Asia Times: LAND OF SMILES Fear of Seattle-style protests, and worse



	February 8, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

LAND OF SMILES
Fear of Seattle-style protests, and worse
By Bradley Martin

BANGKOK - Determined to avoid both protest riots and terrorist attacks, Thailand has been taking extraordinary security precautions ahead of the 10th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), which starts in Bangkok next weekend.

Critics say the authorities are being overzealous, but officials are edgy after Burmese rebel attacks on the Burmese embassy in Bangkok last October and on a hospital in Ratchaburi last month. And they fear a repeat at the Unctad session of protest riots that marred the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization in December and last week's meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Police rounding up illegal aliens nabbed so many that the jails - already bursting at the seams thanks to an ongoing crackdown on users of metamphetamines - couldn't hold any more and they had to start returning them to Bangkok's streets.

Meanwhile, Pummarat Thaksadipong, the head of the National Intelligence Agency, upset his superiors by going public with a claim that terrorist groups bent on attacking international leaders in town for the conference could make Bangkok a high-risk area during the conference February 12-19. He specifically mentioned Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.

Pummarat didn't get any backing on his claim from other government officials, who told him to back up his claims or stop alarming the public. Both the Thai military and United States Ambassador Richard Hecklinger said they saw no particular terrorist threat.

A Bangkok Post editorial on Saturday included a snide reference to ''speculation of the imminent arrival of a cast of terrorists with a higher international profile than the VIPs attending Unctad. Most of the more than 100 countries participating are not sending their top leaders, although Japan and some others plan to do so. The US delegation will be headed by an aid official of ambassadorial rank.

''It is all getting to be a little too much, and there is in prospect the heavy-handed treatment of protest grups who believe they have a message for the delegates to Unctad,'' the Post editorialized. The authorities are assigning the NGOs a place for their protests, but it's not in the compound of the Queen Sirikit Convention Center where the some 3,000 delegates will be meeting. And only five NGO representatives at a time will be permitted to enter the designated protest area. The NGOs are steamed about that, calling it ''a denial of basic human rights''.

Not all media organizations complain about official excess. ''There is a huge stake in the Unctad convention as far as Thailand and the Thai people are concerned,'' Krungthep Thurakit argued editorially January 28 - ''so huge that the government can't afford any errors''. Any security lapse could ''put Thailand's image and reputation on the line'', the business daily said.

Unctad is considered a sort of poor man's World Trade Organization. It looks at the same issues as the WTO but is supposed to do so from the viewpoint of the developing world. Many commentators are hoping the Bangkok Unctad session will inspire more focus on the world's poor in the WTO and in other establishment-oriented circles.

Noodling ex-scribes

If delegates decide to leave the confines of the convention center and their hotels, get away from the clamoring gangs of reporters and see how Bangkok's less affluent people live, they are likely to be tempted to head for the food stalls that line many Bangkok streets. And there they may find . . . more reporters.

The financial crisis hit Thailand hard in 1997. At least eight newspapers and magazines closed and many others downsized as ad revenues plummeted, putting hundreds of journalists out of work. Now the economy seems to have bottomed out, but the news business shakeout left in its wake a reduced number of leaner and meaner organizations that have yet to resume major hiring.

Most of the journos who lost their jobs in the big crunch are gone from the industry, perhaps forever. But they are not forgotten by peers who remain in the trade. Instead their fate remains an evergreen topic for lifestyle sections' feature-writers.

The typical story, now as in 1997, focuses on ex-journalists who switched to selling food from street stalls and carts. That focus makes sense because there seems to be an instinct built into the genes of Thai people in general, journalists included, that sends them straight out to hawk noodles or sweets when other sources of livelihood fail them. This no doubt has much to do with the Thai obsession with constant feasting and snacking, which assures a ready market for the hawkers.

Anywhere in Bangkok where there's a lot of pedestrian traffic, the sidewalks are bound to be almost impassable because of the concentration of carts and temporary stalls, whose proprietors proffer exquisite morsels to tempt the appetites of passersby six days a week. (The city has a standing order to clear the sidewalks on Wednesdays.) And in any such concentration the chances are that at least one of the hawkers is an ex-journalist.

Some of the erstwhile inkstained wretches actually are doing better financially now that they've swapped their notebooks and keyboards for ladles and tureens. A Bangkok Post article (February 6) tells of Tianchai Tanapataranun, who was making 15,000 baht (about $400) a month as a reporter for the English-language daily The Nation. Tianchai didn't get laid off, but his salary was delayed so often he decided to take his chances on the streets. Now he's clearing 5,000 baht (about $135) a day selling noodles.

The Post article says out-of-work journalists have been getting help from the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and the Journalists' Aid and Coordination Center of the Reporters' Association of Thailand. Besides offering job-finding help and training programs for new careers - in the crafts, especially - the center has offered loans of 20,000 baht (about $540) for investment in new businesses.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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