COMMENTARY What the US could learn from Thailand
By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - The similarities between the Thaksin and Bush administrations in
Thailand and the US respectively were always striking as the two erstwhile
allies drew closer in recent years. It's all the more so now that Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been bumped from power by a people-power
movement that complained about his government's moral bankruptcy.
Both Thaksin and President George W Bush rose to power under
legally dubious circumstances: while the US leader muscled his way to the top
through a Supreme Court intervention, the Thai premier won a landslide victory
two weeks after being convicted of concealing his assets by an anti-corruption
agency.
Both tough-talking leaders professed themselves to be "CEO-style" leaders, a
reference to their business backgrounds before entering politics. That has
often entailed running roughshod over the law in pursuit of controversial
policies, not the least state-sponsored killing sprees. Thaksin's "war on
drugs" campaign in 2003 witnessed the extrajudicial killing of more than 2,200
drug suspects; the death toll of Iraqis related to the US invasion now runs
into the tens of thousands.
Thaksin's bloody counter-insurgency campaign against Thai Muslims, where more
than 1,000 people have been killed since 2004, jibed nicely with Bush's global
campaign to ferret out extremists among Muslim populations - seemingly at any
human or moral cost. Ralph "Skip" Boyce, the garrulous US ambassador to
Thailand, has maintained that Washington has in no way assisted Thaksin's
controversial counter-insurgency efforts, which, similar to US military
operations in Iraq, have been attended by allegations of torture and abuse of
Muslim detainees.
Bangkok-based European and Asian diplomats, however, beg to differ, claiming
that the United States' behind-the-scenes role in the conflict is an open
secret in diplomatic circles. US officials first pushed Thaksin to shore up
security in Thailand's then-peaceful majority-Muslim southernmost provinces
after a group of alleged al-Qaeda-linked operatives took refuge in the area in
January 2002 from crackdowns in Singapore and Malaysia, according to senior
Thai intelligence officials. It's still unclear what role US persuasion played
in tipping the historically tumultuous region back into conflict.
Thaksin signed up early on to Bush's "war on terror", offering Thai troops to
both Iraq and Afghanistan in a quid pro quo exchange for a bilateral free-trade
agreement. But pressured by US officials, Thailand agreed not to sign on to the
International Criminal Court, which conceivably would have the authority to
convict US political and military leaders for bald violations of the Geneva
Conventions.
Bangkok-based US diplomats, who lambasted Thaksin for cracking down on press
freedom in 2001 and early 2002, drastically changed their tune later in 2002,
referring to Thaksin in glowing terms as a "strong leader" and a "good ally".
The Bush administration has since manipulated and intimidated the US press,
including the imprisonment of journalists, in a manner strikingly similar to
Thaksin's hard-knocks campaign against the Thai media.
Partners in crime
Unfortunately, that relationship often pushed Thaksin and Thai security forces
into violating their own constitution. Thaksin's Thailand plays host to a joint
top-secret US Central Intelligence Agency-run counter-terrorism center, charged
with managing covert operations throughout Southeast Asia, according to a
senior Thai intelligence official attached to the National
Intelligence Agency. Those ties appear to have paved the way for the CIA
to establish a secret prison in Thailand, where abducted terror suspects were
allegedly held and interrogated. Ambassador Boyce has repeatedly declined to
comment on the specifics of the secret detention center. (The facility was
closed down in 2003, according to the Washington Post.)
Thailand-based CIA agents apprehended and extradited to an undisclosed location
alleged al-Qaeda operative Hambali in August 2003. Thai legal experts said
Hambali's extradition violated habeas corpus provisions outlined in Thailand's
1997 constitution because he was not formally charged or convicted of a crime.
When pressed about the legality of Hambali's capture and subsequent detention,
then US homeland-security chief Tom Ridge said at a Bangkok press conference in
2004 that he wasn't aware of Thai law. During a 2003 Bangkok visit where he
ceremoniously promoted Thailand to Non-Nato Ally status, Bush referred to Police
Major-General Tritos Ranaridhvichai as "my hero" for his personal role in
Hambali's commando-style abduction.
