Buddhism says you can’t so much as kill a fly; Buddhists will not work in the abattoirs slaughtering pigs and water buffalo for the family table. Unlike other “religions,” throughout its peaceful march of two thousand five hundred years, blood has not been shed in the name of the Buddha. Ninety percent of the Thai population is Buddhist.
So why is there so much violence?
Why is there so much cruelty and savagery in Thailand’s history? In what is the country’s most popular film, Suriyothai, generally agreed to be an accurate depiction of Thailand’s early royal dynasties, numerous enemies were decapitated and a child-king was beaten to death with a sandalwood club after being placed in a cloth bag so that the executioner’s weapon would not make contact with royal flesh. Why is there this legacy of brutality?
Why, more than a dozen years after the uprising of 1992, is Thailand still puzzling over the deaths of students who were shot in street protests, still demanding the names of those responsible, and an explanation for what happened to the many still “missing”?
Why are rape and domestic violence and pedophilia and other forms of abuse of women and children so rampant at all levels of Thai society? (According to a survey by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, forty four percent of Thai women had experienced physical and sexual assaults by their spouses and, in 2003, the Thailand Research Fund said forty six percent of children were attacked verbally and physically.)
Why is the national sport, Muay Thai—kickboxing as it’s known in the west—a part of every Thai male’s military training, and as one of the world’s most brutal forms of one-on-one combat, responsible for so many fatalities? At least one a week, according to one authority.
Why do so many of the trade and technical schools have rivalries that turn into gang-like “wars” that result in students getting killed?
Why do so many young men kill themselves racing motorcycles on public streets?
Why do so many Thais enjoy chicken fights and battles between fighting kites and bulls and beetles and Siamese fish?
Why do magazines and newspapers publish so many gruesome photographs of corpses, and why is the most popular ghost in movies a woman’s head flying through dark woods, trailing intestines?
Why are so many business disagreements resolved when one party hires a gunman?
Why are so many canvassers and other political workers and community leaders killed during the run-up to an election?
Why, from 2001 and 2004, were sixteen environmental activists murdered for opposing what they considered uncaring development by prominent politicians and businessmen? (All the cases remain unresolved.)
Why are extra-judicial killings matter-of-factly accepted as a part of the Thai way of life (and death)?
In 1996, six suspected drug dealers were executed while in police custody in Suphan Buri minutes after they had surrendered in front of television cameramen and photographers. The men were then taken back into the house where they’d held some hostages (who had been freed before the six surrendered), gunshots were heard, and when the police emerged, they said the men were killed in self-defense.
This wasn’t an isolated case. According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, ninety cases of extra-judicial killings were reported in 1995; forty-eight in 1996; sixty-eight in 1997; and forty-seven in 1998. Three years later, in The Nation (July 25, 2001), a front page story was headlined, “Police Death Squads Run Riot.” What followed sounded like I’d gone to sleep the night before in Bangkok and awakened in the morning in Bogota or Baghdad.
“Police-backed death squads are executing suspected drug traffickers in the lower Northeast,” the story began, naming the part of Thailand where I have a house and family, “and intend to kill as many as one thousand people this year, the region’s police chief said yesterday.” The Region 4 chief, Lt. Gen. Pichai Sunthornsajjabul, was then quoted as saying, “Our target is to send one thousand traffickers to hell this year, to join some 350 before them.” Sure enough, in a program called “Shortcut to Hell,” three men suspected of dealing amphetamines were found dead a few kilometers from my house a few weeks later.
The chief explained that an anti-drug “alliance” comprising police, soldiers, government officials, civilians, and members of “private organizations” had been working as an intelligence-gathering arm of the regional police. Once the alliance’s tips were confirmed, he said, police would consider whether there was enough evidence to prosecute.
