Glug. No it's not. You've been reading too much output from the Robert Amsterdam propaganda mill. Robert Amsterdam is a paid political lobbyist who specializes in character assassination of politicians and movements opposed to his client. He likes to pitch himself as a "human rights activist" but he simply uses human rights as one tool in his portfolio for harassing his client's rivals. At the moment, Robert Amsterdam is being paid by Thaksin Shinawatra so everything he says and does is determined by the need to promote the interests of his client. Since both the client and the interests are very unsavory, this requires substantial prevarication and obfuscation.
Before going into what's been happening in Bangkok this year, some background is essential. Not just on Thaksin Shinawatra himself but also on Thai politics in general. Let's start with Thaksin. The man is a billionaire who made his pile getting sweetheart deal contracts from the Thai Government for work in modernizing Thai telecommunications infrastructure. He was also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Thai Police. When he first entered politics, his act was quite revolutionary. Normally a Thai political campaign consists of the candidate publishing lists of worthy people who support him. In effect, they provide lists of references that more or less state "I am a good person and can be trusted to work in your interests." People then voted for whoever paid them the most. In Thailand, it's quite possible to have a worthwhile debate on whether vote buying is wrong or not. Thaksin changed that. He conducted a western-style campaign that put a portfolio of promised policies out and invited people to judge his party on the basis of those policies. This was so different that it worked rather well. His Party became the largest in the Thai Parliament and he pushed through the items on his agenda (low cost medical care, low-interest loans for farmers and a few other things, all calculated to endear himself to the rural population - note still buying votes but wholesale rather than retail and using Government money to do it). When the next election came up, his party wasn't just the largest one, it actually had an overall majority.
This made Thaksin's real objectives critical. Thaksin is (or was) a great admirer of the Singaporean model of government and industry. He wanted to create a new Thai state in which there was a single party (controlled by him) and a single corporate entity (controlled by him). The fact that Singapore doesn't really work that way is neither here nor there. Thaksin wanted a state where there was no center of government or economic power that was outside his control. With a majority in Parliament, he set about achieving just that. Hold that thought.
Now, let's look at Thai politics. Thailand is an odd place; it's one of the few countries in the world where the political establishment openly says "we're politicians, don’t trust us." There is an ongoing presumption in the country that political shakeups should never be seen in terms of black and white. The message is to look with skepticism on political changes and to assume that all political movements are corrupt and tainted by greed and ambition. There is an assumption that all are backed by a hidden hand that is pushing a secret agenda. This is an intensely cynical view of course, and one that leaves no room to suppose that a protest is both genuine and sincere.
bhutan replied with this 10 years ago, 50 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#697,332
OK, that's all background. Now, on to the riots in Bangkok. They actually started in Songkhran, 2009. Thaksin's supporters tried a coup. Thaksin's strategy appears to have been to use urban-style terrorism around key points in Bangkok so that Abhisit would be forced to declare a state of emergency. Then the military would be brought in to quash the UDD protesters. Thaksin and his advisors expected this would cause bloodshed and the situation would spiral out of control, creating a state of anarchy. Finally, the strategy went, Thaksin's supporters would petition His Majesty the King for a royal intervention to end the crisis.
Thaksin was probably inspired to try this approach by memories of Black May in 1992 where heavy-handed action by paramilitary personnel had indeed resulted in excessive violence and the eventual fall of the government. However, what Thaksin either forgot or (more likely) did not know was that the situation was very different than it had been in 1992. His assault resulted in 36 hours of fighting between Army troops, demonstrators and local residents that left two dead and 113 wounded. By the time the skirmishes had ended, the demonstrators were being driven back to a small area around Government house where about 2,000 members of the pro-Thaksin groups had retreated. The troops had been sent in under strict control and without heavy weapons. Most importantly, this time the civil population was wholeheartedly in support of the troops. A combination of firm but restrained action of the security forces and public repugnance for the level of violence used by the UDD won the day. Indeed, when UDD supporters threatened to set fire to an LPG truck in order to attack advancing troops, local residents formed a human shield to protect the soldiers.
The consensus of opinion in Thailand is that the events of the Songkhran weekend eventually ended as a victory for Prime Minister Abhisit's government, albeit by a desperately close margin. Thaksin's personal profile never recovered from the debacle, and his standing as a viable political leader was more or less destroyed. Instead of being seen as a champion of "the people" against the Bangkok bureaucracy, he was perceived as a self-seeking power-hungry megalomaniac for whom those he had pretended to support were just pawns in his own pursuit of power and wealth.
Thaksin and his supporters went back and rethought their strategy. They learned from Songkhran 2009 and Thaksin's military advisor General Khattiya Sawasdipol created a special militia within the ranks of the Thaksinites, intended to prevent the Army from dispersing future riots. Cutting a long story short, the Thaksinites (now known as the red shirts) held a rally in Bangkok that started in mid-March 2010 and ended two months later. During that period, Khattiya's militia ended one attempt by the Army to disperse them, Khattiya was killed by a sniper (it is still not clear who killed him), the red shirts moved to the business center of Bangkok and eventually were dispersed by the Army.
So, who were the Red Shirts? Robert Amsterdam would have you believe they were poor but peaceful farmers who had come to the city to protest their poverty-stricken status. Actually no. They came to Bangkok because they were paid to come to Bangkok by Thaksin Shinawatra. Essentially, they were in it for the money, for the staggering BHT10 billion from offshore Thaksin accounts that were funding their demonstrations. The longer they demonstrated, the longer the influx of hard cash would continue. They also wanted an interim government that would pass a blanket amnesty to all the red shirt followers, including the black army gunmen who had opened fire on April 10. Since Thaksin had invested BHT10 billion, he would not accept anything less than a national government dominated by him. With the demonstrations achieving nothing more, they turned to widespread violence.
That was the turning point in the history of this confrontation. The result was an immediate and rapid collapse of the red shirts' public image, in Thailand if not in the international press. The latter, systematically misinformed by paid Thaksin lobbyists, largely backed the red shirts as a genuine movement of the poor against the Bangkok elite. The reds were looked upon by most Western media as champions of democracy against the military-installed Abhisit government. This comfortable, if entirely erroneous, worldview fell apart as red shirt thugs stormed a hospital, causing critically ill patients to be hurriedly evacuated. By this time, the general Thai public no longer bought the reds' propaganda that they stood for any sort of democracy. They cared only about getting their patron into power regardless of the damage done to the people or economic conditions of the country. With tourist cancellations and business layoffs mounting as a result of the standoff, most Thais just wanted the government to remove the reds from the streets of Bangkok as quickly as possible. The coup de grace was when the government froze the assets of the high-profile names who had been providing financial support to the reds. The list showed that these individuals were part of the traditional business and political elites. The whole red shirt movement had been exposed for what it was: never a genuine movement for "democracy" or "the rights of the poor" but a band of mercenary foot soldiers in the battle between two opposing Bangkok factions.
So, the statement that the riots were caused by income differences is quite wrong. The events between March and May 2010 were caused by a power struggle between two groups of Thai industrial-military-political complexes. One was the traditional power structure that saw power as being shared out between interested parties on a formula that included such things as popular support etc. The other was Thaksin supporters who wished to see all power concentrated into his hands and the opposition crushed completely. Once the Army had crushed the street demonstrators, they realized the game was up and they ran. Most are now in Cambodia, the balance are in Thai jails.