Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
guilty of abusing his powers as prime minister. The Red Shirts occupied Bangkok's cent-
ral shopping district for two months and demanded the dissolution of the government and
re-instatement of elections. In May 2010 the military used force to evict the protesters,
resulting in bloody clashes where 91 people were killed and shopping centres were set
ablaze (US$1.5 billion of crackdown-related arson damage was estimated).
In 2011, general elections were held and Thaksin's politically allied Puea Thai party
won a parliamentary majority with Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra elected as prime
minister.
MASKED MASSES
Thailand's obsession with mass political rallies has been dominated by colour-coded activists (Yellow versus Red
Shirts). But there is a new arrival to the protest movement: a group calling itself 'V for Thailand' has donned Guy
Fawkes masks and convened demonstrations in Bangkok's shopping malls, a near-permanent encampment in
Lumphini Park and Phuket. The group charges Yingluck's administration with corrupt policies designed to reward
base supporters.
Troubles in the Border Regions
Since 2001, Thailand has been fighting a low-scale war with Muslim separatist insurgents
in the southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, collectively known as the
Deep South. These provinces once made up the historic sultanate of Patani until it was
conquered by the Chakri kings. During WWII, a policy of nation-building set out to trans-
form the multi-ethnic, multi-religious society into a unified and homogeneous Thai
Buddhist nation. This policy was resisted in the Deep South and gave birth to an ongoing
separatist movement. In the 1980s and '90s, the assimilation policy was abandoned and
then prime minister Prem brokered peace through support for Muslim cultural rights and
religious freedoms, amnesty to the armed insurgents and economic development for the
historically impoverished region.
The Thaksin regime took another approach to the region. Greater central control from
Bangkok was exerted and was viewed as a thinly disguised policy to break up the tradi-
tional stronghold of the Democrat Party. The sensitive and tenacious Muslim culture of
the Deep South did not respond favourably. In 2002, the government dissolved the long-
standing inspectorate and the army-run joint civilian-police-military border security office
- a unit often lauded for maintaining peace and stability and providing a communication
link between the Thai government and the southern Muslims. In its place the Thai provin-