“If there’s not enough evidence to take legal action [but we are sure they are involved in the drug trade],” The Nation quoted the Lieutenant General as saying, “drastic measures will be taken by members of the alliance. We have applied legal means, political science and even Buddhism, but the [drug] problem only seems to be getting worse. Now it’s time to rely on [the]
Death Angel. Of course, it’s a legally delicate means, but it’s the path we have to take to bring peace back to society.”
There were some twenty million people under his jurisdiction, he concluded, and “if a thousand social troublemakers go missing, I don’t think it will cause anyone any problem.”
The next day, Pichai denied that summary executions were occurring under his jurisdiction, or that he condoned such a practice. He blamed the deaths on armed vigilantes. The Nation stood by its story and, soon after, the Bangkok Post quoted a commander attached to the Muang Loei district police station (in the northeast, near the Laos border) as saying his men had killed sixty six suspected drug traders who resisted arrest between January and September (2001). Another eleven were reported missing.
In 2003, the prime minister declared a nationwide “War on Drugs.” Ninety days later, an estimated two thousand five hundred suspected drug dealers and abusers were shot dead. [See “Piss in a Cup,” page 119.] A year later, in what appeared to be separatist incidents in Thailand’s southern provinces, another five hundred were killed.
Every country has its bad cop stories and incidents of ugly violence. My own country of origin, the United States, surely is one of the most brutish and homicidal in recent history (dating from the 1700s). But no one ever said America was a peace-mongering nation. The U.S. is the biggest bully on the block nowadays and it seldom lets the world forget that, sending its peace-keeping missions and unilateral war-making troops wherever it decides, even when the United Nations calls its actions illegal. It’s also the world’s number one exporter of weaponry, has the highest per capita ownership of handguns, refuses to sign the nuclear proliferation and international land mine treaties, has the world’s largest military defense budget, etc., etc., etc.
Thailand, on the other hand, is known for its social and cultural restraints on direct confrontation. And with good reason. Because it is non-threatening, most of the time. I think most people agree that Bangkok may be one of the few major cities in the world where it is reasonable to say that no matter where you are, or when, you are comparatively safe. At least from muggings and the sort of street crime so common elsewhere that it doesn’t even make the morning papers.
But there’s this high incidence of and fascination with violence in Thailand. Why?
Kanjana Spindler, assistant editor, editorial pages, wrote in her weekly Commentary in the Bangkok Post (February 19, 2003), “The question comes to mind of just how violent a society we are. After all, we claim to be a predominantly Buddhist nation and if most people claim to subscribe to Buddhism’s basic tenets then we shouldn’t tolerate violence against one another at any cost. In reality, of course, we are probably much less Buddhist than we might like to claim.”
Dr. Kriengsak Charoenwongsak, the executive director of the Institute for Future Studies for Development, a regular contributor to the Bangkok Post, believes much of the popular manifestations of violence, such as Muay Thai, “is catharsistic: it allows people to vicariously satisfy their inner drives to succeed at any cost including untempered aggression. Instead of fostering feelings of pity on those weaker than ourselves, boxi
ng is the practice of finding satisfaction in seeing the opposition being completely crushed, something one cannot do in real life because it is against moral standards and the law. Subconsciously, people who like boxing accept the idea that hurting other people is normal.”
William J. Klausner, a former professor of law and anthropology at Thammasat and Chulalongkorn Universities and an ex-editor of the annual publication of the Buddhist Association of Thailand, agrees. In Reflections on Thai Culture, published by The Siam Society (1981), he said that to fully understand the Thai personality, “we must appreciate that the ‘cool heart’ and the ubiquitous smile are quite often merely cultural masks covering emotional concerns related to dignity, face, perceived status. There is strain and tension; and release is sought, at least initially, through indirect methods. When these techniques are no longer psychologically satisfying or effective, extreme forces of violence may well result.”
Which makes Thailand sound like just about everywhere else on earth.
