Interview with Thongchai Winichakul
Dr Thongchai Winichakul
Part 1 Thu, 05 April 2012
interviewed by Andrew Spooner
To anyone interested in Thailand’s recent history and politics Dr. Thongchai Winichakul needs little introduction. A famed academic and historian, now resident in Singapore and the USA, Dr. Thongchai was a student leader during the terrible Thammasat Massacre of 1976 and spent time in prison following those events.
I met Dr. Thongchai in late 2011 at a SOAS event in London and then once again in Singapore earlier this year. We discussed at length the failures of Thailand’s human rights NGOs and in particular both Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI). As readers of this blog will know I have previously been critical of both organisations.
More recently other revelations, sourced from the Wikileaks Thai cables, have focused on HRW’s secretive connivance and support of the highly illegal and anti-democratic 2006 Thai Army coup and the resulting military junta government. So far HRW have refused, point blank, to answer any questions regarding their support for the Thai Army’s military takeover and rumours persist that their Bangkok-based staff are closely linked to the neo-fascist pro-coup extremists in the PAD. Furthermore one of their staff members, Sunai Phasuk,
met with US Embassy staffis mentioned in US Embassy cables on 58 occasions – an astonishing number - over a 5-year period. Is Sunai employed to conduct intel gathering for the US government rather than to work as someone committed to “human rights”?Other questions clearly need to be asked about HRW and Sunai’s closeness to the US mission in Thailand, particularly in light of the USA’s backing of the 2006 junta and its continued support for Thailand’s brutal army - an institution which is implicated in several massacres and almost 20 military coups. Yet, astonishingly HRW, far from examining or explaining their own support for the 2006 coup – something which nearly all analysts state unleashed the present round of instability in Thailand, culminating in the brutal Bangkok Massacre of 2010 – released a report in late-2011 condemning the democratically elected Yingluck Shinawatra government of “back-sliding” on human rights (I will return to this issue at a later date).
With these issues in mind I asked if Dr Thongchai would be willing to conduct an email-based interview. He agreed – this is that interview.
Andrew Spooner:
How well do you think Amnesty Interntional (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Thailand have dealt with the cases of both political and lèse majesté prisoners?Thongchai Winichakul:
I’m going to talk about lèse majesté law and its victims only because I am not sure how broad or particular “the cases of political prisoners” you mean here, e.g. are victims of the state’s suppressions in the deep south considered “political prisoners” in your view too? If they are, HRW and AI have done a pretty good job on many cases. I don’t know and have not heard if the HRW and AI consider the prisoners related to the anti-government in April-May 2010 “political” or not. (Thongchai? : Ironically, it should be noted that now Thai government considers these people “political prisoners” - although the meaning of such term in Thai may be different from the one held by international human rights community - I’m not sure HRW or AI have said anything about these people yet).
For the lèse majesté cases, they did poorly. Between 2005-present, for the first 4-5 years they were inactive, silent, and implicitly against the effort to fight the unjust law and to help victims of the law. The bottom-line was, in my opinion, the HRW and AI got information from, and followed the views of the local Thai human rights community which is dominated by anti-Thaksin people. They are very biased and lack professionalism or human rights principles. They are too politicized and brought their politics to cloud their views and judgments on human rights issues. Most of them supported the coup. A few leaders of these Thai human rights people even joined the “tours” organized and financed by the coup regime to explain to the world the necessity of the coup. Their political biases blinded them from seeing the victims of the lèse majesté as political prisoners or prisoners of conscience because most of these victims are Thaksin supporters or at least were actively against the coup regime. Many of human rights lawyers became active lawyers for the anti-Thaksin (PAD Yellow) camp. Meanwhile, up until today, these human rights activists and lawyers refuse to provide legal assistance to the poor families of Red supporters who were victims of several state suppressions, of lèse majesté laws, and who were jailed since the crackdown in mid-2010. (Thongchai? : A few lawyers and activists, mostly from younger generations, broke out from these Thai human rights “mandarins” to help the Red supporters.) These “Thaksin-hater” human rights people have dominated and influenced the Thai human rights community. (Thongchai? : These people themselves changed their position in recent years. Unsurprisingly, AI and HRW also changed their positions too around the same time.)
