THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST

etween what is spoken and admitted privately, and what is recited and dismissed
publicly is widening and exacting an increasing cost on Thai society…
The messages on the wall were unprecedented and their almost-immediate removal
is symptomatic of a censored society, while those who disagree with the red shirts
are too afraid to ask why so many red shirts think and believe in the things they do.
Denying what a substantial number of the population thinks and believes will not pull
the country out of the current political impasse.
A Pandora's box was opened when the coup ousted Thaksin four years ago. The least
we can do now, after 91 people have died, is to start acknowledging what others feel
and ask ourselves why.
On October 10, 2010, the still-leaderless Red Shirts staged another mass rally at
Ratchaprasong, drawing 8,000 protesters. Once again, the chant that “the bastard ordered the
killing” resounded through the crowd.
On October 17, a rally in Ayutthaya attracted 12,000 people. And on November 19,
six months after the storming of the Red encampment, 10,000 protesters massed at
Ratchaprasong once again. On January 9, a Red Shirt rally at Ratchaprasong and
Ratchadamnoen following the lifting of the state of emergency attracted the biggest yet postcrackdown
crowd: 60,000 people.
As the mass protests gathered momentum, signs of anti-monarchist sentiment became even
more apparent. An insult to Queen Sirikit was added to the anti-Bhumibol chant. A literal
translation of the word used for her would be something like “cholera woman”, but a better
English-language approximation is “bitch”:
The bastard ordered the killing.
The bitch ordered the shooting.
Coded attacks on the royals were ubiquitous at Red Shirt protests: favourite T-shirts included
a design bearing the image of a red ant biting a large blue whale (a reference to Sirikit’s
obesity and the royal colour that represents her: Bhumibol is yellow, Sirikit blue) and another
with a Thai slogan that means “I don’t know, I’m sick” (a reference to the belief among
protesters that Bhumibol’s stubborn refusal to check himself out of hospital was an effort
to pretend he had nothing to do with the May crackdown). Even the Thai phrase for “insert
card” on ATM machines was transformed into a secret insult to King Bhumibol; a few
months later, banks replaced the phrase with another using different wording.
In November 2010, Nirmal Ghosh of Singapore’s Straits Times spoke to two two key Red
Shirt leaders who had gone into hiding after the May crackdown. They estimated up to 90
percent of the movement’s supporters were now avowedly anti-monarchy. One of them was
quoted as saying:
There are three realities now – the majority of the red shirts are anti-monarchy; they
don’t believe in a peaceful struggle; and they need a new kind of leadership and
organisation.
In comments on the New Mandala blog, Thammasat professor Somsak Jeamteerasakul said
he agreed with the assessment that up to 90 percent of Red Shirts were now against the
monarchy.
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Prior to the March rally, I wouldn’t say that anti-monarchy sentiment among the Red
Shirt masses was very high. It was there; faintly, flickeringly. But now, in the past