
Supported by more and more people coming out of their houses and offices, the caravan cruises into Vibhavadi Rangsit Road, as small trucks with loudspeakers join in, calling the population to join the caravan now directed to a big fresh market on the outskirt of the city. Around the traffic flows smoothly, embraced by a sea of red bikes. Shortly after the Don Muang airport the traffic suddenly comes to a halt, and the caravan stops.

Few bikes zig-zag through the cars, to see what is going on in front. Nervousness shakes the crowd as rumors starts circulating of an imminent army attack. Stuck in the middle of traffic, bikes are sent around by the leaders to check possible exit routes. Few minutes after the bikes come back with bad news. Every exit seems closed by group of soldiers, lined up behind anti-riot shields. I decide to drive to the front to take a look. As soon as I park the bike a few teargas shoots break the standstill, followed by rounds of rubber bullets. It is craziness again.

People run away trying to hide as the bullets bounce off the concrete overpasses, before hitting the ground. Confusion reign for some minutes as the soldier advance covered by shoots coming also from the highway over us, where other soldiers have taken position. I run in a small soi, taking refuse inside a building. Locals tell us that there is no exit from this soi, urging everyone to move away before the army advance. I pick up an older woman and drive back, dodging rubber bullets. The group reconvene few hundred meters back, as people start moving in the middle of the street traffic signs and trees branches to create small barricades. In few minutes people appear with sharpen bamboo sticks and iron bars. A man passes carrying with a table’s leg. Hell breaks lose again as the air gets itchy, filled by tear gas. Some groups of protesters hide behind the barricades pushing them toward the military as people behind scream to not get closer. A monk with a bamboo sticks and goggles walks around, eyes injected of blood. Soon the first injured are carried back from the front lines as the more peaceful protesters look around in fear and confusion, trying to find a way out.

As the tension grows a providential torrential rain hits the battle ground, cooling the spirits. From behind the protesters lines of police officers in anti-riot gear appear, now completely surrounding the group and thousands of local dwellers who joined them in the street. Rain pours heavy, soaking protesters and government forces alike. We remain there for almost an hour, trying to figure out what next. The police line start advancing as few protesters start negotiation with them. I get closer. The police officer in charge is talking to a protester who carries a walkie-talkie with a long antenna. “We are here to protect you” he tells calmly. “We are not going to attack you” reassures the policeman as the protester goes back and tries to calm down his side, fearing that someone may do something stupid. As negotiation go on, overlooked by the soldiers on the highway, more and more police trucks arrive in the area. Suddenly hordes of police officers in normal uniform, not weapons or protections come out of the vans and pass the anti-riot police, cheered by the locals and the protesters. For some time the two sides engage in a strange dance, advancing and retreating as in a collective courting ritual. After about twenty minutes the police officers in uniform tell the protesters to move on a side and pass them, taking positions between the army and the red shirts. As the long line of police forms, they all turn around, giving their back to the soldiers, effectively screening the protesters who finally have an exit route.

The crowd in the street cheers and applauds the police officers as the caravan slowly moved into the flooded back streets, making its way back to the Ratchaprasong area, always headed by a small avant-garde checking the street and directing the convoy. For the second time in few weeks the police took up the mediating position between the protesters and the army, diffusing tension. A new player seems to have entered the chessboard, still unclear with what role.

daily life in Ratchaprasong

2010-05-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the protest early in the morning, for the first time. The tension of yesterday and the sleepless wait for an attack, which every night seems imminent but that never occurs, has left people tired, sleeping everywhere they could find a place. It is rare to see Thais sleeping so late, especially people from the countryside and service workers, used to be the first ones to wake up and to open the windows and the shops of the city.

The protest site is at its emptiest peak. Like every morning many people left for their jobs, leaving the square to few listeners to some low level speaker and small groups lounging around under the shades. I get in from Rama IV, with the intention of following the motorcyclist actions today. The barricades are surprising empty, some people sleeping around and the smell of breakfast soup being cooked and steaming sticky rice getting ready on bamboo canister to feed people for the next day. I talked briefly to a guy dressed in black about what was going on and he told me that the bikes went out earlier to collect information on the troops’ movements. I talk a bit with him as we keep moving back to enjoy some of the shadow casted by a nearby stand. The truck with the loudspeaker sat there, with a large board with pictures of the 10th on it, silent in the morning heat. At its side a pile of carton boxes was sitting, filled with helmets, which have been brought to be distributed to the “heroes” of the red shirts. I took my bike again and easily drove through Ratchadamri, silent and very empty, again covered in the noises of people waking up and the smell of food as a lonely speaker broadcasted the voice of a man, without the usual response from people and roar of the crowd.

I drive toward Siam Square hoping to find a different scene with the presence of motorcycles at the other gates but one after the other I went through and the same atmosphere of a village waking up reigns, just right in the middle of ultra-modern Bangkok. I decided to park the bike and go to talk to same motortaxi to ask what was going on. I stop at the intersection between Henry Dunant and Rama I, where normally the shoes repair sits. A small group of drivers is there, shadowing under a stand with an hammock attached. The whole stand vibrates with the oscillating body of a drivers lounging on the hammock. Most of the drivers are from this district and they have been coming every morning to make money and support the red shirts. We start talking about politics, ideas about the red shirts and the role of motor-taxis. It is the usual talk about Thaksin and his attempt to free the drivers from “influential people”, even if one of them kept repeating that mafia is still well present in their lives. We talk for a while, mostly with an older man who seems to be the most vocal in the group and who normally works close by, as his vest says. He has black hairs and thick mustaches, a red t-shirt covered by his vest. I ask him what are the motortaxis supposed to do during the day and he tells me that they have already gone to the PM house, following rumors that he was there but found the house empty. As we talk about motortaxis he keeps repeating that speed is the key element, their speed in doing action, appearing and disappearing. As some of them drive away and came back, as in a usual win, I chat up others and get into a conversation about social welfare states and taxi systems, as usually struck by their knowledge and curiosity. At some point I am left with the only woman in the group. She is 42 and has two kids, her vest says Dusit but she normally works somewhere else on the outskirt of the city. She is not a particular supporter of the red shirt but came here to find money for her kids and left every afternoon to go back to her family, getting more money than she normally would. She smiles with shyness, with long bleached hair flowing on her shoulder as the day flows indifferently, taken hostage by the pressing feeling of an imminent violent turn.

Fear in red area- April 24th

2010-05-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

The medieval looking barricade at the Sala Daeng intersection has been transformed and extended. An intricate puzzle of bamboo sticks blocks the street. On April 22nd a big blast occurred in Silom Road, as grenades fell from the sky killing and injuring a group of citizen who were in the area, protesting against the prolonged red shirts’ presence. As a consequence stakes have risen on both sides of the barricades.
On the red side, the protesters have closed up the whole area, behind a much higher structure, covered on both sides with cars’ and trucks’ tires. On top of the barricade a lonely red cartoon board in English. “Stop Corruption. Dissolve Parliament.” In the heat of the middle of the day the asphalt close to the barricade becomes sticky, filled with the petrol that is sinking the tires, ready to be ignited in case of an attack. From the holes in this amateur barricades red shirt protesters look at the other side of the street, try to read the movements of the military. In the last days similar structures have been erected at each entrance of the protest. Security has also been tightened. Getting in with a bike now means having to stop at the entrances to be controlled, on your body and inside the bike compartment. Failure to stop can sparkle exaggerated reactions. As I walk around a small group of people cluster around the Ratchadamri skytrain stations, as someone has seen a soldier putting his head out of the wall of the huge horse race stadium/golf court at the side of the street. As people move around frenetically a car and a motortaxi pass through a check point without stopping. A scream burst and some twenty very angry guys, both in red and black shirts, started running after the two vehicles. I start running following them. The motortaxi is crashed on the ground, his bike reversed and him being basically assaulted by these people. A couple of women stop me from taking pictures and keep repeating to the guys “There is a journalist, there is a journalist”. He is taken away, not before having taken off his vest, dragged away from indiscrete eyes. Small outburst of violence occur all around the protest, effects of the palpable tension that you can breathe around, covered underneath display of “mai pen glua”, we are not scared.

I get inside the barricades from a highly patrolled entrance on Rama IV, where they now extend all the way pass the entrance of Lumpini Park, and park my bike. The number of people behind the bamboo wall has increased significantly. Crowd of people carrying sticks roam in the space behind a second barricade, some fifteen meters behind the big one, made of tires only. The space in between the two barricades is almost empty, just a few curious looking at Silom from the cracks in the structure. On the ground piece of stones are piled and orderly set in small hills of broken grey stones. A larger pile of red ones is closer to the big barricade. Ammunitions. Everybody in the city was expecting today to be the day of negotiation and maybe solutions but seen from here it really doesn’t feel like it.