Throughout these years, these Thai human rights leaders and in particular the AI researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, always cited one case of the lèse majesté victims that they helped – the case of Sulak Sivaraksa, an anti-Thaksin critic who was charged under the Thaksin government. However, this is just more evidence of bias and not any evidence of their professionalism or adherence to human rights principles. In more recent times Sulak’s case needs to be compared to a case AI often cited as the reason why they cannot support other victims of lèse majesté – that of “Da Torpedo”. Zawacki argues in public and in private conversations, that Da Torpedo committed hate speech, thus disqualifying her from being a prisoner of conscience or political prisoner. In my opinion, this reasoning on such a “technical ground” is pathetic, thoughtless and cruel. Many political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are involved in armed struggles against their governments and have given much harsher speeches. Nonetheless, even if we put aside the Da Torpedo case, around the same time there are many other victims who were not involved in any hate speech at all. Yet AI (Thongchai? : and HRW) were also silent on these victims and never provided a good reason for their silence.
Part 2 Wed, 18 April 2012
Thongchai Winichakul continues:
Keep in mind that around the same time [Spooner? : as lèse majesté cases were increasing], the Thai human rights community, including Zawacki [Spooner? : Amnesty’s Thai-based researcher], sang the praise of the Thai King as a champion of Human Rights. Given the horrible human rights violations by Thaksin government in the anti-drug campaign and the conflicts in the deep south, these Thai human rights people only saw things in black and white, i.e. Thaksin’s opponents are good guys, the coup and the king’s intervention were good things to happen. They failed to stand firmly on the human rights principles regardless of who committed those violations of human rights or what governments use the lèse majesté law to silence their critics and suppress their opponents.
AI and HRW listened to their own bureaucrats without listening to criticism and comments that they should be aware of the problems within Thai human rights community. They don’t care these “outsiders”. [Spooner? : In one conversation with a HRW person at the New York office, the person sarcastically wondered if I was a Thaksin supporter. A similar reaction also came from AI in London and from Thai human rights activists to other critics of them.] AI and HRW, in my opinion, have become bureaucratized, thus unable listen to the voices that are different from their own bureaucrats. Given criticism on their bureaucrats, they protect their people like any mandarin would do. After years of complaints, they have not yet opened up any investigation into their mistakes. Instead, in recent years, especially AI, have gradually slid into a better position that lèse majesté is a problem and victims are prisoners of conscience. They do this without admitting any mistake but instead claiming that this is the position they have held all along – which is not true.
Another reason for their mistake is, in my opinion, that Thailand is not very important for them to care or spend much time on. One of the major arguments why they did not care the victims of the suppression in Thailand in 2009-2010 is that those Red victims were violent and had weapons. Meanwhile HRW and AI support the popular uprisings in the Arab world. They are correct for the latter, but they don’t even care regarding the flaws of their reasoning for their silence and absence of support to victims in Thailand’s case. Thailand is too small for them to acknowledge their mistake. They simply move into a new position without anybody’s attention. Mistakes are quietly swept under the rug like a capable bureaucracy would do.
One of the reasons AI and HRW have gradually changed their position re: the lèse majesté issues is because the situation in Thailand has changed and the views of international community have changed too. The latter may be more important to AI and HRW. It now becomes so obvious and undeniable that lèse majesté law is a serious violation of human rights and victims, regardless of their political colors, should be judged by human rights principles and not by their political colors.
Andrew Spooner:
If there have been failures what do you think these two pre-eminent human rights NGOs could have done differently?
Thongchai Winichakul:
They should listen to other voices who are fighting for human rights not just their own bureaucrats. Stop belittling these different voices from the same side. If they could have a mechanism to hold their own country researchers, like Mr Zawacki, accountable, it would be great. I do not know if AI and HRW have a good enough bureaucracy to accept transparency and accountability or not. I do not know how to change the behavior of those “mandarins” in London and New York. That is beyond my ability to understand how they work. It is not my problem for not understanding it but it is their task to make sure to not allow this mistake to happen again. Ultimately, I think both HRW and AI and all their bureaucrats should stand firmly on human rights principles. I hope this is not too much to ask for.