THAILAND: Student movement emerges from the shadows

Thailand's student movement appeared to be dormant in recent years but has now emerged as a force supporting the anti-government Red Shirts, with the Thai authorities keeping a close watch on student groups.

The Students Federation of Thailand (STF) links more than 40 university student groups around the country. The federation came out from the sidelines in March with a statement saying its members would stand "beside the people's struggle for democracy, including the Red Shirts", as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship is commonly known.

"We, the Student Federation of Thailand, together with other student networks who uphold democracy and justice, wish to encourage the spirit of the redshirts," the federation said in a statement on 13 March.

"If there is any use of violence from the state, we are meant to stand side by side with the mass of the Red Shirts to achieve our goals of overthrowing [the] bureaucratic and elitist class, and to establish completed democracy."

In the run up to Wednesday's violent crackdown by the military on the protesters' strongholds in central Bangkok, the Red Shirts had been protesting in the streets for two months demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who they accuse of being illegitimate and undemocratic. They have also been calling for new elections.

"The student movement is definitely building up in support [of the Red Shirts]," said Suluck Lamubol, a Chulalongkorn University student and a member of the federation executive committee.

Speaking just hours before Wednesday's crackdown, Suluck said: "In the last two to three months there have been some self-established independent student groups and they were connecting loosely. Now they are more connected."

Some academic staff had also openly supported the Red Shirts, Suluck said. "And there are other academics who are not part of it [the Red Shirt movement] but who are Red sympathisers."

The student movement played a role in helping to oust General Suchindra Kraprayoon from power in 1992 and was also involved in political upheavals going back to the 1970s.

The movement had been dormant in recent years, said Pokpong Lawansiri, a World Bank scholar at University College London and an overseas facilitator for the Thai student groups.

"But it is now much more powerful compared to the Thaksin era," Pokpong said. Thaksin was Prime Minister for five years until deposed in a military coup in 2006 and many of the Red Shirt protesters feel he was undemocratically removed although others are critical of Thaksin.

Duncan McCargo, Professor of South East Asian Politics at Leeds University in the UK, speaks fluent Thai and was formerly a lecturer in Pattani in Southern Thailand. He described the Red Shirt movement as "fractious and incoherent, attacking all sorts of people".

The Yellow-Red divide was "much bigger than class or regional divide, it cuts through all groups, even families [and] neither side has been playing by the rules," McCargo said.

He said that with such deep rifts in society, "you can clear the streets but you have not solved the problem. It is a huge societal divide through the country".

"The Red Shirts may go quiet for a while because some of the leaders have been arrested and [will find] it difficult to mobilise but that does not mean that that [political] wing has gone away."

Student groups, particularly in universities in Bangkok, mirror the polarisation of Thai politics and society," Pokpong said.

"The federation has been very critical of the government but other sectors of the student movement set up after the ousting of Thaksin are more conservative."

McCargo said many of the students at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University openly supported the government while students at Thammasat University were traditionally more radical. The situation at Ramkamhaeng University was more mixed.

Nonethless McCargo said there was "a suspicion about student politics".

"The government fears that the student groups are passively or indirectly connected to the anti-government groups."

There have been several indications the authorities have been watching student activists more carefully, including threatening emails and summonses to report to the military authorities.

"It looks like they [the authorities] are now targeting students," Pokpong said.

But he said the students who were rounded up on Wednesday and early Thursday in Bangkok during the government crackdown, were not necessarily Red Shirts: "Those students are not Red Shirt supporters but because they are speaking out against the government they are being branded Red Shirts [by the authorities]."

Suluck was one of three students on a government 'watch list' summoned by the temporary joint-forces command centre CRES - the "Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation" - for questioning on 5 May, along with the SFT Secretary General Anuthee Dejthevaporn and a third student.

"We were puzzled at why we were there, I had no idea why, although it was possibly about our involvement in the Red movement," Suluck told University World News.

"Perhaps it is not really surprising because student leaders were interrogated like this in the past. But this was the first time we were called into the military, without any lawyers and without any reasons, under this civilian government."

She described the interrogation as "psychologically threatening".

"They said the Red movement had become violent and was illegal and that any involvement in the future or any support for the Red movement would be considered illegal and that I might be arrested.

"These kinds of actions should never happen under a civilian government, it is quite ugly for the government to threaten us."

Suluck said she was not afraid and that if anything happened to her and her student friends it would not be so easy to cover up: "The situation is not going to end very easily."

The federation later condemned the summonses as "threats to the people".

Although Suluck was released the same day, she said students in the southern part of Thailand, where a separatist movement unconnected with the Red Shirts has been opposing the government, had been jailed for up to seven days in the past.

Those arrested included students from universities in Hat Yai, Songkhla and Pattani, close to the border with Malaysia.

"The student movement is quite strong in the south. When students were arrested there were rallies in front of the military camp," Suluck said.

This occurred as recently as last week in Pattani but also in Yala and Narathiwat in southern Thailand where students were released after three days in detention. She said student leaders were the ones leading young people in the south.

"Student groups in the south are constantly being watched because of the wider separatist situation," McCargo said. "If the authorities thought there was any connection between the students in Bangkok and the south they would clamp down heavily."

But he also pointed out: "There are no leaders of the Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts who come from the student movement."

Suluck said the student anti-government protesters in Bangkok were still small in numbers compared with the Red Shirt movement as a whole and were not involved in the overall direction of the anti-government protests.

Comment:
During the current red terrorism in Bangkok, the students came out against the reds. The reds then tried to intimidate them. This article is thoroughly untrustworthy as a piece of red pro-Thaksin propaganda.

howard499

Comment:
Interesting. I'd appreciate the evidence of those students coming out against the reds, and being intimidated by them. I'm a student in Bangkok and have been following both news and propaganda from every side. I don't get to see any news about that. Strange!

Gary

Comment:
Where is the proof that the student groups turned against the reds? That's new to me!

An