I start asking around and protesters tell me that they expect the army to attack in the next 48 hours, number that I keep hearing since about a week. As I stroll around having small conversations with a group of motor-taxis, themselves bored by the uneventful standby, the truck with loudspeakers close to the barricades calls the “pi-nong motorcy” to come closer and put down their names and phone numbers as they need 500 motorcyclists to register, for an unspecified mission. Immediately the people in the motortaxi group stand up and, with many others, taxi and not, get into four half-orderly lines at a side of the truck. I join them, thinking that they will be sent out to check on the situation, talk to police and army, and then report back. The process is complex and confused and people seem not to be sure of the reason they were called. Everybody is asked to write down their name, number of driving license and phone number. Somebody suggests that is in case of damage to their bikes during patrolling so they can be controlled and reimbursed. The process goes on for a while but nothing seems to happen and nobody moves from the area.

One after the other the drivers are registered by a group of women in their forties. As the data flow on many pieces of papers through the hands of volunteers who lean on the barricade tires using them as table the sun goes away. I decide to sit for a while, a bit exhausted. I open my phone and I start reading twitters. News from the stage report the leaders’ call to motorcyclists to join the protest in the next days. Apparently during the early evening the negotiations with the government had been terminated, following the refusal to agree on a 30 days dissolution scheme, effectively putting back the situation into tension and imminent confrontation. Today on stage the speeches are incendiary, talking about the army and police surrounding the red shirt and the need to raise the stakes and change strategy of confrontation. The reiteration that the confrontations should be non-violent seems like a posture more than anything else, and frankly seems less and less credible. In this climate the leaders keep repeating that they are ready to fight, and that they know they will win, trying to keep up the forces and morale of the crowd. Intervention after intervention on stage, the motorcycle taxi drivers are named, as “motorcycle heroes” and just our “pi-nong motorcy rapjarn”. Nattawut gets on stage and starts enumerating the weaponry and numbers of police and army deployed. Soon it is the turn of red shirts defenses. “We have six lines of defense already. 2,000 motorcycle volunteers are needed at each entrance” he says. This is probably the reason why the names were collected at the barricades. One after the other the leaders of the movement step on stage, talking about the ongoing confrontation, always leaving some words about the “motorcycle heroes”.

At Ratchaprasong the crowd has significantly expanded since last time I was here. As I move away from the stage I hear from the loudspeakers the word “motorcycle taxi” I turn around and on stage, refracted by the myriad of screens in the large intersection swarming with people, is a motortaxi driver. Standing on stage with a vest with the insigna of the Pua Thai Party he shortly talks to the crowd about the 200,000 motorcycle taxi in this city who support the movement because Thaksin gave them freedom from local mafia. “We will come out to help the red shirts” he assures as the crowd claps. He speaks very briefly and right after Weeng, a longtime leader of the democracy movement, is again on stage thanking him. I start running toward the stage, trying to meet this guy.

I get into the backstage. Nobody seems to have seen him. I ask Sean, the international spokesman of the red shirts, and Jaran, one of the leaders. Both seem to have no idea. They both sit on plastic chairs in front of two TVs whose sound is impossible to hear, as both of their phones ring endlessly. When I ask Jaran how I can contact him he tells me that it is not a good time. Both he and Sean don’t seem to think they are going to be attacked today but they seem sure they will be. “On Monday morning” Jaran says with certainty “astrologers say that the 26th is going to be a very bad day for Thailand.” His phone rings and he walks away to let a journalist in. I roam around a bit taking a look into the back stage where the leaders and some monks are chatting with well dressed good looking young ladies that seems out of a fashion magazine more than from a “peasant” protest.

Jaran, back to his table, invites me to eat with him at his table. He says that they will have election and then reintroduce the 1997 constitution. I push him a bit. “Your answers have to do with the immediate changes but don’t deal with the more structural problems and issues that the red shirts are talking about such as inequality and double standard”. He tells me that is a longer process and they need to get rid of aristocracy first. I tell him that aristocracy at the end take his power from one source and is difficult to think one without the other, giving the example of England as a country that still having that power is necessarily still dealing with aristocracy. A younger guy close to him smiles, staring at Jaran to read his answer on his face. He lower his head and voice. “I don’t know what the future would look like but definitely we will need something different from this” as he index the crowd at the other side of the stage. I then ask him about the military intervention and the risk of protesters dying. “Soldiers too” he rectify. “They may even win here in Ratchaprasong but not in the nation” he tells with cold eyes that if they attack the whole area will be destroyed, the buildings, everything he keeps repeating. “It will be civil war” and “we win big”. Scary attitude to hear from a man like this. I leave shortly after and drive back, stopping at some places to take pictures of the lines of people still registering for the red shirt card and small crowd watching on the mega screen Jutaporn speaking about the situation.

He opens every sentence with “I learnt from pi-nong here” and concludes saying that if they are attacked it will be Rwanda 2. I pass again through the small opening at the barricades and drive back home, in the silent city. Tomorrow is going to be motorcycle day.

Privates and prostitutes- April 19th

2010-05-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

As announced the army has moved into the Silom area, securing it from the expansion of the red shirts’ protest. I wake up and try to get a sense of the news of the day, struggling to find independent websites and blogs not blocked by the state censorship. Frustrated I head to Ratchaprasong, hoping to fill with my eyes the blank created by repression. I enter from Pratunam. Nobody checks me so I drive to the half empty intersection, almost to reach the stage. On my left, where the carton box wall used to stand a mime seats in the sun, white painted face and red clothes, immobile.

The reds have stretched a long plastic cloth to cover the area between the stage and first over pass. Across the protest are the same cloth is unrolled by soldiers’ hands on the overpass at Silom subway station to cover their movements and control the red shirts standing across the street. The long dark green cloth in Ratchaprasong makes the passage from the road to the shaded area refreshing. In few steps the temperature drops significantly and a small crowd stands or sits on motorbikes listening to the speaker talking about the motorcycle taxi drivers, the taxi drivers, and the street vendors who have been at the protest, renouncing to their income to be here. I sit here for a while, enjoying the coolness, and then drive through the crowd. An old woman, chubby and short loses her big smile when I pass, annoyed by the motorists. I keep driving down Ratchadamri road, reduced to a small stretch of street surrounded by twenty meters long white tends: pharmacy, dormitory of the people from Pattaya, Surin, Saraburi, another pharmacy, speakers, video station, monks’ tends, kitchen. On my right I pass a fifty-sixty meters long queue of people waiting to get their red shirt card. I drive to the head of the protest, in front of Lumpini Park, where the red shirts and the army officers face each other in the heat, divided by Rama IV road, crowded as usual by the traffic flow.

On the red side a barricade made of big flower boxes has been erected. Behind the barricades, from a set of loud speakers on the back of a truck, a young woman voice invites the protesters to be calm and let the army do their job calling them “brothers military”. Around the truck a small crowd of red shirts, mostly tough looking men, walks around carrying sharpened bamboo sticks, dawdles, emanating a pungent smell of rice whisky. I sit there for a while, staring at them shouting at the army on the other side of the street, through the chaotic traffic that passes through Rama IV indifferently. I start talking with a younger man who has been here since yesterday afternoon, sleeplessly waiting for the army to attack. His red eyes glimmer in the sun as many around him move piles of bamboo sticks and motorcycle helmets, available and almost grotesque defense tools against the army rifles, pointed at them from the subway overpass. Behind this movement, a number of motor-taxis, ready to bring updates from that front to the leaders in case anything happens, sit there enjoying the show. On the other side of the barricades, talking through the holes in between the flowers pot, six motortaxi drivers, sitting on their bikes, report to the protesters numbers, equipment, and location of the army personnel.

I grab my bike and cross into Silom road, passing through the small gate still open on a side of Lumpini Park . The street is very quiet. Small crowds of citizens on both sides of the street are waiting to see what is going to happen or just taking pictures of this military disposal. The financial district is peppered with a multitude of small groups of soldier in full war gear, protections, mimetic, and heavy weapons, syncopated by wire mesh blocking the side-walks. Many more soldier hide in the small alleys: lounging, sitting, waiting. A multitude of young men, barely bearded, sit in between buildings carrying heavy weaponry. Here and there fifteen or twenty rifles lean against the wall, in groups. Around the army, police officers in anti-riot gear control the situation. I drove to the Narattiwat intersection and park my bike to get back on feet and take pictures. One after the other small groups of military sit or hide in the sois with rifles, m-16 and other automatic guns on them, or just left in a pile somewhere, as the troops naps in the midday heat. Kids. Confused kids for the most part, dressed as puppets with rifles too big and too deadly to put in their hands.

Inside Patpong road, the main sex street of the city, a big contingent of soldiers is stationary, commanded as the other by an older man, sitting on a military jeep with big speakers on top. Another group sits on the opposite side, underneath the entrance of a strip club called Safari. Judging from the weapons they carry compared to their enemy it could well be some sort of safari. The yellow placard, on black background, glimmers in sun as the young privates’ mimetic uniforms. Safari. The weapons distractedly attached to their shoulder confirm: Safari.

Private and prostitutes go way back in Thailand, since the Vietnam War happy to sustain each other’s business, I think, as an older woman gets out of the half-closed door and bring some water to a soldier and another one in front, seated on a higher stools, displays his weapons, excited by the attention of my camera. As I keep walking down Silom. I notice the myriad of roses and plastic bags full of goods lying close to the soldiers. A group of women, in their 30s probably wearing office clothes, an oxford shirt and short skirt or long paints, black or grey, goes around distributing bags from 7/11 filled with snacks and drinks for the soldiers who thank them with a wai and an extra look, as the group walks away. These women are not alone. Other groups, always composed younger woman, for the visual and voiced joy of the young military, distribute bags of drinks or coffee. As in the morning helms to the monks, donations are made along gender lines, this time the donors moving, not the receivers.