The Hustlers
One of the things I enjoy most about the Lonely Planet guides to any traveler destination is the section that appears early in the book about what it calls, almost whimsically, “Dangers & Annoyances.” This is the list of warnings given in an introductory section called “Facts for the Visitor” better known for its advice about “When to Go…What to Bring…Holidays & Festivals…and Things to Buy.”
“Although Thailand is in no way a dangerous country to visit,” the section begins in a recent edition, “it’s wise to be a little cautious…” Indeed. There follow warnings about women traveling alone, guests leaving valuables in hotel safes, credit card fraud, drugs and druggings, assault, insurgent activity and the violent Malay-Muslim movement in Thailand’s south…and in the nearby pages on “Health,” there are further cautions about everything from sunburn, prickly heat, and snakes to dysentery, cholera, viral gastroenteritis, hepatitis, typhoid, worms, schistosomiasis, rabies, TB, diptheria, bilharzia, malaria, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, bedbugs and lice, leeches and ticks, and a supermarket of STDs and HIV/AIDS
One wonders why anyone gets on a plane.
Yet, for me, the biggest bummer are the touts and the scams. It doesn’t matter if the visitor is a backpacker staying in a five-dollar-a-night guesthouse or a businessman lodging in a five-star hotel, there are hard dollars and euros and yen to be spent and dozens of Thais lined up to take them, sometimes by any means possible. “Thais are generally so friendlly and laid-back,” Lonely Planet says, “that some visitors are lulled into a false sense of security that makes them especially vulnerable…”
“I’ve been coming to Bangkok for more than twenty-five years,” a friend who stays at one of those high-end riverside hotels told me, “and I have to say, it’s not as bad as India yet, but the way I’m bothered on the street by people who want to sell me something, for sure that that’s the way this country’s going. I bet I was approached twenty-five times today. It’s going to kill tourism, eventually.”
He’s right, of course, at least about the more aggressive hustlers, con artists and vendors. It might be mentioned that my friend’s quarter century in Asia was spent in the travel industry, so I think he knows what he’s talking about.
Whenever I travel, I miss Bangkok and I’m always glad to be “home” again, but I dread the journey’s end: getting from the airport to my flat. If I forget to give the driver my destination in Thai, chances are about fifty-fifty that he’ll try some kind of con: “forget” to turn on the meter or say it’s broken, fail to give me my change when passing through an expressway toll booth, or take the long way round to keep the meter running.
It’s worse, as my friend said, on the street. How many visitors are scammed by tuk-tuk and taxi drivers and freelancers on foot into visiting a jewelry shop owned by an “uncle” or a “cousin” who has a special sale going; others are told a new government tax will increase the price in just two days, etc. This happens with such frequency—and the gems and jewelry always turn out to be worth far less than what the sucker pays—a government office has been established to handle the complaints.
Imtiaz Muqbil, a travel columnist for the Bangkok Post, wrote (June, 2002) that tourism officials admitted that “cheating and fraud is the biggest source of complaints they get internally. Jewelry shops overcharge visitors by several times the actual amount, mostly in order to pay the hefty commissions given to guides, tour bus drivers and the owners or managers of tour operating companies.
“Shopkeepers generally know they have that one chance to squeeze visitors; a tourist is not generally considered a repeat customer. Even though they blame themselves for not having been more careful, they exact revenge by going back home and spreading the word among friends and colleagues.”
What my friend was talking about is worse. It’s not just a tired old con that includes telling the tourist over-valued gems that will kill the golden goose, but the constant hassle of walking along a shopping street, where vendors—whose stalls already occupy most of what should be pedestrian space—beckon and call and hold out their hands as if to say hello; the automatic response is to shake hands, but then try to get yours back. Making eye contact or glancing at the goods brings the vendor to your neck like a hawk.
