Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Tue, 21 Jul 1992 04:49:23 PDT
From:         "Indonesia Publications/Task Force" <apakabar@IGC.APC.ORG>
Subject:      TH: 'FEER' Coverage Slammed
X-To:         seasia-l@msu.edu

The first few lines of this posting got clipped when
the original poster put it up.

John (apakabar@igc.org or apakabar@igc.apc.org)
/* Written  7:12 pm  Jul 21, 1992 by peg:greenleft in cdp:greenleft.news */
/* ---------- "Green Left issue 63, July 22" ---------- */
in a stable democratic government which could bring to justice
the culprits of the May murders.
Having lived through the horror and heroism of those days, one
can only be saddened and appalled by the poor quality of some
media coverage of such tragic events. Even the eminent Far
Eastern Economic Review - hitherto a liberal journal known for
wide-ranging and objective analysis - missed a lot of what
happened in Thailand.
Under this magazine's new right-wing editor - a Dan Quayle fan
who admits he has almost no Asia experience - the Review seems
uninterested in improving its coverage. Space could be found in
it for full-page editorials that put the death toll at ``several
dozen'', when there are nearly 1000 officially ``missing''. Space
could not be found for the following letter correcting some of
the misinformation the magazine seems to be swallowing from
Thailand's army.

A week is a long time in politics, but apparently not long enough
for your Bangkok correspondent, Paul Handley, to get either his
facts or analysis straight. I don't know where Mr Handley was
when the May 17-20 bloodletting took place. However, he certainly
was not on the same Ratchadamoen Ave., and adjacent areas, that I
witnessed.

Mr. Handley's report was more accurate than that which he filed a
week earlier. However, he apparently missed seeing the most
crucial event of all: i.e. who first pulled the trigger, on the
night of the 17th/morning of the 18th May. The following points
may help Mr. Handley understand what has really happened in
Thailand:

1) Rioting did not start first, gunfire did. On the night of May
17th-18th, shots were fired at the crowd, then they rioted.

When demonstrators confronted the police that night, plain-
clothes agent provocateurs fired multiple rounds, at close range,
into an angry but overwhelmingly peaceful crowd. I heard the
shots fired, intermittently but frequently, for at least thirty
minutes.

Numerous people I talked to (including journalists) personally
witnessed this. It's now been verified by the South China Morning
Post that a British journalist saw this shooting, which killed a
minimum of three. Having myself been within close earshot, all I
can say is: it would be a first-class miracle if only three.

Once this shooting happened, full-scale rioting began to
gradually erupt. Hitherto there had been scuffles and skirmishes
between some demonstrators and police, but the crowd remained
overwhelmingly peaceful albeit angry.

2) Mr. Handley wrote about a ``bottle-and-brick assault'' at Phan
Fa bridge that night. Prior to this shooting, the only bottles I,
and anyone else I talked to, had seen were water bottles.

These started to be thrown in a torrent, when riot police
mercilessly clubbed a demonstrator who ``waied'' [gave the
Buddhist greeting with folded hands] before them, completely
unarmed. The result: a man photographed as dripping in blood,
from head to foot, and who has since `` disappeared''. This was a
far cry from Mr. Handley's (and Suchinda's cohort's) fantasy
about ill-equipped police night-sticks breaking on first impact.

3) Even then it took quite a long time for the riot to really
gather full steam. For a long while - at least one hour - I
personally saw a one-to-one stand-off.

One beaten demonstrator would be grabbed from the crowd, and
hauled away on a police truck amidst a torrent of verbal abuse
from the crowd. Soon after a policeman would be carried away,
bleeding, to an ambulance.

Yet the massive array of water cannons that I saw filling an
entire street for several blocks were never used. In this same
street, there was also an enormous number of riot police and
soldiers. Some riot police were on the street, most were inside
their compound.

These large contingents of back-up riot police, the water cannon
and troops constituted an overwhelming force that could have
easily blocked the demonstration at Phan Fa. If the government
really intended to contain the demonstration without resorting to
military violence.

4) Finally, a far from minor point. Intervention by His Royal
Highness the King was not ``unprecedented'' as Mr. Handley
writes. This was what brought an end to the killing in 1973, and
1976.
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