Facing each other from afar though the sound of traffic, the unbearable heat underneath their protections, and the smell of street food, with the same red eyes of who hasn’t slept, eyes into eyes, are not just the soldiers and the red shirts but two faces of Thailand, two different ways of conceiving their role as citizens, and social beings. On a side a “social responsibility” and idea of citizenship that stresses orders, respect for a chain of command and citizenship as being compassionate and generous toward the state and its leaders, who are there for everybody’s good. A citizen that wai to the soldiers, bring them food and drinks “pua chart”, for the nation, to celebrate and support its brave defenders. On the other side and idea of citizenship based on participation, watching closely the state and its governors, of being Thai and working for the good of the nation, “pua chart”, by revolting against a system perceived as unjust and to be changed “for the future of the country”, as an older man said today, almost spitting it out his frontal teeth. This two Thailand are today silently facing each other across Rama IV, both armed with conviction, certainty of being in the right, but carrying different weapons, sticks and slingshots against iron molded war tools. In this gaze there is much of recent Thai history, a history of class and regional conflict, of obedience and “moderation”, of burning ideals and fearless protests, all these parallel histories reflected through the same red eyes of youths from lower income families. The same exact eyes on both sides, the country looking itself.

I walk my way back on the overpass. Here the number of soldiers is overwhelming, battery after battery of soldier napping on the pavement with overflowing piles of goods and plastic bags donated by people, this is a ‘yellow area’ after all. At the entrance of the Sala Daeng skytrain station a small group of soldier sits chatting as an endless line of soldiers sleep on the pavement, beside them. On the background Zen music is blessing this absurd vision. I get off and in vane try to talk to some of the soldier who gave me the expected answer that they could not talk or that they are just following orders, an old and ineffective excuse. I walk to the end of Silom road where a half destroyed building has become some sort of head quarters for the operations. Inside a large table with two or three older officers, a street vendor selling food and many bags disposed on the ground very carefully, too carefully to not contain something dangerous. For the first time I was asked not to take pictures by one of the officers. The building, or the skeleton of the building at the corner between Silom and Naratiwat road, is surrounded by wire mesh. Soldiers stand at each entry, in couples. Inside three motor-taxi drivers talk to military officers. I guess everybody has their motor-taxi informants, as a driver told me they are the “owner of the territory” after all.

After resting at home, I go back to Ratchaprasong in the evening to meet a young Thai documentary maker at the McDonald at Amarin Plaza, hoping to be there at the protest to see the reactions to Aphisit public interview on channel 9 and 11 pm. The film maker is sitting inside McDonald with three other friends, a small packet of French fries on the middle of the table and the four sitting there for at least two hours, usual way to use a/c space in Bangkok. We sit there for a moment and then get out looking for a tv.

Many TVs in the area but none turned on the Prime Minister speech. We enter the backstage area but the TV broadcasts only images, as the sound is covered by songs and political speeches on stage. Around us a myriad of Thai journalists sat at their laptop, fastly writing. Beneath the stage the table of the leaders is lighted by the reflection of the spotlights of the stage, a Caravaggio’s beam on them. The film maker uses the bathroom in the backstage, one of the privilege of being well connected in the mob. We then walk down to Ratchadamri passing again the line, crowded even at this time, of people getting red shirt id. Along the way various tends broadcast videos of the violence on April 10th. Small crowds witness images that have been repeated and repeated over and over again. We pass at least 4 small stalls selling CDs of the protest for 50 bath each. On our right a long tend opened on the side of the street attracts protesters with some amusement park attractions with a political undertone. On a yellow and pink backdrop the tent is divided in two sections, each with a game. In the first one, some metal bowl lay on the table, each with three bright yellow tennis balls inside. Behind the older woman who distributed the balls, pyramids of cans with the black and white photocopy of Aphisit’s face.

Twenty bath for a bucket, three throws and chances to win a cushion, quite useful around the protest. Printed on the cushions Hello Kitty, Darumon, or written in white on red “dissolution of the parliament”, apparently not the most popular. In the second section a younger woman is tiding together darts, three in three, as a boy puts away the balloons. Lines and lines of balloons, yellow on pink backdrop and pink on yellow backdrop. Behind them, as the hands of the boy reveal as he takes away the balloons, pictures of Aphisit and Suthep, or copies of newspaper clips. An older man is still playing. Under his hits two yellow balloons explode, exposing the face of the prime minister. Satisfied he walks away with a Darumon light blue cushion, mildly limping.

We arrive to the barricades at the end of Ratchadamri road. The wire mesh that appeared during the day over the flower boxes has been covered by a huge green plastic cloth, the copy of what the army has done on the other side, covering completely the sky-walk all the way to Sala Daeng station to make their movements invisible. Behind the wire mesh sharpen bamboo sticks function as a protection from possible invasion. It looks like a medieval barricade, was not for the big trucks’ tires laying here in there and that later they will move in front of the barricade to light up with petrol in case of army’s attack.

We cross to the other side and walk into Silom road. The military completely fill the streets. Thousands of them sleeping in parking lot, hidden in buildings, and lounging in halls. Few are visible from the street but many more appear when you get into the sois or look into the buildings. Military hammocks hang inside elevated parking lots. We walk around and get into Patpong. The scene is absurd, uncanning remembrance to pictures of Bangkok during the Vietnam War but all in silence and without the mass of people in the street. The place is practically empty, few stalls, almost no tourist or clients, some places are closed and in the others hoards of whore dresses in tied clothes or nurse apparels, chitchat with the young militaries. Two guys in full military gear walk down Patpong, proudly displaying themselves as an empty lap-dance bar throws in the street at full volume an up-beat hip-hop piece, perfect soundtrack for their advance. They pass us as my friend’s camera is rolling, amazed as I am of the absurdity of the situation. We walk another bit down the alley. Behind a wire mesh a group of ten soldiers sit. Beside them a jeep is lightened by the pink reflection of a neon sign “Super Pussy”. We keep walking into the deserted Silom road. The vision of this mass of military gives a eerie feeling to the city, accentuated by lonely prostitutes and a couple of older man completely dressed in red, walking through with a smurf on their faces.

We get back to Rathadamri road, exhausted by the heat and the walk. Here people are sleeping on the barricades, ready for something to change. About forty men with bamboo sticks waiting for a full attack by thousands of heavily armed soldier. A small group of motor-taxis stands on a side. I start talking with an older man, bright white hair. He starts telling me, as he lower the voice, that both sides are just “crazy with power” and that despite what the government say not all the motor-taxis are red shirts, not even the one that come here, some people do but some other, as him, come just to make money as drivers or vendors. Other two younger motortaxi come closer and we start talking. In few minutes clients arrive and they all leave, with somebody on the backseat. The younger one, in a purple vest, tells me to wait for him as he will be back soon. When he gets back a man arrives, all dressed in black with a vest with written Beretta everywhere, and call people around. He diffuses self-confidence and testosterone. Soon a crowd of young men, probably the same age of the majority of the soldiers, come around listening to the guy. He is explaining the situation to them and distributing money for petrol to pour on the tires from a stuffed wallet. “Take your motorcycle, two bikes one after the other” he instructs them. The young motorcycle taxi volunteers to go, gets given a hundred baht and drives away in the night.

April 18th

2010-05-17T10:22:00.001-07:00

I woke up in the morning and went directly to Siam square, zigzagging through the traffic that stagnates at the frontiers of the protest. U-turn in Silom road, passing through the barrier that separate the two lanes, and left into Thaniya road, full of prostitutes and Japanese restaurants during the night but empty and still asleep at noon. I parked in Siam Square, sleepy beside small groups of police officers wearing orange and purple foulards to differentiate units.

Rama I road has been transformed into a walking street, sheltered by the imposing cement structures of the skytrain. White huge stands occupy the two sides of the street, leaving a narrow path for people and vehicles. A slow flow of motor-taxi moves through the people who occupied the space underneath the sky-train pylons and transformed few small green patches into natural pavement for hand-made huts, covered on the side by two long pieces of colorful plastic and on the other buy the elevated train. An old man lounge, shirtless, napping in the intense heat as vendors fill the sidewalks and part of the street with food and a multitude of red merchandise, wrist bands, t-shirts, flip-flops with the face of Aphisit and Suthep, foulard, stickers, flags, pictures, Cds of the protests, tapes of the speech, the ubiquitous clap with red feet, jackets with written police. On my right hand side Thaksin jumps out of a tall poster, dressed in clothes from the movie Matrix, two guns in his hands. I pass through this river of objects, visually, olfactory, and sonically overloaded.

On my right side at the FARED (First Aid Red Shirts) stand, a group offering first aid to the protesters, where volunteers, mostly middle-aged women, distribute first aid, and free pills for different kind of health problems, an international media press conference is taking place.