The US has consistently supported Thai authorities' efforts in prosecuting
counter-terror operations, even when legally dubious. Former US ambassador
Darryl Johnson applauded Thai authorities in 2003 for detaining three Thai
Muslims in Narathiwat province, who allegedly plotted to bomb five
Bangkok-based foreign embassies, including the US Embassy. Johnson at the time
said there was "strong evidence" against the suspects, whom he characterized as
"really bad guys" during an embassy-sponsored US Independence Day party in
Bangkok. After more than two years in detention, all three suspects were freed
by a Thai court finally for lack of evidence. One of the suspects, a
well-respected medical doctor, is running and is expected to win a seat in the
Thai Senate this month.
As the Bush administration works to undermine the United Nations' global
authority and legitimacy, Thaksin has consistently lashed out against UN
agencies operating inside Thailand. In 2004, he forbade the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees to interview Myanmar refugees who crossed the Thai
border, and later sparred publicly with the refugee-protection agency after it
interviewed 131 Thai Muslim refugees who had fled southern Thailand's brutal
conflict for the safety of northern Malaysia. Thaksin famously told a UN
human-rights rapporteur investigating allegations of abuse during his war
on drugs that "the UN is not my father".
Allied abuse
Few of these well-documented abuses - often instigated, if not tacitly
supported, by the Bush administration - factored in the nationalistic
people-power movement that recently pushed Thaksin into stepping down. Arguably
they should have, as many of the political and legal compromises Thaksin has
made with the Bush administration have represented blatant violations of
Thailand's sovereignty. (Protesters did rail against the US-Thailand FTA
negotiations, which Thaksin had conducted opaquely without consulting
parliament and which, if completed, will deprive hundreds of thousands of Thai
HIV/AIDS sufferers from the generic drugs the Thai government now produces
under a World Trade Organization-mandated compulsory-licensing agreement.)
Therein is the rub. Thailand and the US have distinctly different brands and
processes of democracy. When Thaksin's record of abuse and self-enrichment
became apparent to Bangkok's politically astute upper and middle classes, they
took their grievances to the streets and refused to leave until real democracy
was restored. Faced with popular pressures, Thaksin's deputies now vow to
implement a new round of political reforms, including better checks on
executive powers.
Although articulated through informal and somewhat rowdy channels, protest
politics have historically catapulted Thailand's democracy ahead. This history
includes the tumultuous street demonstrations in 1992 that eventually resulted
in the passage of the 1997 constitution, known locally as the "people's
charter" and arguably one of the world's most liberal constitutions. When
democratically elected Thai leaders work at odds with real democracy, Thailand
has a time-tested relief valve.
While the US preaches about the virtues of its model democracy, Americans stay
at home and passively watch on television the outrageous debates concerning
legalizing torture, official eavesdropping and military-style abductions and
detention without trial of terror suspects. The few lonely protesters against
Bush's increasingly unpopular war in Iraq have been routinely rounded up and
arrested for staging peaceful sit-ins in front of the president's Texas ranch.
The mother of a fallen soldier was in January removed and arrested from the
Capitol Building during Bush's State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt
emblazoned with the running number of troops killed in the Iraq conflict.
The tolerance demonstrated by Thailand's police forces during the recent
anti-government rallies was in itself a testament to the Southeast Asian
country's democratic maturity. There were no arrests and no violence, in what
one popular commentator has described as Thailand's "smooth as silk" democratic
revolution. For all the mainstream media criticism heaped on the people-power
movement for threatening the future of Thai democracy, the crowds that gathered
on Bangkok's streets assembled precisely to defend their hard-fought democratic
freedoms against an elected leader who they believed was acting to undermine
them. That's a claim the United States' lethargic and fading democracy, for all
its pretensions, can no longer honestly make.
A top US diplomat said in private that Thaksin "was no longer suitable" to US
interests just before the embattled premier announced his surprise resignation,
according to a well-placed source. That change of heart, however, is probably a
reflection of more opportunistic US diplomacy than an official recognition of
Thailand's brave democratic example.
With Thaksin's avowed departure, may future elected leaders stop compromising
the country's hard-won democracy in the service of the United States' often
illiberal and anti-democratic strategic interests.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor
