The PAD and the Expansion of the Education System

Normally it would be expected that providing more opportunities for higher education would produce a population that is not only better educated and likely to earn better incomes and so forth but, also, are more tolerant, understanding of the situations in which other people find themselves and able to diagnose problems in society and the economy on rational grounds. Yet, in Thailand, opinion polls (many of which are very suspect methodologically, of course) consistently show that the majority of people with university degrees and graduate degrees appear to support the bourgeois right (Democrats) and the feudal/Fascist right (PAD/NPP) and their predilection for state murder, double standards, manufacturing of evidence etc.. Why is this?

Well, initially I assumed this was an artifact of the dual educational system in Thailand: higher educational places are reserved for the children of the middle classes through keeping costs up, insisting on English language and academic standards (which are denied to the children of the poor because of the deliberately-maintained low standards of the schools they are permitted to attend) and concentration of higher institutes in urban locations. This leads to middle class children reproducing the conditions of the existing class system, of course.

Goran Therborn (I met him, you know, when he came to a workshop here) goes a little further:

“Contemporary monopoly capitalism has generated immense strata of subaltern intellectual employees, who tend to send their children for academic qualification; at the same time, rising employment opportunities for intellectual labour have attracted young people to higher education in far greater numbers than previously. As a result, the huge wave of qualification disintegrated the traditional means of bourgeois academic subjection – instruments which, in the imperialist countries, had functioned so successfully since the times of the bourgeois revolutions, preparing students for their future roles as members or hangers-on of the ruling class, and providing a pool of militant strike-breakers and, at certain times and places, dedicated Fascist storm-troopers.”

In 2006, the forces of feudalism, personified in the army, joined forces with the rightist bourgeois forces to expel the forces of progression in a military coup – the Thai Rak Thai government wished to complete the bourgeois revolution from feudalism to capitalism which had begun in 1932 but which had been resisted, often with the use of enormous amounts of violence, by the aristocracy and its lackeys.

* Goran Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (London and New York: Verso, 2008) (originally 1978), pp.177-8. It is the book I read on the trips to and from the main campus – that’s why I quote it on Wednesdays and Thursdays, of course.

Reporters without Borders Report

The report on state (and non-state) violence against reporters in Thailand has been released and is here. It begins:

“The very violent political crisis that convulsed Thailand in April and May 2010
had a dramatic impact on the safety of journalists and media freedom. the toll
was heavy: two foreign journalists were among the 90 people killed, ten other
journalists were wounded (some sustaining injuries from which they will never fully
recover) and there was a wave of censorship and intimidation without precedent
since the 1990s.”

It is actually quite a short report and consists of ten personal accounts from reporters attacked by the military – deliberately targetted is the consensus opinion – and considerations of the deaths of those reporters who were murdered. A Thai language version is also available.

More on Disappearances

Some details on the treatment of the more than four hundred people disappeared by the Abhisit regime have emerged at Prachatai:

“The emergency decree is being used as a tool to “destroy political dissent and democracy”, said Somyos Pruek-sakasemsuk, a key red-shirt member and editor who was detained for three weeks under the law.

Calling it “mafia law”, Somyos said there were still 400 more people – some as old as 70 – being detained with very little information known about their condition. Most are unlikely to be proven as “terrorists” as alleged by the Abhisit Vejjajiva government, he said. The red-shirt supporter was detained from May 24 to June 13, when the court found that there was not enough evidence to detain him.

People being detained under the emergency decree are “political prisoners”, though the government maintains that they are mere suspects, Somyos said.”

It seems like it is the baleful Bush Guantanamo method that is proving to be the inspiration here – people being held incommunicado for extended periods under the pretext that they are ‘terrorists’ and the possible use of torture – certainly the treatment Khun Somyos reports is very harsh. Add this to the ever more comprehensive suppression of free speech, the attempt to steal the assets of suspected ‘terrorists’ (as all political dissidents can now expect to be labelled) and the brazen denial of wrongdoing after the military was repeatedly ordered to use automatic weapons, helicopter-borne tear gas bombs and sniper assassins in killing 86 pro-democracy protestors and the human rights record of the Abhisit regime looks very shabby.

State Murder

After yesterday’s report indicating that shootings at the 1972 Bloody Sunday events, when British soldiers shot dead 14 protestors, would include the term ‘state murder,’ there is a further report in today’s Guardian about the response from some of the bereaved. Although the killings took place 38 years ago, it is clear that feelings are still strong:

This is from a young woman who was 18 at the time:

“There were the times you felt very, very proud of how strong people were and how much they could remember, especially older people after such a length of time. And there were times you heard evidence you didn’t want to hear. Giving evidence myself was the end of a long road of wanting to tell what I saw to the world. For a long, long time I had closed what happened deep inside me. I wanted to talk about it, but I couldn’t, because if I brought it to the front of my mind I couldn’t cope. As it gathered momentum, I kept saying to myself, “Aye, you can do this”. When it comes your time you are going to be able to cope.”

This is from an 18-year old man whose 22-year old brother was killed:

“Take the fella that murdered my brother. In his own neighbourhood, that boy probably wouldn’t treat a stray animal the same way. But he doesn’t feel what he did on Bloody Sunday was wrong because he was brought up in the system to see my brother as an enemy, somebody who had to be taught a lesson.”

The families of the more than 80 killed in Bangkok on the orders of the Thai state will feel the same way. Is there any hope that they will receive justice?