The small crowd of foreign journalists is surrounded by Thais of all ages, separated by a red plastic band and listening often without understanding, the mixture of Thai and English. At the end of the stand a large white table hosts a professor of Chulalongkorn University, a former yellow shirt who, as she puts it, came to her senses after the coup and join the red movement, a monk, who briefly spoke at the end about non violence, and two other people I don’t recognize. Behind them, as in a strange police lineup, three women and a man stands, each of them with a large framed picture of their relatives, killed on April 10th. One of the women carries a forensic picture of her son, lifeless. The youngest of the four is probably 13 or 14 years old, her silent eyes looking forward but glued on the ground. Her small hands clung to the picture of who looked like her father, similar faces, and identical noses. He is wearing a large cowboy hat in the picture, his eyes look very serious and mildly sad. Everybody in that row look trapped, behind the table, with the consciousness of being observed, the attempt not to cross eyes, and the awareness of the ineluctability of their condition. All of them wear red shirts. An older woman, with short black hair in a black oxford shirt is acting at the MC, syncopating interventions and explaining in English and then in Thai the next step as well as introducing the speakers.

I barely listen at the beginning from behind another red band that divided the stand into the stage space and the audience space, filled with journalists scribbling on their block notes or filming what was going on. I stop talking with few of them about recent events. A younger Thai girl, a free-lance journalist working as a fixer and as their personal baby sitter for these days listened to our conversation, commenting now and then. A young man gets the microphone, loudly retelling what happened to him on April 10th. His car was among the one parked in Tanao Road to block the advance of the Thai Army. As he was parking the car there he was shot at with rubber bullets, smashing his car’s windows. He was then taken out of the car, beaten on the street and brought to a military camp for a five hour of interrogation and beating. Even if in English he speaks like the people on stage, changing the inflection and the volume of his speech emphatically. The red shirts around read the clues carefully even without understanding what he is saying, clapping everytime his voice raise the tone, maybe an automatic reaction after so many days of being bombarded with the rhythm of political tirades. I walk away, disturbed by this thought.

Today the atmosphere at the protest is tense. As usual during the hot hours the area is quite empty, with people mostly clustered around the stage, often sitting on their motorcycle or in any place with shadow, clustering along the walls of the shopping malls, using the small tongue of shadow cast by the enormous complexs, or underneath the three overpass that cross Ratchadamri road. Today, however, something is different. The crowds are really sparse, the music is playing softer, the security is tighter on the whole perimeter where motorcycles are stopped and their seats checked. Rumors are running around of another imminent attack by the army. There is a strange feeling of calm before the tempest, of tense waiting for the upcoming meeting between the army chiefs and for the decisions that will be taken. In the meanwhile, the red shirt are raising the stakes, announcing they will extend the protest also the the Silom area, the financial hearth of the city. The reply was short and rapid. The army spokesman assuring on camera that this will not be allowed and that the “mob will not be allowed to be flexible anymore”.

In this psychological chess board, on the other side of town, at Rangsit University the yellow shirts are meeting, hoping to come up with a plan, or some sort of platform to voice their opinion. Later this day they will join the “no-color” protests in Victory Monument and give the government a seven days deadline to resolve the situation with the red before they will intervene directly as concerned citizens. It is a day of pause, staring in the eyes, strategizing, and talks of conspiracy and movements of the soldiers on the roofs around Ratchaprasong, all of this underneath a cover of calm and restrain. The opponents, how many of them it is difficult to say, pounder their next moves.

Around the city, political discussions are diffusing in the homes, the streets, and the shops. I get out of the house later to buy some food and return a movie. Passing in front of the 7/11 at the corner of my soi a motortaxi drivers, using his vest as a political manifesto against dictatorship stops me. He talks fast in a mixture of Thai and political terms in English from his mouth, covered in a white mask with thick black mustaches coming out on the sides. He pulls out of the basket in front of his motorbike a piece of paper from about a hundred of copies, wrapped in a brown envelope. He tells me to read it and asks that I read the first line, as I proof of my ability to read Thai. It is a short page to explain basic political concepts of democratic systems: popular rule, legitimacy, parliamentary systems. “I wrote it myself” he explain proudly “you know, to explain political systems the ‘Thai people’ who do not understand what is the difference between parliamentary and dictatorial systems and believe to have democracy when they don’t have it”. He speaks very fast, constantly interrupting his own speech to ask me stuff about the system in Italy and Mussolini. I ask him if he wrote it from scratches and he says he took it and rearranged, as he asks, without waiting for an answer, about the electoral system in Italy. I ask him if he supports the red shirts and he tells me he is a step forward, he supports them but is looking for revolution not reform. As he says that he greets a younger woman and gives her a copy of the pamphlet, again out of the envelope. I say bye and walk away, passing two women walking home from their office in yellow t-shirts.

on motortaxi and protest

2010-05-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

public art at protest site

2010-05-17T10:20:00.001-07:00

dismantling protest

2010-05-17T10:19:00.001-07:00

I woke up to the news that red shirt were dismantling the protest at Democracy Monument and moving it completely to the Ratchaprasong area. I got in a cab and arrived to Saphan Phanfa, which is now reachable even by car. The intersection is empty, just the stage left. The few people left are collecting garbage and taking down tends, as a man stands alone on the decomposing stage, singing. Traffic is back, but very light. In front of Wat Ratchanatdaram, overlooked by the Golden Mountain, small shelters made of plastic sheets and sticks wave to the morning wind, emptied to go camp in the central business district. Few people walk around, mixed with slow moving trucks. Some people are taking apart the white stands that occupied the sides of Ratchadamnoen and storing the material onto large trucks, ready to be rebuilt again down Ratchadamri road. In the sleepy atmosphere of the morning, small groups of people are taking apart everything that the red shirts have built in the area.

As I arrive to Democracy Monument the three artists who built the carton box wall few days ago are also dismantling, carefully folding the boxes. The man who directed the work greets me. I sit there for a moment as the temperature raise. I take some picture and find myself helping them to store the boxes. The guy is wearing a light blue t-shirt, darkened by spots of sweat. He gives me a pair of pliers to cut the iron mesh that connects the boxes and he starts telling me that the older man, the only artist among them, has been doing public art since 1976. Him and the other man helping them out were student activists during that time. They both studied for some years - one in his case- at Thammasat University and went to the jungle after the October 6th massacre of students. Three year for him in Isaan, three for his friend in Phitsanulok. As we keep working in the reckless sun everybody around is taking things apart, packing up objects, moving away in cars. Two motorcycle taxi drivers give the last tours of the occupied monument, pointing of pictures still standing followed by small group of people walking through the red coffins, now stripped of flowers and flags. Just four pieces of wood in red on the pavement in an empty square. It is stunning how fast things can change. On our left a huge burial structure was built during the morning to burn the coffins if and when the government would resign. A trolley is parked there as a dozen of people are taking down the structure, maybe to be rebuilt somewhere else.

The older artist, Pii Leek, who has been collecting his other paintings printed on plastic sheet from around the monument, comes back and indifferently greets me. He has the slim face and dried body of old people that have always been active. He has soft hands, few white strings of beard come out of his chin and white hair emerge from the side of a once white, now yellowish, hat. He wears large white shirt and beige paints. Flip-flop. I ask him about “Thai Artist for Freedom”, the group who signed all the works of art filling the monument. “It is just me” he tells me half-smiling, “I have been doing this for a long time, on a side, with other forms of art as well, more or less political. I collect money from friends and use them to put up art at political protest.” He speaks with a soft voice as if the words slip away from his missing teeth. I ask him if I can call him and talk more and he tells me that I have better go to his house as he come to protests only if he has something to do otherwise he stays home.

We go back to work as some of the people who are helping sit in the shadow, taking a break. I get close to Nit, the man I talked to before. He points at a single woman shoe left in the street and suggests me to put it underneath my ass as the street pavement is burning. I sit with him, balancing on a shoe. Soon he starts talking about 1976 and his experience as a student then. “Students at that time”, he says, “we were the people talking, the people on stage, but at the end it was the normal people, the workers that really made up the movement.” He looks around to the street that saw many of his friends killed and that forced him to leave university and live in the forest for three years. He tells me that in 1976 the government recruited people from the country-side to fight against the students and the people protesting, the infamous “village scout”. “Now those villagers are part of the red shirts” He pauses for a moment. “The same people who killed us are now protesting here, on our sides.” In his silence before standing up and going back to work I think that history has a weird way of repeating itself, common enemy and conflict creates odd friendship, especially if the past is painfully carved in your mind.

We finally manage to organize the empty boxes and drive to Ratchaprasong in his wide jeep, full with folded carton boxes from the wall that was build there. Other folded boxes are on top of the car, extending it in height. We drive through Siam Square were people have fully occupied the sidewalks in front of Siam Paragon, lay down their mats and started rebuilding shelters for the next nights. At the corner with Siam Square the vendors of grilled chicken that two nights before was filling with smoke the roundabout of democracy monument, is setting up shop in his new, again carefully chosen location.

