Comments

I was against the premature use of the ISA (and the emergency decree) by the Abhisit government, and for the same reasons i was against the use of the ISA by this government.
These harsh laws are, as i understand it, used as a reaction, when protests go out of hand, cannot be handled without a partial and temporary suspension of civil rights, and not as a preventative measure. It has to be pointed out that just because ideologies of protest groups are somewhat anti-democratic our democracies are still supposed to give them the same rights to voice their opinions, regardless of our agreement or disagreement with their aims.
In the case of Pitak Siam, the use of the ISA was a panic reaction by the government, and as it turned out – it was a bit of an overkill. As we have seen, the protesters were contained well within normal laws.

All anti riot measures are not nice, but i believe that careful application of teargas does prevent worse injuries. Both water cannons and especially baton charges, and of course rubber bullets, result in worse.
In this particular case – both clash sites are in quite a distance from populated areas, so there was a minimal exposure to bystanders.

Interesting post.

Before the protest I openly supported the government’s invocation of the ISA something for which Pravit, amongst others, accused me of supporting “dictatorship”.

However a couple of comments relating to the appropriate use of tear gas something which I have mixed feelings about.

Like Nick I was “lucky” enough to see the German riot police in action in the 1980s on a few occasions, in Hamburg and Berlin etc. They used gas, water cannon, armoured cars etc in a pretty aggressive fashion. I’ve also witnessed police use of similar in France when England fans rioted during the World Cup, anti-EU protests in Denmark and, as I spend most of my time in the very centre of London, the various anti-riot tactics employed by the UK police over the years.

One of the problems with tear gas is that it is completely indiscriminate – particularly in an urban settings. It drifts into dwellings, down subways and affects people who have nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of riot or disturbance. In the UK it has been used only when such disturbances are turning very violent and wasn’t used at all during the riots in 2011 because of this indiscriminate nature. It’s use can actually draw people into a confrontation who had no interest in the disturbance in the first place. The rioters in N.Ireland also soon learned to make it less effective by building burning barricades with the heat from the fire pushing any gas upwards.

While I think the use of teargas on Saturday was, in a Thai context, an incomparable step-up from Abhisit’s snipers, to simply pass it off as some kind of “humane” act flies in the face of all studies and even the UN’s own Special Rapporteur’s report on “freedom of assembly” which states

“With regard to the use of tear gas… [it] does not discriminate between demonstrators and non-demonstrators, healthy people and people with health conditions.”

Having said that I still think that given the resources they have and the situation at hand the Thai authorities use of gas was proportionate.

Real progress in many ways but always room for improvement but what the govt have shown is that security laws can be used to protect democracy, not upend it, and that the police, if deployed effectively, can also play a very important role when civil disturbances occur, pushing the army out of the frame.

I think that Thai peasants are definitely angry and frustrated in a lot of cases. This is not however in my view because they want to return to their past conditions or that they feel they were better off 50 or 100 years ago. They want to feel they are getting an equal share of the benefits of Thailand’s economic growth and modernity now in the present. The improvements they have experienced in their standard of living while substantial they may see as being small compared to that experienced by urban Thais.

The ancient chinese emperors claim that they were the sons of god with a mandate from heaven to rule.

As someone who has closely observed the Theun-Hinboun PC’s dramatic transformation of these river basins over the last decade and was in communication with Murray Watson (MW) during the period mentioned by Keith, I would like to add a few comments to this discussion.

Firstly, I do not interpret Keith’s post as implying he was making any claims to be the first or amongst the first to “discover” d/s impacts along the Nam Hinboun, and thence, did not find his post misleading. Anyone that goes to his report will find he has correctly cited most of the previous material related to the project’s impacts.

Secondly, I think Keith was being purposely cautious about presenting MW as any kind of “champion” of social or environmental justice in Laos and do not recognise this characterisation in the post. As Keith implies, he was an enigmatic character, and who really knows why he was motivated to change his stance quite so dramatically in the space of a few years. MW claimed it was mostly concerns with trying to protect “good science”.

What is clear is that MW had already tried to set the record straight on other projects apart from THHP prior to his spat not only with THPC, but also with Norpower and others he saw as having a huge conflict of interests with regards to the lucrative Lao hydropower sector. For example, he had through his Final Completion Report for the Nam Mang 3 Hydropower Project, made a quite impassioned plea for improved practices across the entire environmental impact assessment process, which went far beyond his TOR and would be an interesting document of study in itself, given that this was just a relatively minor hydropower project and was funded by a Chinese developer, rather than a Western developer as with THHP. For example, this is MW’s argument to enlarge the scope of the EIA process into social matters (Section 8.2, p. 20 of report):

“Secondly, the EIA Process has been enlarged to take on too large a socio-political burden. The regulations require standards of equitability and distribution, and rights to property ownership and economic and livelihood opportunity, for families and groups by gender and ethnicity which are far in advance of the current situation. As targets for society they are admirable, but as a requirement for a developer they almost guarantee non-compliance. Any developer following the regulations would find himself trying to force political changes at rates far greater than is possible without severe social dislocation. He would be at odds with the officials and administrators, and would threaten their livelihoods more severely than his project threatens the livelihoods of rural stakeholders.

The EIA Process is much too frail an instrument to carry these additional purposes. It is in any case doubtful how much social change can be generated from external pressure. More progress could be made with regulating environmental damage, a much more important and long term topic, with higher potential for success, if the social elements were to be removed, and placed back into the general context of the entire relationship between lenders, investors, donors and the developing country.”

I think he surely knew this report would win him few friends in either GoL, the hydropower industry, the development banks and fellow consultants who are used to writing what MW termed as “Status Quo Reports” (SQR), which are the recognised norm for the industry in the Lower Mekong Basin. Personally, I think he’d probably had had enough of the culture of SQR, and unusually for his profession, was prepared to be a canary within the mine, singing that the air was getting increasingly foetid and if something was not changed quickly, there would sooner or later be no mine left to exploit.
I agree he was way too litigious and perhaps trying to turn the situation to financial profit, but I think it would be wrong to paint him as an entirely self-interested party in the case of Theun-Hinboun, but was trying in his own way to right some more general wrongs in the hydropower industry in Laos and move beyond the ingrained culture of SQR’s, seen once more with Compagnie National du Rhone and Poyry over the Xayaburi Dam debacle.

Therefore, I remain to be convinced that he was he was “simply a high priced hydropower dam consultant who was willing to turn on anyone who he felt was blocking his own path to advancement”.

Ahlon Tin Win … specializes in timber extraction…. He has been at loggerheads with local farmers…

Yes indeed.

Great report, Nick. Hope you don’t mind but I ‘shared’ this on my Facebook page.

Thanks Nick. I always watch for your post of an incident, you always have some good pictures and balanced reporting of events.

Your reports and Spring News seem to be the most unbiased of all the news sources

Note that my definition of Yellow Shirts is much broader than the PAD.