Red dissidents

The Economist has a story that essentially argues that the red shirts cannot be ignored.  Because there isn’t anything on the monarchy, we guess that it won’t be blocked in Thailand, so PPT just highlights some interesting passages.

The story mentions a “uniformed police colonel” in Khon Kaen with “seditious thoughts,” and “fed up” with a government that seeks only to “discredit and obstruct the opposition every day”, including the “manufacture” of evidence and applying the law “unequally.”

The article goes on to “suggest that the conservative coalition government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva of the Democrat Party is far from secure as it begins its third year in office.”

Instead of “reconciliation,” the government’s critics “survive in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.” Noting that the “government has used the emergency laws and other security legislation to round up red-shirt activists” it is claimed that the “movement is now strong enough in areas like the north-east to flourish in spite of such measures.”

There’s also a comment on red shirt radio stations that “compete with the government’s despised broadcasting service.” The government keeps closing them. In the case of “Thanik Maseepitak, a red businessman,[who] erected a state-of-the-art radio mast and equipped a broadcasting studio in Khon Kaen early in 2010, only for it to be ruled illegal. Two hundred soldiers arrived in October to cut all the mast-wires and cart off the studio kit. Undeterred, he has just set up another radio station in a nearby village. To avoid detection it changes frequency almost every day.”

Essentially, for The Economist, the struggle continues.

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