We drive through a flow of people walking, sitting, frenetically setting shops, rising covers, building stalls. At the corner with Henry Dunant road we get stopped by the red shirt traffic controller, one of the hundreds of guards that manage access and security at the entrances of the protest areas. Nit explains to them we are coming to put up an art piece in front of Siam Paragon. The guard, a man in his forties with a grey t-shirt and bushy eyebrows tells him that we needs to turn back if he is looking for Siam Paragon. “Central World” I tell him. He looks at us confused and mutters something into the black walkie-talkie. Nit pulls out his camera to show the pictures of the boxes. The guard takes a look at the picture and tells us we can’t pass there. There are too many people in the street now. I ask if Pratunam could be better and he nods, “go ask there”: deflecting responsibility. Guards are the same, no matter what color they wear.

We drive into Henry Dunant road, u-turn and with the power of the driver’s red shirt we pass another block and drive back into Rama I. The street is swarming with people, pick-ups, tuk-tuk, individual cars, taxis and dominated by the ubiquitous motorcycle taxis, soon to be the only mean of transportation available in the area with the capacity of crossing the crowd, allowing mobility to people on and off the protest, but also in its belly. It feels like a hoard of people and vehicles is coming against us, maybe the guard were blocking the street for I reason, I think. We somehow manage to move solitary against the current inside this giant jeep. Nit is talking to me about his job as an editor for D-magazine, one of the myriad of journals, newspaper and red publication that are circulating. “Too much competition” he said smiling “we have finished the money and we are risking running out of business”. He switches from a subject to the other and asks me about the communist party in Italy as he criticizes the Maoist direction of the CPT and other institutional forces in Thailand. He speaks calmly as he also talks to the phone tuck by his shoulder with Nick, the other guy who was at Democracy Monument and he reaches for some round small dark brown candies that he hands to me. They taste awful but I am too ashamed to throw them away.

We drive back to Ratchthewi road, where a motortaxi with a whistle directs the traffic. At the intersection with Petchaburi road I tell him “you should turn right but you have to go straight and take a u-tur… “we are red” he interrupts me with a smile, “we can turn right here” as he cut three lines and turn shouting politely to the police man inside the booth, “wehavetodropsomethingthankyou” with no pause. The traffic is now unbearable so he drops me off and goes straight into the flyover, directed at home in OnNut, renouncing to deposit the boxes for today. I get off and walk toward Pratunam. The street here is packed as a flow of people makes its way into the protest site. On the small bridge at Pratunam, vendors sell from plastic tables buckets full of the white powder and water guns, cashing on the on-going Songkran celebrations. Besides them, functioning as the border of the protest, a group of young Thais listen to hard rock music, pounding at full volume from black speakers on the back of a pickup. Completely covered with white powder their young bodies dance to the rhythm of the music, in an ecstatic mix of water, heat, music, and white powder. I pass them careful not to get my camera wet and walk into the protest.

The crowd has grown significantly since the vacation of Saphan Phanfa but the extension of the protest area remained the same. As a consequence the density of people is much higher, and growing. I walk down and get on an overpass to take pictures of the red sea from above. In the direction of Central World the face of a popular Thai movie star emerges from the crowd on a advertisement board. He is carrying a camera that flashes every 15 seconds or so. On the other side, three young models look at the crowd dancing from huge advertisement boards. The three sisters carry three names Gucci, Luis Vitton, Versace. I walk down the overpass and bump into another book-vendor of classic leftist books.

I have met him many times already, at protests and at conferences at the local university. He greets me warmly and asks me how often I come to protest. “Everyday since I got back”. I answer. “Every day for me too” he replies, “since two weeks.” He is sitting on a motorbike, a light purple Fino that looks like a modern Vespa. He is wearing a green, mao-like hat, with a red star on his forehead, red shirt, and jeans. In front of him lay, on a plastic table covered by blue cloth, his books. We start talking about the protest and the clearing of the other site. I ask him why they decided to move here. “The owners of these shopping malls” he tells me “are the people behind this government and the aristocracy. They don’t want the army to engage in fight here. They will damage their property.” We look around for a second. “We are safer here, protected by Luis Vitton’s bags” he laughs. This place of exclusion, material symbol of unequal access to resources, has been transformed into a shelter for the red shirt movement, precariously tied to their lives by a string of jewels and luxury goods. “They have no problem in destroying lives but they don’t want to destroy goods” he says out loud. Around red shirts protesters keep buying from the many street vendors around: food, t-shirts, wristbands, clappers, flip-flop, pictures, videos, beverages.

We start talking about politics and I ask him why the students are not present in this protest. “They are” he replies.” “Not too many” I say. He stops for a second “After 76” he says” students have not been too involved in politics” “you know, students now are interested in good life, in party. This is not a protest of the student, is a protest of the people, which is much better” he goes on “the people now don’t need students to teach them, before the student thought they knew and understood but at the end they had their own ideas and dreams. Now the people can speak for themselves, this is the main change”. I ask him about the yellow shirt “What do you think they think? Why do they support what you call a dictatorship? Not all of them take advantages from this situation, right?” He looks at me and makes me feel it was a stupid question. “TV, the media, they all create an idea, yellow shirt believe Thaksin is bad and so anything that comes with him is bad. You know I don’t like Thaksin too” he says, lowering his tone, voicing a position that is slowly spreading around, “but now it is clear Thaksin was a tool, this is not anymore about him. I didn’t like him, but he had also good policies.” He starts telling me about his first born, of his young pregnant wife being able to give birth for only 30 bath, against the 50000 bath that a friend of them spent in a private hospital. “They paid” he continues “but they are rich so they can, if you are not it’s only 30 bath.” As we talk my eyes fell on the books. I ask him “what books do you sell more? What are people buying?” “Fa diao gan, another journal called An, and the book of Jit Pumisak.” “Are people reading Marx or Lenin?” I ask pointing to Marx’s beard, towering on two covers. “Some, the people who are interested in political thoughts”. I tell him I never understood the relation between Red shirt and the communist symbolism. The question makes him uncomfortable and he starts on the defensive, maybe as a reaction to years of propaganda equating communists with enemies of the state. “Red shirts are not communist” he starts out. The Maoist hat on his head seems to disagree. There are some former communist, Maoist, who are in the red shirt but they understood that both communism and this movement are both about democracy first.” He seems to lean for a more socialist position, looking at Pridi Banomyong as an example. “I am a red Pridi, not a red Thaksin” he concludes. “So what next if the government is dissolved?” “The red shirts should create a new party and maybe also the yellow shirt should create a new party so to have a real bipartisan system.” We talk for another while about this and the welfare state in Europe, not everyone in the crowd wants to talk for hours about politics. I greet him and walk away as the lights of the day are almost out, covered by the imposing buildings around us.

The large plaza in front of Central World swarms with people, each finding their own space for the night and for the next days. People are moving frenetically, an endless flow that walks with chairs, lays mats, stops their carts, renegotiating space between the protesters who have been here in the last weeks and the new comers. The protest extended now down Ratchadamri road, almost to reach Lumpini Park. Slowly the white stands that were at Ratchadamnoen Avenue are being put back up, along the street. I hop on a motortaxi, too tired to walk more. I get back home talking on the way with the drivers, who comes everyday from Thonburi, on the other side of the rivers, to be part of the movement and make some money on a side. On the way home he asks me how much I would have accepted to pay for this ride, if I did not know the normal price, tasting the water for the next farang who will come to him.

On the making of history- April 14th

2010-05-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

As the first days after the violence go by, histories are being created, told, and retold in the two streets around Democracy Monument from which the army attack came from: one is Dinso road, a big street arriving directly on the northern side of the monument; the other one, Tanao road at the end of Khao San road, the backpackers Mecca of Bangkok. Both streets are slowly entering the mythology of this protest, his conceptual and photographic memories.

Tanao road, where I spent most of my time in the last days, was one of the first streets built in Bangkok, when most of the citizens moved on water. It now crosses, under its new name, Ratchadamnoen Avenue few hundred meters west from democracy monument. The street, much bigger on the other side of the avenue, becomes smaller on this side, providing the perfect bottleneck for a military crackdown. I came here the day after the violence and wrote a bit. The street gives away an eerie feeling. Small shrines for the dead have been set up on the street, overflowing with objects, pieces of clothes, candles, coins and other donations. Few steps away rubbish covers the streets corners, pieces of the stone coming from who know where, and basis of the streetlamps from the nearby streets. Overlooking this scene, behind iron barriers, a hoard of farang tourists, throwing water to each other. People walked around bending, searching through the rubbish for bullet or other portable memorabilia of the violence. Slowly by slowly people and curious grew in number, looking around in almost religious silence. Most of them are well-dressed, not in red shirt but with a red foulard or a wristband, easy to take off once they leave the area, clear signs of less strong affiliation and class belonging. These are not the people who were here during the confrontation. In the silence, broken by the harsh notes coming from Khao San, cameras everywhere capture histories.

As the flow of people searching for a piece of history grew a big board was put up, in the middle of the street, hanging from red ropes attached to the street lamps. On this carton board, glued, a series of 16 photos, the same fast printed photos that are slowly appear everywhere in the protest areas, here and in Ratchaprasong. At corners, inside shops, on the monument, on cars’ windows, on the walls these gruesome images are proliferating, being printed and sold around the city for few bath in stands equipped with small printers.

People start gathering in front of the board when Seh Daeng, the popularly acclaimed army general turned red shirt leader, appears from the end of the street. He walks with a small entourage of guards in mimetic outfit. He checks the photos first, stands there visibly touched, salutes with a wai the two “shrines” on the street, walks back. He stops to stare at a shattered shop-window, behind a closed metal cover. His hands run fast and frenetically on the walls around the shop deciphering bullets holes for the crowd around. M-16 he says and the small crowd around him mutter it: “M-sip ook”. All of this small procession/inspection is done with the uttermost calm, almost with grace, as the crowd cheers and try to get a picture with him. Even now I have to force my ears to remember the noise and the clapping of plastic feet. Staring at him my brain somehow stored the moment as a silent one, maybe in an imaginative stretch with a valzer playing in background , even if few meters away techno music was playing full volume.

As he moves away to the middle of the street to allow the crowd to bring back his photos and words, a middle aged man, dressed in a rather odd skateboarded-like style pulls out a red marker from his black backpack and starts circling the bullets holes beneath Burger King, different from the ones Seh Daeng checked and way too big and deep to be from an M-16. A circle, an arrow, few words, repetead at every bullet hole. “Gun Lifle M-16 by Soiler” I stare at him for a while and then I tell him “Brother it’s with the letter R not L.” He looks at me confused, I don’t know if for my weird Thai accent or for my comment. I repeat “Rifle is written with R not with L” he seems to understand but he does nothing, I show with my hand what I mean. He understands, smiles at me, and thanks me as he carefully goes back to every hole and changes the L for the R.

The sun goes down and the dark seize the small road. A larger crowd arrives, attracted by the spreading news about the presence of Seh Daeng, who has already left. The skeletons of cars and taxis parked on the street on the 10th to block the advance of the army lay in the dim light, drilled by bullets. Some people emerge from the crowd, and stand in front of the shrines or the pictures, retelling the events of the last days. Two men take the central stage, between the board and the shrines: a young man who looks like he has been sleeping around here for a while in a torn red shirt and an older man, toothless and without shoes. They recounts confused and often inconsequential stories, as they try keep on them the eyes of the crowd. They both say they were here and they saw people falling down. The younger guy, the one I follow more closely, speaks about the events in a detached tone “The army came from there” as he point to the road behind the cars. “But they were also over the buildings, we pushed back and forth, back and forth and then they start shooting and they had weapons, they were using weapons against people with bear hands.“ Somebody from the crowd asks if the people died there, pointing with her eyes at the small shrine, right beside the man. The guy honestly says “I don’t know if they died here or there, everybody was pushing back and forth, it could have been there” he tells as his eyes rove for a second. Another farang asks in English if the Japanese reporter was killed here, somebody translates and the story-tellers says again that is not easy to tell, there was a big confusion, it may even had been the other street. No personal pictures are on the blood stains, just some food donation, some coins and two almost torn apart red shirts with the sad face of Thaksin, in white.

Around us, as the flow of water from Khao San road slowly inundate the red shrines. History is in the making, cold enough for the curious, the well-dresses red shirt, the “military leaders”, for the pictures, the collections and the close but undisturbed Songkram celebration but still too warm to take a defined form. Histories on the dark street were still fluid and open to interpretations, solidifying before my eyes by narrators, actors, and bystanders. The guy with the marker, the comments from Seh Daeng, the objects that people were putting on the shrines, everything is participating to the imploding and converging into a more fixed version of history, a history of violence and sacrifice, of state repression and personal heroism. A history that will be challenged and sometime even completely denied by state propaganda and mass media but will be retold, in personal conversation and VCDs’ screenings around the protest and in a myriad of houses throughout the country.
Two days after, on April 14th, I went back again in the late afternoon.

The mood was quite different. Many more people, mostly young wearing water rifles, were on the street, attracted by the “traditional” wet dance party of Songkran in Khao San road more than by the call of history. Most of them, however, stopped to check out the pictures board towering in the middle of the street. Using the board as a teacher would with a blackboard a man in red shirt has become the official story teller in the area. One after the other people come and leave, stare at the macabre pictures, take some pictures of pictures, often with their cell phones, and walk on, toward or away from the water. The story tellers keeps going, restarting again and again, going through the pictures showing the photo of the guy who was killed precisely where we stand, solidifies version to what two day before was still uncertain. As soon as I stop there to listen another guys grabs my arm. “You don’t have to pay for this” he tells me and he starts retelling the events cutting straight to the part that he thinks foreigner are interested in: the Japanese reporter’s death. He tells me that the second stain, the one more inside Tanao road, is where the Japanese reporter died. “Look there is also a Japanese flag there” as he points with his finger to the small flag that appeared there since yesterday in a bamboo vase full of rotting roses. I turn around and I ask him “Was it scary?” ready to receive the classic boastful response. “I don’t know” he answers almost surprise of my question “I wasn’t here the night of the 10th”. I keep walking down the road passing the cars that block the street, every window smashed into glass spider nets by bullet holes. I stand in front of them, trying to get a picture.

On my left, as the sun light is completely gone, a mildly over-weight man in his forties, black ruffled hair, white oxford shirt with blue strips, a black backpack, tick eyeglasses, and a very big red foulard around his neck stands with a motortaxi driver, an old man with a carved face with two thick brush strokes of the white talcum powder used during Songkran on his chicks. As the motor-taxi starts telling the story of what happened, an older woman comes out of one of the ally and joins the group followed right after by another younger woman and an even younger boy. Three generations listening. I get closer. They are speaking about the provenience of the shots and the motor-taxi driver is telling of twenty snipers, on top of a white big building, shooting into the crowd. He pulls out of his pocket a picture of the guy left brainless, by this time towering on every board in the protest areas, as a proof that the bullets arrived from above. The man with the foulard asks if the red had weapons. The motortaxi driver poses for a second, shrink his shoulder and says “yeah, sure some had weapons, but I have not seen anyone using them”. Then he points with his head to the direction of the shrines and asks the man if he wants to go see there “We have already seen it” answer the younger woman, in a conversation that resemble the one you have with tourist guides. He turns to me and he tells me to go see. Almost unconsciously I follow his advice, returning on my steps as I leave the small group behind me. When I realize that I am going back and I get back is too late, they are already gone.

Only 24 hours after the history has been crystallizing into a less fluid form, blood stains are given names, faces, and paraphernalia added to give strength to the new narration. A small Japanese flag, a picture of the brainless body, a hole in the wall. A version of the story solidify with them, a way of telling it, landmarks to point to, ballistic evaluation to be drawn, and a more and less stable group of story-tellers who were not present during the events and are making a job out of it. At the same time, a transport operator who carries people on and off the protest, one of the ubiquitous motorcycle taxis, gives to his clients tours of the area, from its fringes. History is in its making, a history of events and people, a small localized history that works as a compendium to the big history that particular events can and, as the red shirt now hope, will change.

April 13th

2010-05-17T10:15:00.001-07:00

I sit on the western side of democracy monument. Carton boxes that were lying around yesterday, scattered on the pavement, have been organized in blocks. On them thousands of different hands have written their own message: offenses to the government, questions about the government or other institutions and their roles, or whatever they want to say, most of the time in Thai, occasionally in English. These boxes have been transformed into a massive blackboard for people to express themselves on. An older artist collected some money from friends with this idea in mind and bought them to the street few days ago. Today, the beginning of proper Songkran celebrations which will run for the next two days, him and a group of collaborators rearranged them, creating a wall that almost covers a side of the monument.

The boxes have been attached one to the other with iron mesh and fixed with red ropes directly attached to nails, hammered into the monument’s pavement. A group of three artists showed up and started drawing on top of the messages a massive Democracy monument in black, leaning on a side, symbol of what they see as the ongoing destruction of democracy in Thailand.

In the middle of the street dotted with people, covered by the thin shadow casted by the monument a younger artist starts drawing the outlines, comparing the proportions of his lines with the monument behind the cartoon wall. Around two older couples stop to stare, puzzled. The older artist, wearing a white hat from which grey hair pop out on the sides, checks and at times picks a brush to corrects with firm hands the outlines, drawn by his younger helper. Soon a small crowd gathers around, sitting on the asphalt, using the little shadow casted by cars parked around to protect from the burning sun. One man, in his fifties, sits close to me and asks were I am from. We start talking.

He tells me about the boxes that he participated in buying and bringing there. He told me that people started writing on them on the 10th, after the helicopters came around and dropped tear gas on the crowd. The boxes were laid out around the monument only the day after. He asks me how to translate in English “abolish aristocracy” and walks to the painter with the piece of paper I wrote, as the monument is being filled with black paint. The monument behind, the real one, had been wrapped in a multicolored piece of cloth, with a red wrapping on the top and a huge red cloth around the monument saying “give power back to the people”.

As the shadow casted by the cars extends more people gather to watch the emerging painting, ten or fifteen at this point. A young girl passes by with a leaking water gun, blue as the small tank on her back. A couple in Hawaiian red shirts with white flowers stamped on is taking pictures. The younger painter distributes thick layers of black paint on the large cartoon surface. He is in his thirties wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and black sun glasses. He steps back to check the painting as he frown his thick black mustaches. He goes back and stands on top of a table, both of his feet on big cans of paint. Behind him the voice of a man direct people through the three lines of monks and older seated on chairs on the northern side of the monument, there to receive Songkran’s water offerings. The monks’ robes give to the place another shade of brown. Red shirts walk through the lines, pouring small quantities of water into their hands full of orchid flowers, pass to a lower line of sitting elders, and then come up above them to pour water on a golden Buddha icon.

