Boston had “Boston Strong”. Paris had “Je Suis Charlie”. Now, as much as we wish we never had to have one, post-Aug 17 Bangkok has come up with “Stronger Together” and “Our Home, Our Country” as rallying cries against the ghastly terror at Ratchaprasong intersection on Monday.
If happiness couldn’t unite us, perhaps tragedy can. Or tragedy should. And to an extent, it has, though still not enough to stop the itch for finger-pointing and packaged prejudices, which began when the smoke hadn’t yet cleared and body parts hadn’t been collected. As long as the cowardly killers are still at large, the blame game is with us — ready to be exploited by the new as well as old power clique — and the only way to settle it is to find the criminals as quickly as possible. Failure to do so will only confirm our state of dysfunction, both moral and judicial. That much is clear.
The Ratchaprasong explosion was the worst attack on Bangkok in recent memory, and yet it wasn’t the worst, especially when you think about the anointed phrase “Our Home, Our Country”. The Deep South has had it worse for a decade. That much is also clear though often forgotten, and a quick phone call to a friend prompted me to realise that there was never any slogan to rally the people to become “stronger together” when a bomb hit Yala or Pattani.
Just three weeks ago, an attack in Saiburi killed a monk, a soldier, a civilian, and injured many others, and while the news was shocking to the whole nation, the violence soon became a mist that evaporated into “another incident”. In June, there was one car bomb, one motorcycle bomb, at least two cases of arson and two other bombings in the region. The death toll in June was 15, in May it was 29. All of the victims were Thai.
It pains me to sink so low as to play the numbers game, because death isn’t just statistics. But if we’re really pressed to think about quantifiable losses, the Krue Se and Tak Bai cases surely beat the Bangkok one. Not to mention the total count, which has already surpassed 6,300 deaths after 11 years and seven months.
What happened at the Erawan shrine was a tragedy. What happened elsewhere in “our country” may seem remote, disconnected, even intangible, but it’s no less tragic. It is also an everyday reality endured by a lot of people who’ve long been schooled to watch out for suspicious packages on footpaths — long before we in the capital started doing it six days ago and are already complaining. The Bangkok bomb was certainly loud, but was it louder than the rest?
“Our Home, Our Country” — would that motto fit the thorny South plagued by doubts, where “home” and “country” have a deeper dimension? “Stronger Together” — this is generic, potent, militaristic, which means it would not work in the South where the military presence is certainly part of the problem before it can be a solution (it also echoes the divisive “Together We Can” adopted after the 2010 Ratchaprasong crackdown, for a term that aims to bring inclusiveness often ends up excluding those with different views).
Come to think of it, would “Je Suis Pattani” (I am Pattani) be acceptable for chic Bangkokians, now that we in the capital know how one bomb can rattle our core, let alone 100? Our memories of violence are selective, clogged and clouded by fears and biases, and the raw aftertaste of cruelty is sometimes not enough for one or two slogans to bring solidarity.
The post-Aug 17 mottos are definitely good for the T-shirt business on Nana or Silom. They’re uplifting, and they capture the human instinct to move forward and the Thai instinct to forget. The slogans are advertising, which means they’re empty, or partly empty, as they sweep up our assorted layers of malcontent and will them into oblivion.
They are necessary, granted, but their semantic subterfuge is also a kind of mask. That’s why slogans hardly work in a place where people can’t bring themselves to feel the numb comfort of forgetting, like the South, where so many cases, so many forms of barbarity and injustice, are still lingering.
“Boston Strong”, because Boston arrested and convicted the bomber. Paris hunted down the Charlie Hebdo killers and, due to circumstances, finished them off. I’m not advocating an eye for an eye. It’s just that slogans have to live up to themselves in order to truly mean something, anything, and prove that they’re not just vacant symbols. Slogans uplift, but they won’t bring closure, and the longer we cling to advertising, the tighter it will come to replace reality.
Find the killers, stop pointing fingers, otherwise “Stronger Together” will only make us weaker together forever.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.
