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You are > Home > Death and pure terror visit top holiday spot
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
Death and pure terror visit top holiday spot
BY FINBARR SLATTERY
THAILAND, known as the Land of Smiles, has been featuring in the news for quite some time so this week I intend to have a look at the country and what’s happening there.
The Kingdom of Thailand is a country six times the size of the island of Ireland with a population of 67 million. It is situated in a peninsula in South East Asia beside Myanmar – formerly known as Burma – Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia.
Bangkok, with a population of seven million, is the capital city and it is right there that the spotlight is currently because of a struggle for power which is nothing new in Thailand. It has a history of conflicts since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
The present trouble in Thailand started in 2006 when Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, was ousted in a military coup.
This coup happened to make the ousted leader a hero with the masses but Shinawatra, a billionaire telecoms tycoon turned politician, is feared and hated by his rivals in the state. They will do anything to stop him coming back.
The Red Shirts, who have been very much to the fore in TV coverage, started off supporting Shinawatr. They have now developed into a mass movement preaching social change. They want to get rid of the present prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was educated at Eton and Oxford and is a supporter of the Newcastle United Football Club. He came to power in December 2008 as a puppet of the military.
The prime minister offered to hold elections in November and it looked like an agreement could be reached but fresh violence broke out after an attempted assassination of a renegade general who was advising the Red Shirts.
So far there have been 30 deaths, all civilians, and a couple of hundred more have been wounded. The Red Shirts have asked for a cease fire and talks presided over by the United Nations but the prime minister wouldn’t hear of UN intervention, insisting that Thailand did not want any outsiders meddling in their affairs.
Their revered King Bhumibor is old and sick and has no say in affairs. There is a mighty gap there between rich and poor and it looks like the unrest will continue for some time.
The situation in Thailand is best summed up in both the heading and sub-heading on a report from there which was in the International Herald Tribune (May 17): Class War Shakes Foundation of Thailand.
The sub-heading stated: "Long a unifying force, monarch stays quiet as divisions sharpen".
Two months of tension and violence ended last Thursday when the protestors finally gave in after a big assault by the army. The Red-Shirts have now dispersed and gone home.
Thailand has a great tourist trade. Nearly a million visitors from the UK visited the place last year. This year due to the unrest that has taken place, there will certainly be fewer visitors from this side of the world.
Hopefully peace has come to that troubled land and the world will be all the better if it does.
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