The Songkran atmosphere in Ratchadamnoen is very different from Ratchaprasong. There younger crowds throw water at each other in the street, mixing with foreigners and loud pop music, no offering to the elders is happening, substituted to a larger dance party filling the intersection in Pratunam. Back in Ratchadamnoen, at the beginning of Dinso road, people crowd around the parked military tanks which have also been transformed in boards for red shirts’ political messages. A young father pulls his small child up to sit on the tank, and take a picture as the kid looks around lost with his red head band calling for dissolution. Behind him the tanks swarm with people trying to break some small part and bring it back home.

At the eastern side of the monument the coffins of the people who died on Saturday painted in red stand on tables. Long lines of people wait to have a moment in front of the coffins or to chat briefly and give support to the relatives of the dead, who stand in front of the wooden boxes, pictures of their loved ones tightly held in their hands. A voice behind them, coming from the stage in Saphan Phanfa, tells ironically “We are very lucky to have Apishit as our prime minister”. Each coffin is covered in flowers and brings a picture of the body inside, and a copy of their national ID. Names ,faces, ages, residences, forever printed in pictures of many. The lines of people coming for a gaze, a picture, or a hand posed on the coffins just for a second seems endless, overlooked by the top of Democracy Monument, covered in red cloth. On the pavement, also covered with handwriting, hundreds of incense sticks burn in three big jars. On the sidewalks other long lines of people gathers around some stall registering people as signed members of UDD and giving them an ID. This seems to be the more evident short term effect of the military attack. Crowds, families, interminable lines of silent people waiting to be photographed and receive a red shirts’ member card. Many of them have been at the protest since weeks but only now decided to get formal membership to the group. Three or four stands along Ratchadamnoen road harbor this mass of people buying for 50 bath the plastic card holder, filling a paper form, and waiting for hours to be put in front of a red backdrop and a digital camera, before receiving their plastic card, for another 100 bath. Inside the stands four or five younger supporters sit in front of laptops and small tripods with digital camera, volunteering their time in this seemingly endless operation of recording names and faces. The attack that was supposed to instill fear and despair seem to have created a stronger push to be formally involved. “We won’t go home until we win” tells me an old man, as his wrinkles bend into a sun-burned smile. Behind him a young couple pretend to be fighting among them, as the young woman giggles. Few steps away a kid plays with a small plastic water gun, following a dog. Besides them, an older motorcycle taxi, wait silently in line, the vest adding another tonality of color to the scene. On a side, small groups of people help each other to fill the form correctly, as they pass their pens to the next one. Thailand’s humanity fills these lines, silently waiting to their documentation of political participation.

On the opposite side of the monument a single piece of white cloth hangs from scaffolding. On it just one eloquent word in red: “SAD”, in English. The brown carton boxes wall in front of it shine in the orange sun, as a timid sunset emerges from the road, reflected on the beige wings of the monument.

a moment of relief- April 12th

2010-05-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

I sit at the end of Khao San, on a small step outside a silver shop. On my right the street is broken into pieces, left there since the day before carelessly. Red shirts and curious everywhere taking pictures of what happened in this small soi, or at least of the traces left, archived, collected, marked into walls, on streets, inside people’s memories. In front of Burger King at least two people were killed, or at least things have been arranged to transform two blood stains into the last residence of these souls. They were shot at the head, people say, their brain left on the street pavement. A guy is going around circling with a pen every bullet hole he can find on the walls. People with wet eyes stare at the stain of blood with have been delimited by yellow metal barriers and adorned with two dirty red shirts, both with Thaksin’s face on, some flower and food donation- rotten in the unbearable heat of the day, and some coins, donation to the spirits. Around on the pavement pieces of stones, dirt, food, and the stone basements of the lights in Ratchdamnoen, that have been broken to make stonse to throw to the army. A big board across the street with the pictures of the dead bodies reproduced and photographed by a dozen of cameras, self phones, camcorders that will bring them into the private lives of thousands, into their living rooms. Some police officers with bullet proof vest walks around, as people in the crowd look in the rubbish on the side of the road for bullets, memorabilia of this moment. 5 meters away, right behind a row of metal barriers delimiting the area is Khao San, a crowd of young tourist is playing with water. Songkran today is celebrated only here in Bangkok.

Thousands of wet under-dresses young white kids dance into the ear bursting techno music, throwing water at each other. Their clothes adhere to their young bodies as they completely ignore what is going on few meters away. An orgy of adolescent lack of interest, orientalistic indifference, and massive disrespect. Some Thais stop for a second, looking at this charade from behind the barriers, wet tanned white kids having their battle with buckets and water rifle. 5 meters. I feel disgusted. I know I should know better and find some social dimension to this, something clever to say but I just can’t, I don’t want to, this is simply disgusting and a complete obliviation of everything going on. The Saturday tourists ran away, who arrived this week may be kilometers or years away from what is going on 5 meters away.

As I sit thinking about the disgust and sense of shame I feel, a roar from the crowd expand in the crowded streets, people start running and shouting in the direction of democracy monument, I stand up passing the silent story tellers who were narrating the stories of the fight and I ask a woman what is going on she just says “dissolution” as she run as well. I leave her behind enter Ratchadamnoen and find a sea of red cheering, clapping, shouting, hugging each other. Everybody is going toward the monument. “The democrat party is dissolved” a man shouts. From every street red shirt emerge. The atmosphere is joyful, that kind of moments when you can feel the relief of thousands of people, it gives the goo spam. I walk again, electrified by the common feeling. People are waving red flags, the loud speakers are chanting “democracy is in our hands” I turn back and see people clapping and waving flags in the red sunset. Their profiles carved into Ratchadamnoen with a low sun at the end of the street that greets the moment. I arrive at democracy monument, cheering everywhere. The speakers shout” One year ago was their Songkran, this year we can celebrate our Songkran, and it will be a Red Songkran”. I arrive at the Monument a young man runs on my side, his arms to the sky, happy. Same others around him do the same. Then there is a moment, just a very brief moment of pause. The young man stands, watching Democracy monument and starts crying. An older man on his side, blocked with his arms up, cries as well, silently. Around people running. I see the tension on these man faces, the tension of many sleepless nights, the tension of the Saturday’s events, portrayed over and over again in the pictures of the dead and injured posted everywhere, breaking. Red sleepless eyes, bursting into tears. The loud speakers say is not over, urge people not to leave. The old man sits down on a chair, nervously looks for his cigarettes, find the packet and plays with it in his hands, eyes staring at the monument wrapped in red cloth saying “give back the power to the people” and besides it the coffins of the dead, with their pictures on top. I take some pictures of him and the younger man who is still frozen there, standing, in tears. It is a very powerful moment, I don’t know yet was really has happened but seen from here it looks like victory, or at least the need to believe is it. I take some steps, on old man walks to me and tells me one of the dead is a “nong” and now they have died for something, for “chart”, the nation. Another man tells me this is not just for Thailand, but for every person in the world, the demonstration that people have the power, or can claim it. I go back, the older man is still with his packet in the hands. I ask him for a lighter, he passes it to me. I offer to light his cigarette, he says not now and offer me a sit on his side. I sit there, for a while in silence. He is on my side, the younger man on the other. He is not crying anymore, he smiles. That smile that you take after a long journey, when you breathe finally. The older man tells me he hasn’t slept in three days, he has come to Bangkok exactly 30 days ago for the protest, abandoned his job. I tell him he will probably sleep well tonight, he laugh. I tell him tonight you will have a party. Not yet he replies and go back to torture his pack of cigarettes. The sensation is overwhelming. People are celebrating. At least for tonight this is going to be the mood. I walk away thanking them, on my left are parked five tanks of the Thai army. Their interior has been dissembled, as every weapon that they carried, the caterpillars taken apart and left on the street. Anything that could be taken away it was, small memories of this historic moment. People are jumping on them, other to find a privileged spot from which to look and photograph the crowd or to get photographed. Many kids are standing on top as their parents and grandparents take pictures. A man is inside the tank I now stand on, searching for small part to take away. I get pictures, I can’t stop taking them in this moment, in front of democracy monument standing on a military tanks covered in messages of democracy, people power, and hate against the Thai military. In the tank besides me a crowd is waving red flags, two tanks behind a group of tourist are being photographed by a small crowd as they stand on top, showing their water guns with which they partied in khao San until a moment ago. Sunset makes the atmosphere the more mythical. A motortaxi guy comes up from the front hole of the tank and sits there, his head out, staring at democracy monument. I don’t want to ask questions, I want to leave everyone to her/his own personal moment. An old man asks me to take pictures of him. “I have never seen one of those before” he tells me, mildly embarrassed. You feel on top of the world from here. I get down and take other pictures, I discover that the Election Committee voted for proceeding in the direction of a trial for the dissolution of the democrat party which means it will still have to go to constitutional court and it won’t be fast, yet people are celebrating as if they won the whole pie. Some sort of relief was needed in these tense days. The smell of barbecue fill the air as small stall, previously inactive is covered in smoke, as good street vendors know soon people will want to eat and a battery of chickens hit the grill.

