What the rescue of the trapped boys means
published : 13 Jul 2018 at 04:30
newspaper section: News
Global news cycles over the past two weeks have been saturated by Thailand's gripping story of 12 boys from a local youth football team and their 25-year-old coach trapped in a labyrinthine and partially submerged cave complex in the Chiang Rai hills in the north of the country. Even after their successful rescue, the story continues.
Attention to the plight of the boys and their coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, how it could have happened, and what could and should have been done about it, has turned into how it all ended up so smoothly and happily.
The tale of the 13 is so magnetic because it is a rare coming together of an increasingly fragmented and contentious world, a united effort in Thailand's polarised society and yet "un-Thai" in many ways, and ultimately a "one-off" even though we would like to believe otherwise.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak
Senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University
A professor and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science, he earned a PhD from the London School of Economics with a top dissertation prize in 2002. Recognised for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia, his views and articles have been published widely by local and international media.