Patpong at night may be the worst. Many visitors go there exclusively for the night market, but that doesn’t deter the touts who stand outside the sex venues. “Come inside! No cover charge! Take a look!” they cry. And if you’re a single male or in a group of males, touts hold up brochures for massage parlors or merely whisper, “Want lady? Want man? Want boy?” While others hold up signs announcing ‘PUSSY PING-PONG SHOW, PUSSY CIGARETTE SHOW, PUSSY COLA SHOW...” Numerous bars in Patpong and elsewhere also station women outside whose job it is to physically pull and push men toward the doors.
I’m not without compassion. I’ve lived in Thailand long enough to know that the touts and cabbies and street merchants are extraordinarily poor. One of my closest friends is an American Catholic priest who has lived and worked in the slums for more than thirty years and I’m down there nearly every week with him, so I know how many of these people live, and how precarious their survival may be.
I still don’t like being pestered and hustled, and I don’t think anyone else does, either. Thailand seems to be growing ravenous in its attempt to pull more and more money from its visitors, in ways that seem not just larcenous, but mean-spirited. National parks and numerous privately operated tourist attractions now have a double tier system where foreigners sometimes pay several hundred percent more to enter than someone with a Thai face. Dress codes for some of the most popular visitor destinations—the Grand Palace, for one—require foreigners to wear sandals that cover the heel—“approved” sandals are for rent in a shop nearby—while Thais may enter wearing any sort of footwear or none. (The barefoot Buddha, an Indian by birth, would have been turned away.) Until Summer 2002, a foreigner’s mobile phone wouldn’t work in Thailand, part of the fallout from the monopoly that controlled the industry, a concession held, incidentally, by the man who is now the prime minister. Many laws are enforced only for visitors, police usually accepting a small contribution, for instance, instead of the full two-thousand-baht fine for littering. When shopping on the street, a foreign face automatically doubles or triples the price.
It is as if every form of banditry is directed against foreigners, not just by the greediest of freebooters who probably think of themselves as entrepreneurs, but also by the authorities. For a time, many visitors from China—Thailand’s fastest growing source of tourists—were being taken such advantage of, the Chinese government threatened to put Thailand on a don’t-go-there list for its citizens unless the independent package tour business was cleaned up.
That put some agencies out of business, but complaints generally go nowhere. “The Thai police are usually of no help whatsoever, believing that merchants are entitled to whatever price they can get,” said Lonely Planet . “The main victimizers
are a handful of shops who get protection from certain high-rankling government officials. These officials put pressure on police not to prosecute or to take as little action as possible.”
The foreigners are not totally blameless. Most shoppers buying designer gear and computer software and other counterfeit goods at flea market prices know the stuff is bogus, so they have no legitimate complaint when the forty-dollar Rolex watch stops ticking as soon as the plane takes off for home. While many gem buyers, motivated by personal greed, choose to believe the lie that the stuff will have greater resale value back home.
Still, for more than a decade, tourism has been one of Thailand’s main revenue sources and since the financial collapse of 1997, many officials have come to regard its expansion as the economy’s savior, rather than institute the reforms that might fix some of the problems that led to the crash.
Change sometimes comes to Thailand as slowly as it can come rapidly, depending on what’s to be altered and who benefits. Because they’re so rampant, and pervasive, dishonesty and fraud will not be easy to tackle. “Yet,” wrote Imtiaz Muqbil, “it could have a more devastating impact on the country’s image because it flies directly in the face of tourist propaganda which generically presents Thai people as being friendly, hospitable and good-natured.
“Having thus been lulled into a sense of complacency, visitors find themselves doubly shocked, annoyed and frustrated; they feel cheated by the incident itself as well as by the official literature which sought to convince them otherwise.”
The Bodysnatchers of Bangkok
The sounds of windscreens shattering, car parts crumpling, skulls bursting, guns banging away, screams sailing into the night are still echoing when the city’s bodysnatchers arrive. These are the Buddhist “rescue” crews who scrape up victims of violence on many of Thailand’s city streets, helping the police identify the still warm deceased, arranging and paying for final rites and cremation if no one claims the corpse. The Buddhists believe they make merit this way.
Thailand Confidential Page 11