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A number of media commentaries have predicted eruptions of social unrest in Europe, some with revolutionary connotations, as a direct result of the economic crisis. Thailand has just suffered the consequences of these struggles also, but local observers have condemned mainstream media for “biased reporting” on Thailand’s turbulent few weeks.
Recently The Nation, an English-based newspaper in Thailand, published an “Open letter to CNN” by Napas Na Pombejra, which set out to reprimand CNN correspondents Dan Rivers and Sarah Snider, citing that “thousands of CNN’s viewers have already begun to question the accuracy and dependability of its reporting.”
The same could be said for the BBC and other news agencies. For those of us living in Thailand it does appear they have resorted to “biased reporting”. Pombejra’s letter reminded CNN’s journalists, reporters, and researchers that they “have a collective responsibility to follow the journalist’s code and ethics to deliver and present facts from all facets of the story, not merely one-sided, shallow and sensational half-truths.”
What the writer was concerned about was this: “Statements seem to have been solely taken from the anti-government protest leaders or their sympathisers,” and complained that “details about the government’s position have come from secondary resources…No direct interviews with government officials have been shown; no interviews or witness statements from Bangkok residents or civilians unaffiliated with the protesters, particularly those who have been harassed by or suffered at the hands of the protesters, have been circulated.”
The main thrust of the piece noted that: “Rivers and Snider’s choice of sensational vocabulary and terminology in every newscast, and choice of images to broadcast, has resulted in law-abiding soldiers and the heavily-pressured Thai government being painted in a negative, harsh and oppressive light…”
The Economist, while not exactly favourable in this country for its own slant on Thailand’s problems pointed out that: “[Thailand] is also counting the economic cost of the worst political violence in decades. GDP grew by 12% in the first quarter as exports rebounded. Now growth faces threats on three fronts: the uncertainty roiling the global economy; a slump in domestic demand; and the damage television pictures of Bangkok as a war-zone have done to Thailand’s important tourism industry. With the economy stuttering, the social and class divisions that emerged during the confrontation will be even harder to heal.”
Maybe, but Thailand’s prime minister Abhisit, at the end of an “acrimonious two-day censure debate” made a desperate call for reconciliation. But his course of treatment included bringing ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to justice. The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) is to circulate copies of his arrest warrant on terrorism charges, with copies distributed to 187 Interpol member countries asking them to help capture him.
The Economist’s take, that Kasit Piromya, Thailand’s foreign minister, has complained that other countries are not helping Thailand to catch a “bloody terrorist”, despite a 2008 court conviction for corruption. It notes that Interpol reveals that he is still not on its fugitive list.
Reuters reports that: “Calm has returned since troops forcibly dislodged protesters demanding immediate elections from their fortified encampment in ritzy central Bangkok on May 19, providing a window of opportunity to dip back into what had been one of Asia’s hottest emerging markets,” but that “Thailand remains fundamentally divided between what some analysts see as a peasant and proletariat movement largely backing ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and what they call an aristocratic “establishment elite” of royalists, military brass, bureaucrats and the educated middle class.”
In recent times, a number of media commentaries have predicted similar eruptions of social unrest, almost in revolutionary dimensions, as a direct result of the economic crisis, with warnings that Europe will suffer the return of nationalist tensions and the emergence of fascist movements.
This was backed up by historian Simon Schama of the Financial Times, who stated last month: “Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage…in Europe and America there is a distinct possibility of a long hot summer of social umbrage.”
So Thailand’s unique brand of unrest is not isolated in the world’s social pathology of today. And Ko Chang, an island a million miles away from “sulphur in the air”, is still as much an attraction for tourists as it always was.
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