REVIEW
Burning resentments
The clashes of April-May 2010 told from street level
- Published: 14 May 2012 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: Life
This book begins in the debris after the violence of May 19-20, 2010. The remnant protesters are exhausted by the long campaign, demoralised by the violence turned against them, and utterly defiant. Claudio Sopranzetti accompanies one group on a train back home to Udon.
RED JOURNEYS: Inside the Thai Red-shirt Movement by Claudio Sopranzetti 137 pp 2012 Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai. Available at Asia Books and other leading bookshops, 395 baht
"This is not finished yet, it is not even half done. We will come back," they repeat time and time again. They slowly unwind by sleeping, venting their anger, clowning around and getting drunk. Not heroes, or terrorists. Sopranzetti notices they are not "the poor" identified by the press headlines, but more like a lower middle-class with jobs, good houses, pick-ups and possessions.
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