of human rights in Thailand as an issue or process of vernacularizing a global discourse.5 When Kat told me “Marxist is no longer a bad word, since the end of the Cold War” (ตั้งแต่สงครามเย็นผู้นิยมลัทธิมากซ์ก็ไม่ใช่คำสาปแช่ง), she alerted me to the ways in which such a thesis of domestication would have to account for the domestication of other global discourses (Marxism and democracy, for example) and the particular variants of these discourses (in the Thai case, Maoism) as they shaped the process of domestication. The statement is also arresting for the sort of sea-change it indicates in Thai politics, a change that sets the demonstrations of 1992 apart in important ways from the student democracy uprisings of 1973 and 1976.
14 October 1973 to 6 October 1976
In November 1971, Prime Minister Thanom Kittakachorn launched a coup against his own government, suspending a three-year-old constitution and dissolving the equally young parliament (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 186). Student organizations had undertaken sporadic demonstrations over Japanese control of the economy and corruption, among other issues, but by June 1973, the demonstrations were better organized, focusing on the restoration of the constitution and democracy (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 186). The military government responded by arresting student leaders, and on 13 October, up to half a million Thai from throughout the country joined student protestors at the Democracy Monument on Ratchadamnern Klang Avenue to demand a constitution, the restoration of elected government, and the release of jailed students. This was the first mass uprising against a Thai military government (Giles 1997, 89). As the police and military presence grew, protestors became uneasy and moved toward the palace both for their security and to appeal to the king to mediate (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 187). Although the generals backed down once the student leaders won an audience with the king, releasing jailed students and agreeing to restore the constitution, the 14 October dispersal of the demonstrators dissolved into chaos, and the military attacked, killing and wounding several hundred.
Thanom Kittikachorn, Praphat Charusatien, and Narong Kittakachorn (Thanom’s son and Praphat’s son-in-law), the junta’s leadership, hastily fled into exile, the last shred of their government’s legitimacy falling with the massacred protesters. Further, it is widely believed that the king pressured them to leave, making way for the restoration of constitutional democracy (Connors 2007, 62). Whether or not this is true, the king did choose the members of a National Convention that elected the National Assembly that would serve as the interim parliament and draft a new constitution. By 1975, Kukrit Pramoj held the prime minister’s office, heading a fragile coalition, but was forced, under pressure from the army, to dissolve parliament. In April 1976, he lost in the polls, to be replaced at the head of the Democratic Party by his brother, Seni, who formed a new coalition government under the banner of reformism (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 191–194).
Over the same period, the reactionary elements of the right wing had reorganized, forming, in particular, two paramilitary and propaganda organizations, the Red Gaurs and Nawaphon (meaning new or ninth force). In concert with the Village Scouts, a rural, anticommunist program started by the border police in 1971 under royal patronage during the Thanom regime,6 these groups undertook a campaign of intimidation and assassination of leftists, student leaders, and labor organizers, following an explosion in 1973 of the number and scale of worker strikes (Giles 1997, 90–92). Their impact and the reluctance of police to intervene emboldened Praphat (temporarily) and Thanom (now donning a monk’s robes) to return from exile in August and September. Students at Thammasat University, located at the western edge of Sanam Luang (Royal Park, which is itself at the western end of Ratchadamnern Klang, before it rises to the Pinklao Bridge), protested the return of the junta leaders.
For roughly a decade, building on the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, the demographics of the university population had shifted from elite dominance to include Thai from a much wider range of economic and regional backgrounds, with the result that students were no longer automatically assumed to have the kind of mandarin status they enjoyed in the 1950s and earlier. On the contrary, there was a growing animosity among those Thai who saw students as averse to work and as leftist agitators (Giles 1997, 90; Anderson 1977). On 6 October 1976, the three paramilitary groups mentioned above, those harboring resentment toward students, and the reactionary elements of the police and military got their opportunity for revenge. Armed with firearms, rocket launchers, and weapons of opportunity like pipes, sticks, fire, and rope, they sealed all exits from the Thammasat campus and assaulted the students inside. Students who tried to escape were shot or beaten, some being hanged and burned in a no less visible and symbolically charged location than the Royal Park (สนามหลวง, Sanam Luang), which borders the ceremonial Royal Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, one of the temples most closely identified with the monarchy (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 194–105; Giles 1997, 92–94; Anderson 1977). The military and paramilitary suppression of the protest was brutal and exhaustive enough to allow Praphat and Thanom to return without further opposition. Over the next two years, there were three more coups, until finally, in 1979, General Kriangsak Chomanand succeeded in both maintaining a stable government and turning government policies toward the reformism of the Kukrit premiership. Critical to future developments, he placed General Prem Tinsulanond, who had risen to head the army, in the post of defense minister (and he would become prime minister in 1980, after elections were restored in 1979).
When Kat was describing the history of human rights’ formation in Thailand, she explained that there was a rift within the upper echelons of the military between the doves and the hawks (ทหารมีนกพิราบ เขาเรียกร้องสันติภาพและมีเหยี่ยว), the doves trying to keep the military out of the political process and the hawks being ferociously anticommunist, with several having been involved in the attack on 6 October.7 The significance of Kriangsak and, in particular, Prem rising to office is that they favored a political rather than military response to the threat of communism, emphasizing an agenda of rural development (to reduce the appeal of joining or supporting the CPT and to undermine CPT propaganda) and conciliation. The support of the “doves” was crucial to the success of such a strategy in the face of CPT numbers swelling as leftists, student activists, and labor organizers left Bangkok for the jungle after 6 October. When Kriangsak began to normalize relations with China, however, the CPT lost Chinese support, and when Prem initiated amnesty policies in 1979 and 1980 to allow disaffected CPT members to return to the fold of Thai society, they did so in droves, evacuating the CPT of the bulk of its fighting force by 1983 (Baker and Pausk 2005, 197; Giles 1997, 95–96). To all appearances, the left had dissolved.
“Black May” 1992
The 1980s and 1990s, however, did not see the dissolution of the left as much as its reconfiguration. After Prem’s amnesty program, many of those who returned from the countryside and from armed resistance refocused their attention away from social revolution toward NGO work on particular social issues. Individuals who, as CPT members or student activists, had faced imprisonment or death in armed conflict with the state or violence at the hands of paramilitary groups could now work openly and legally. Although NGOs existed before the 1980s, they blossomed during this period. They had a range of foci, from rural development to poverty alleviation in Bangkok slums, but of particular interest here is the participation of doctors in NGOs. During the 1990s, there was an increasing NGO emphasis on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, but before that, there were NGO programs focused on the health of the rural poor and on providing primary health care (Bamber 1997, 238–239). During the mid-1980s, a particularly close relationship developed between the MoPH and a number of NGOs like the Rural Doctors Society. Below, I will discuss a bifurcation in NGO methods that has everything to do with the MoPH adopting a welcoming posture to left-leaning or activist medical personnel (Bamber 1997, 239). The important thing here is that, between 1976 and 1991—the better part of a generation—there was an explosive growth in NGOs and NGO members alongside relative political calm. In 1988,
