by Zoe Daniel
‘Bye Mummy, I love you infinity.’
‘See you tonight, mister.’
The street is very quiet. There are no cars, just the odd moto-taxi zipping past alongside the trickling canal, called a khlong. It’s early, but in Bangkok the traffic normally starts building before dawn. Things aren’t normal right now.
At the end of our Soi, about two hundred metres from our front door, I reach the first of the barricades. It’s a structure reminiscent of Les Misérables. Made of sharpened bamboo stakes and car tyres, it’s about three metres high and four wide. It stretches across the mouth of our Soi, although there’s a gap on one side just wide enough to drive a car through. A few redshirt protestors are milling around and they wave me on, grinning.
A bearded man greets me, ‘Sawatdee khrap’. He’s wearing wraparound sunnies, a red headscarf and a black t-shirt, and nods when he sees the helmet swinging from my hand and my green armband that proclaims ‘PRESS’ in English and Thai.
I nod back as I navigate past the pointy edges of the structure and then pick my way up the next street towards the office. Hundreds of people are asleep or eating breakfast on mats on the road under tarps. Some have elevated their beds on wooden pallets to avoid the run-off from the storms. The wet season is just beginning but there’s no cloud yet today and it’s already searing and sticky. I’m drenched in sweat.
In spite of Arkie’s concerns, the redshirts are all friendly as I pass by, Thai smiles in abundance. They’re anti-government protestors made up mostly of rural people and working-class city folk, and they’re conducting a sit-in as part of a mass protest against government policy.
Thai society is strictly hierarchical. At its core, the protest is a reaction against what the redshirts say is the dominance of the wealthy, particularly the so-called Bangkok elites, who control the government. It’s also the result of long-running anger over a military coup that ousted their hero, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in 2006. He’s living in exile to avoid a jail term for corruption charges (which he denies), but his supporters won’t let go. A highly populist prime minister, his support base is among the poor, who remember him, in part, for his government’s financial support.
Soon after we landed in Bangkok, the redshirts’ anger reached fever pitch when a court allowed the seizure of Thaksin’s assets. A state of emergency has been declared and the city is crawling with riot police. Protestors demand that the government step down and call a general election but the conservative administration, backed by the establishment, is resisting. It argues that the redshirts’ idol is a corrupt multi-millionaire egotist, who treated the country like one of his many companies, and that the only wealth he was building was his own.
Like our house, the ABC office is right in the middle of the ‘red zone’, about 150 metres from a stage set up by the protestors. The street – normally one of the city’s busiest – is lined with stalls selling red paraphernalia, from t-shirts to stubby holders. It has the feel of a carnival and there are real amusement stands. You can hit a can bearing the face of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva with a ball and win a ‘Dissolve the Government’ cushion embroidered in white Thai script on red felt.
Every night thousands gather to cheer redshirt leaders speaking on the main stage. The protest is clearly audible at home and in the office until late, when men, women, children and the elderly all lie down and go to sleep in the street. Their makeshift camp stretches out like a hand along major roads from the centre of the capital. In part, they’ve constricted the city’s consumer heart as a statement about the wealth they want a share of.
Bangkok’s gleaming shopping centres and five-star hotels have closed. Billboards advertising Louis Vuitton now form the backdrop to the enormous tented camp, which includes generators, basic showers and pungent porta-loos. Bright-orange robes hang across one campsite, behind them monks who offer guidance to the protestors. At another spot, so-called blackshirts, accused of being the violent, extremist wing of the movement, sleep in the back of a pick-up truck, bulletproof vests hanging over the sides. As I pass, people call out to offer me soup or a bowl of curry and rice. Street dogs linger, awaiting scraps. Children play. The protestors are well settled in.
I’m relieved to be working after a frustrating start to the posting. When I arrived, the ABC’s documentary program Foreign Correspondent had just broadcast a controversial piece about Thailand’s revered monarchy, meaning I had to lie low for a few weeks. Criticism of the monarchy is illegal and punished with a lengthy jail term. There was concern that extreme royalists might target the ABC staff and office.
