Red shirts, wake up: You're being used

Indeed, there’s another, even more disturbing side to Ratchaprasong. The irony I emphasised Thursday was that the goal of the 2010 riots wasn’t political at all but a complete financial restructuring, and to achieve that goal big money was splashed like blood, horror-film style, all over Bangkok. It was big money that shouted at the women and children on the stages, sharpened the stakes, stacked the tyres, and of course pulled the trigger on anybody who got in the way, including two foreign cameramen and Seh Daeng. Yes, it was big money that launched those grenades into the crowds, that torched the buildings, rubbished whole neighbourhoods and even hospitals, and is even now as I write this baying for more blood in Government House. In other words, it's a big money armageddon!

The irony I omitted yesterday is, in the context, even more bizarre. Despite all of the above, the longing for a new world of those women and children on the mats at Ratchaprasong was completely real, and their grievances were, and still are, urgent and must be addressed. Yet nothing is being done to help them, just window-dressing, and the red shirts simply have to wake up to this fact. To this day the dark skin and pakomas of Thailand’s poor are being exploited by smooth cynics in suits in corporate offices, some of them not even Thai, and the plan is not to restructure Thai society to be fairer but to be more profitable – strip the assets, sack the management, lay off the workers and out of the ashes create a brave new mega-bourse, monopoly palace and spa!

When the red shirts wake up to how they’re being used I’ll be only to happy to write with them!

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai