These are sad times for Thailand. Amid all the confusion and uncertainty at the national level, the violence in the south has gone from bad to worse with the killing of nine minivan passengers on March 14. The incident has rightly shocked the nation and has been widely condemned.
At such times special attention is needed to see that sensible debate is not imperilled. After the incident, even well-respected national news outlets emitted vitriol. “It is pointless for the authorities to talk peace with these killers who have no desire to co-exist harmoniously with their countrymen… It is time for government forces to bring the war into the insurgents-infested [sic] territories”, wrote one. Others concurred that reconciliation is finished and now is the time for an all-out battle. Protestors in a part of the country hanged and burned effigies.
Vindictive responses to wanton brutality, although unsurprising, are deeply regrettable. Similar expressions have been heard in Thailand at other times of death and tragedy, such as during the Ratchaburi hospital siege in January 2000–where all ten perpetrators were shot dead–and the October massacres decades earlier. They serve only to the advantage of the protagonists. The challenge for all other persons should instead be to ensure that reasoned debate continues and bombast is defied.
The consequences of irrational voices shouting down sensible discussion at times like these are all too apparent. Sri Lanka is an example of a country where the exchange of views has so degenerated over years that there is now very little left other than the trading of chauvinist insults amid utter disarray. All parties to the conflict recognise that the other is a fraud, but all persist with the pretence of being something that they are not. None sincerely expect to find a way out. The only contributors, while pretending to offer solutions, provoke new problems. State and society are equally demoralised and hopeless.
Right now, people in Thailand are disorientated. But disorientation is not an overwhelming handicap; by contrast, psychological disintegration is. A psychologically-disintegrated nation cannot solve its problems; a disorientated one can. By avoiding degenerate and primitive expressions, and by working with diligence and caution, it is possible to resist psychological disintegration and ultimately recover.
The Asian Human Rights Commission urges the people of Thailand not to respond to barbarity by abandoning their dignity and sense of basic human decency. Refrain from primitive utterances and vengeful pantomimes, and demonstrate that tolerance can overcome cruelty. Struggle for rationality over barbarity: the survival of the country depends upon it.