No one in the Bangkok bureau was involved in the production, but as a precaution my on-air start was delayed. I spent the first few weeks arranging for the staff to take some time off in discreet locations. I set up house, helped Rowan settle Arkie into school and introduced Pearl to her new nanny, Nisha. In different circumstances it would have been a nice, easy start, but it’s meant that I’ve been unable to report on the political tension building around me. Sitting at home listening to helicopters circling and the boom of crackers being fired at them has been excruciating.
I’m finally given the go-ahead to file after a grenade is fired into a Skytrain station, killing one person and injuring more than eighty, among them an Australian tourist. This is one incident of many. We need to get across the situation, and fast.
ABC cameraman David Leland is already in the edit booth when I walk into the office most days. Fluent in Thai, he gives me an idea of what local TV has been reporting. The rhetoric on both sides is getting stronger. The government has begun issuing demands for the protestors to vacate the city centre. The redshirts are refusing until an election date is set within a three-month timeframe. It’s clear that if force is used, anger will boil over, and while we’re still filing stories there’s a sense that the main event has yet to play out. It’s a waiting game, a question of who will crack first: will the protestors move of their own accord, or will the government try to drive them out?
We spend our days crisscrossing the vast protestor camp, talking to people and monitoring government statements while we try to work out what will happen next. There are increasing skirmishes between soldiers and demonstrators. We pull out all the body armour that’s in the office storeroom and check it, making sure everyone has a flak jacket that fits.
Rowan and I start to discuss moving the kids. Pearl’s only eighteen months old and largely unaware of what’s going on, but Arkie’s becoming anxious. He’s a volatile kid and there’s no hiding things. Helicopters fly low over our house and loud booms of mostly fireworks and the occasional grenade rattle the city. Arkie tells me that the redshirts are bad people and I try to explain that no matter what political views you have, it’s okay to protest to make your voice heard, as long as you don’t use violence. Unfortunately, though, the deaths are mounting. I start hiding the newspapers, but I have a spare flak jacket, helmet and gas mask by the door at home and he knows they’re ready for danger.
Then Rowan takes Arkie down to the barricades to put a human face on the protestors, and he’s all smiles when I get home that night. ‘The redshirts are really friendly, Mummy. Not scary.’
I wonder if he’s listened in to conversations between our nanny and housekeeper, who are anxious about the prospect of a bloody resolution. Nisha is from Kachin state in Burma and has experienced more than her fair share of terror as a result of war between the ethnic population and the Burmese military. She’s been in Thailand, unable to return home, for ten years. Our housekeeper, Monta, in her sixties, has lived through Thai coups aplenty. Having worked for the ABC for around thirty years, she’s also experienced the grief of the media pack when journalists have been killed and injured in action. Monta, in particular, worries about me. I’m the first correspondent in her charge who’s also a mum and each day she’s almost weeping with relief when I come home in one piece.
In a quiet moment, I pack up some of the kids’ old toys and Rowan, Arkie and I take them down to
the protest site and give them to a family I’ve been following for a story about ‘camp life’. The woman and her husband are Thaksin devotees from the countryside and with their young children have been sleeping rough for weeks. Arkie is very pleased with himself but Rowan and I are edgy about having him there. The carnival atmosphere is gone. Previously smiling demonstrators are now tired, tense and watchful. It’s clear that everyone is ready for a catalytic end to the long-running rally.
I’m at home when I get a text message from our Thai producer, Jum, and I catch my breath. A redshirt general has been shot in the head while speaking on the street with a New York Times journalist. The tension palpably escalates and the finger-pointing begins as the redshirts accuse the army of assassination via sniper. The flamboyant general Seh Daeng, previously accused of being the blackshirt ringleader, later dies in hospital.