I walk down the street, same images people taking pictures with the tanks, “fuck thai army” is written on one of them. Down the road two military jeeps are crashed on the street, blocking the entrance, few meters away another one is revolted on a side, from there on the normal life of Bangkok, as nothing happened. I get back on Ratchadamnoen, the same atmosphere of festivity, people clapping, cheering, and hugging. Many people just sit, alone, simmering the moment. Some people leave, the protest slowly gets in movement, after the breaking moment, back in its usual mobility. Motortaxis zip everywhere diffusing people in the city and the good news.

strange acquaintances- April 12th

2010-05-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

April 12^th

I sit inside the 1976 monument on the stairs, hoping to find some calm from which to write down my thoughts and observations about what is going on in this hot Monday at Ratchadamnoen. An old woman walks into the small amphitheater at the center of the monument. She is veiled, dressed in a wide purple tunic, a white veil with blue borders. From the holes in the dress comes out dark skin, with deep wrinkles that the sun gift to the people who live close to the sea. She walks to the center of the small stage, surrounded with brown flower pots on grey marble pavement. She opens a mat, looks around to the people sitting on the higher ground eating snacks or just sitting there in silence to find some peace in the middle of the crowd. Beside her a young man walks through the photos at the monument, staring at students of his age, in white oxford-shirt filling the royal avenue. She then lays out the mat on the ground, facing west, the direction of the Mecca, and by chance also of the royal palace, about a kilometer away. An older man arrives from the west side of the monument, walking there from a food stool. He stands close to her and silently takes off his white shirt leaving his skin to glitter in the afternoon sun. No difference between the color of the skin on the body and on his face, sign of his outdoor work. He quietly puts a piece of plastic on the ground, the same people use here to sit at protest, made up of uncut food labels and over it a red foulard. He then pulls out of a plastic bag that the woman carried a red shirt with the face of Thaksin on the right side, stamped stencil style in white, his face is sad. The man puts the shirt on and stands, eyes into the infinite, before starting to pray, up and down on his knees in this small oasis of silence. After him the older woman takes his place and silently makes her prayers. He sits on the steps, besides her, passing frenetically his rosary through his hands. His eyes are wet. Finished the rosary he sits there for a moment, nervously rubbing his hands. Then he stands up and walks away nodding at me as he passes by, I lose track of him into the crowd. The woman takes off with care her sarong and quietly starts folding their stuff. First the Thai Rath Thai newspaper, then the mat, carefully folded by the expert hands. Then she stands up, checks the bottom of her vest, picks up a bottle of water left there and walks away, the same direction of the old man again smiling at me as she passes by. The small round stage remains empty for a second before a small roundish kid steps in, looking for small fishes inside the lotus pots. Conflict creates strange allies. Thaksin and the red shirts are master at this, making their actual strength and potentially its future weakness. Who could have imagine an old Muslim man from the south praying inside the 1976 monument wearing a t-shit with Thaksin’s face 5 years ago?

the day after, April 11th

2010-05-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

April,11

It’s the day after. Yesterday the military intervened to try to disperse the red shirts from Saphan Pan Fah, leaving 18 people dead, 4 of them military, one a Japanese journalist. As I walked home in the small badly lighted soi, a very well informed foreign journalist tells me on the phone, in a distant voice, “it was bad, it is the beginning of war”. “Their brain was spattered on the road”, “there was a brain after, left on the street” tells me a young woman with small dark brown eyes, almost lost in the sea of red that colors her head, body, neck as she squat arranging a large piece of cloth covered with the books on a side of Central World, in the Ratchaprasong area. She is looking at a collection of books regarding people’s movements, an odd mixture of contemporary radical history presented in the omnipresent Fa diaw gan, classic of thai radicalism, old books with yellowish pages and the basics of Marxist thoughts, from Marx himself to Rosa Luxemborg. “They are not man, they are animals” she adds, in using the most intense of the Thai offenses. The book vendor, an old man with large roundish glasses, that cover his eyes and part of his face, and consumed teeth that show their iron core, transforming is smile in a biothronic mix of glittering silver, yellowish calcium and black spots that reveal his life-long dependency to tobacco. I met him many other times at red shirt protests, always with his selection of books to sell and with a small portion of books that he wouldn’t sell but of which you can get a copy, if you are willing to pick it up at next protest. He immediately recognizes me and, as often reserved to foreigner, his wai was shortly followed by a handshake. As always at this protest he doesn’t only sell book but he puts on a on-going political debate, mostly a tirade. He seems to enjoy my presence, the foreigner who speaks Thai offers him too good of an occasion to tell me how things are and slowly enlarging the discussion to passerby who stop, listen a while, maybe buy something and then walk away as I also offer him a stable public that allows him to keep going. I think he knows that at some point I can’t follow him totally, but he doesn’t care. At the end the discussion is not for me. He tells me” this is class war, pure and simple” and the problem is not Abisit but the people over him. “You need to cut the hands” he keeps repeating as he mime the action passing the other hand over, as if it was a blade. Around him the atmosphere is calm. The Ratchaprasong intersection is a red sea. The stage is at the center of the intersection, and a large crowd stands around it , in the direction of Pratunam in a stillness almost confusing for a space where mobility and rapid traffic are the norms. On top of the stage a large banner says in English” Welcome to Thailand, We just want democracy” (very similar message to the one that the yellow shirt distributed to tourist during the occupation of the airport). Underneath a larger squared banner shows a fighters with open hands, in a typical zapatista representation in stencil style, with a white inscription of top “Peasants”, translation of “prai”, the world in Thai for the commoners that stands out in the sunset from the shirt of the speaker. On the higher ground in front of Central World people the crowd is more disperse. People sit on the ground and listen with a less corporal participation in a space of commerce and consumption transformed in a truly social space, a new political arena in the city, away from traditional politics played in the old town, away from the mandalic depiction of the city. I walk around for a while enjoying the feeling of this reclaimed space and chatting with people here and there, the atmosphere is apparenty calm and joyful, food cooking, the light dimming, and the usual clapping. The first break is for the national anthem, the book vendor who I was talking to who stands up, straighten his body as he keeps talking as many others around him. The second break is in memory of the “heroes” that died yesterday, a long minute of complete silence, composed bodies as for the anthem but not a word in the air. At the same time a funeral is going on few kilometers away at Saphan Fa, where the people were killed in the night of Saturday. It ends with a clap and everything goes back to their activities. People all around speak about yesterday, the dead, the attack, the violence, but as if it was something that happened in another space or time, hardly it feels as something that could go on as easily where we are standing and that happened less than 24 hours ago. In some corner of the huge area, composed of the plaza and what it used to be the street, appear boards with pictured from yesterday, people shoot, rifles on the ends of the military, the dead bodies wrapped in a Thai flag, an empty street with a brain on the pavement, there, alone. As if it was surgically taken out of the skull and then purposeful stretched on the ground as to extend to its maximum, to cover more ground, just there, a brain. People crowd around this pictures and a woman comes to me and starts explaining me what happened yesterday in English, is the classic we were bare hands and they had weapons story, I listen and then walk away. I walk away, buy some mu steak and hop on a motor-taxi in direction home. She is a younger woman, not very used to the bike and she moves in the empty Ratchadamri with a basic lack of equilibrium, she has a vest from Patumwan, I ask here where is her win normally and she tells me that she doesn’t have one, she gets the vest from a friend and comes these days as a side job, besides her office employment. I ask her if she come to work or for the red shirt, to work she tells me as she laugh. So she get out of her work and she goes there, no problem to work “not as in the soi” she tells me “ at the protest I can come and work”. I greet her at the entrance of my soi, telling her I will probably see her tomorrow.

The number of motortaxis at the protest increased dramatically, many of them have a red foulard over the vest to show their double presence at the protest, in the empty streets around Ratchaprasong they are the only transporters, you can get a taxi if you carry something but otherwise the motor-taxis are your first choices, especially with no busses and with the skytrain blocked since a couple of days. In the empty roads they move slowly, often bend backward as the passenger bend forwards, a normally silent interaction of transportation becomes something different now, is part of the protest, part of the political participation, discussing with motor-taxis, source of information, travelers and vessels. I met Ajan Jaran again today, very tired, long bears was trying restlessly to connect to his gmail account from and old laptop. I tell him about the motortaxis and what was a cold answer the first time I asked the question about their roles a months ago, revived him for a second “huge role, huge role” he kept repeating.

the first drop into the sea

2010-05-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

There is just too much going on in Bangkok right now, too much violence, too much palpable tension, too much talking on each sides of spreading rumors, secret killings, behind the scene plots. Whether real or not they have became part of life in this city and that donate rhythm and pace to it.As foreign and Thai journalist clutter around conflict zones in the city, local television quitely goes about its normal routine of soap operas and short news. Media refracts and media detracts, hides and amplify. I am not a journalist and maybe not even a scholar but i feel a responsibility to put out there what i see, describe what i encounter. My own little drop.