COMMENTARY
It was a racket and near-scuffle. It was fear teleported as anger. The scene at Thammasat University on Thursday was distressing, as anti-Nitirat alumni exalted morality against knowledge, along the way confusing noise with argument and equating what's loud with what's right. It almost turned sinister when a small band of Nitirat supporters showed up, placards ready, and a mini face-off ensued. That was enough to dominate the headlines and consciousness of the public in the ongoing case that is testing the firmness of the ground beneath our feet - a historic test of what Thailand is, or what we want to become.
This is pressing. But let's look away for a minute, because the ground is trembling elsewhere, too. Let's look away from the test-tube to the morgue, from the metaphorical eye of the typhoon to the visceral realism of the war zone. Not so far from Thammasat, something else happened that hardly made it to the pages of the national dailies, something that is also testing the slippery meaning of what we - Thais - are, and what we may become. At the Democracy Monument one day before the Thammasat rally, a group of Muslim students along with representatives from the Students Federation of Thailand, read out a statement condemning the killings of four civilians by military rangers in the South. In an act that's only fair to describe as merciless, the rangers, claiming they'd heard gunshots, opened fire on a pickup truck carrying villagers on their way to a funeral. Deputy Prime Minister Yuthasak Sasiprapa, in the typical sorry-is-the-hardest-word soldierly stoicism, admitted that the victims "were not involved with the insurgents". The rangers, he promised, would face the full force of the law.
It is amazing that this latest report of a glaring, everyday atrocity did not stir the anger of good citizens and freedom lovers regardless of shade and ideology. As if the bitter debates on injustice, double standards, civilian deaths and bureaucratic oppression do not extend past Hua Hin, or maybe Phatthalung. As if the matter-of-life-and-death dispute on the ownership of Thailand and Thai-ness stops somewhere outside the bloodied minarets and pondok schools. As if the South and its phenomena have already emerged as a separate entity, excluded from the sovereign of national mood and conscience.
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About the author
- Writer: Kong Rithdee
- Position: Deputy Editor