Concern increases about snipers and the Thai government warns journalists that we may be targeted. ABC viewers worry about my flak jacket having no neck protection as I report live on the seventeenth-floor office balcony in the evenings. Neck guards aren’t designed to ward off sniper bullets – they’re to repel shrapnel – but I wear a new jacket to reassure the audience. It does feel a little exposed standing on the elevated platform, particularly when the redshirts launch firecrackers and my sentences are interspersed with rattling booms. A sheet with ‘TV’ painted across it is hung off the balcony. We’re all aware of being vulnerable as we stand under bright broadcast lights, even if it feels far-fetched that anyone would take a pot shot at us.
The city is largely shut down apart from the redshirt camp and our office building becomes a hub for the world’s media. In between filing stories, I have a conference call with my bosses in Sydney and the ABC’s security advisor. Our office has floor-to-ceiling windows and there’s a risk of injury from shattered glass from a wayward grenade or bullet, not to mention one that may be deliberately sent in our direction. We can’t source sandbags as the inner city is surrounded by soldiers and we don’t have time. We tape up a few tarps, anchoring them with cupboards and bookshelves, and partly block out our windows at night.
I move out of my office near the balcony onto a central desk with Jum, the Aussie producer Paul Gates, and the TV New Zealand correspondent Steve Marshall, who I’ve welcomed in Anzac solidarity. We all sit around filing madly in between pulling on flak jackets and helmets to venture out into the debilitating heat to see what’s going on, before returning to file again.
The government has finally set a deadline for the protestors to leave the city, but they’re still refusing unless an election is guaranteed within three months. The prime minister responds with a counter offer to hold an election within six months as well as implementing what he calls a roadmap to reconciliation. The redshirts reject the offer. It’s a standoff.
Rowan calls me while I’m out in the field with the crew, crouching behind a barricade of tyres with the protestors. It would be better to be with the soldiers because they have guns pointed in our direction, but we don’t want to walk to them down the middle of the empty street. People were shot here this morning, bystanders tell us, so we’re taking cover and observing while I file some radio news and David gets a few pictures.
‘We’ve been told to go,’ Rowan blurts when I pick up on the first ring.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, watching the protestors in front of me putting rags into Molotov cocktail bottles and threading slingshots.
‘The army came to the gate,’ he says. ‘Our street is going to be a live ammunition zone, and they’re turning off the power and water.’
We trail back to the office on foot, weaving our way through the rally site, sweating under our body armour. Khun Tu, the driver, and I then negotiate our way through the barricades from the office to the house so that he can move my family out of the red zone. The ABC’s office manager has booked them into an apartment hotel in Sukhumvit that we think should be okay. For the moment the danger is contained to the middle of the CBD.
I find Rowan and Nisha throwing clothes, toys, kids’ books and DVDs into a bag – school is shut so they’ll have to amuse Arkie and Pearl in the hotel indefinitely. Nisha is sticking with us, a tiny tower of strength and calm in the chaos, while Monta refuses to leave the house. I plead with her to get out of the city for her own safety, but she’s resolute. She will look after our home while we’re gone.
I give Rowan a hand and also grab a few things for myself. I’ll be sleeping on the office floor from now on to avoid having to make the dicey walk home late at night. I barely have time to sleep anyway. I grab a pillow and doona off Arkie’s bed, a matching Winnie the Pooh set, his birthday present from my dad in January. It feels like half a lifetime has passed since then, back when I wasn’t working.
Getting back to the office I find that everyone else has decided to stay. Paul helps Jum move the couch to create an alcove for herself away from the windows, while he throws a pillow down behind a desk. David will sleep in the editing booth and I’ll take the floor in the radio studio. Khun Tu stocks the fridge and freezer with frozen meals, fruit and yoghurt, as well as bottled water that we’ve brought from the house. Very little is open in the CBD and as the army begins to blockade the entry points to the rally site, getting supplies will become even more difficult.
I’ve grabbed a few Singha cans from the house, and around midnight we have a beer each as we file the last of our material from the day. I crash on the floor on top of Arkie’s doona and sleep like the dead.
The next day as we dodge bullets and tear gas, I wonder what to do about my mum. She’s scheduled to arrive on a visit to see the kids, but I’m not too keen on her joining the madness here. As I run down the road with my colleagues in flak jackets and helmets, lugging gear and gas masks, I remind myself to call her as soon as I get back to the office. By the time I’ve filed on protestors burning a police bus and a journalist being shot, it’s late in the day.
‘No, I’m coming,’ she says firmly, when I raise the prospect of delaying the trip. ‘I can help Rowan look after the kids. I will be fine.’ Like Monta and Nisha, she’s resolute. No one’s keen to leave us to juggle it all on our own.
That night the city is virtually blacked out. The authorities have been threatening to cut power to the grid but it seems more likely that the redshirts have turned off their camp lights to make it hard for snipers. There’s still power and water in our building but of course there are no showers and the bathrooms are putrid with no cleaning staff on duty. Journalists are filing from the hallway floor and there’s a queue at the seventeenth floor balcony live-shot, where reporters are talking to TV networks around the world under the only bright light within the city grid.
The next couple of days are a blur. Major thoroughfares become urban warzones as protestors hold their ground against the army. The city is shrouded in smoke from burning tyres. We’re all running on adrenaline, the only thing keeping the exhaustion at bay.
Rowan and I have been talking a couple of times a day and we decide that it’s best for him to get out of town altogether. He’s taking Arkie and Pearl back to Cambodia. Through the hotel apartment’s windows in Sukhumvit, the kids have been watching the smoke rise over Bangkok as if it’s on a big TV screen. Black plumes mark the various hotspots where protestors and the army continue to clash. They also mark the perimeter of the military cordon which the soldiers are inexorably tightening like a noose around the rally site.
Very early one morning, Khun Tu and I run the gauntlet from the office to the Sukhumvit hotel. We bolt in the car up Petchburi Road. Normally a gridlocked arterial, there’s not another car on it, just rows of burning tyres that we weave around at speed. It’s eerie. A couple of times I almost tell him to turn back. As much as I want to see my family, my biggest concern is getting stuck outside the army line and not being able to get back in.
But when I arrive at the hotel, the kids fall on me with cuddles and my tears drop on their little heads. I wish I was
flying away with them rather than facing fear head-on again. I force myself not to lose it completely, my teeth literally gritted. Rowan later says he’s never seen me so tightly wound, or so thin. I was light when we got to Bangkok and I’ve lost kilos.
I say a quick hi to Mum, who’ll go with Rowan and the kids to Cambodia. There’s some irony in being forced to evacuate from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, which is not lost on me or Rowan. He gives me a hug and the tears fall again, and then I’m gone. Khun Tu talks us back in through the army checkpoints, and suddenly I feel relieved. Now I only have myself to worry about. Although I’m still torn, I can’t avoid the reality that I love being in the thick of such a big story.
For me, it’s a 5 a.m. ring at the office door that marks the start of the military crackdown. It’s Wednesday 19 May and a colleague has woken us up. Tanks are massing close to the rally site, he tells us, and the army is going to move in. It’s not a surprise; protestors have been repeatedly warned through the media that if they don’t move the government will force them out. Messages to that effect have even been broadcast from light aircraft flying low over the CBD.
I jump out of my makeshift bed and call Sydney for a quick cross into our flagship morning radio program, AM. We head out into the rally site, where there’s been an exodus of young men to defend the barricades. Those left, all women, children and the elderly, gather in front of the main stage, singing and chanting.
Before long the tanks start crashing through the barricades on the perimeter of the rally site. But while the bamboo-and-tyre structures are no match for the might of the military, the protestors continue to resist. There are sharp bursts of automatic gunfire and explosions as the two sides clash. Many of the soldiers are young conscripts. They look wired.
We move towards the incoming tanks but pull back as wounded protestors begin passing us, hurtling to the hospital on the backs of motorbikes or in the trays of pick-up trucks. One man is sandwiched between two other passengers, slumped and pouring blood. He’s either unconscious or dead.