UMW Regional GeogBlog

Red Shirt protest, April 2010. Photo: Gavin Gough (see note at the end of this blog entry.)

I am writing this in Bangkok, having decided to ignore the U.S. State Department warning that I not come here. I’m glad I did. The dire warning read, in part

Due to escalating violence in central Bangkok, demonstrations in Chiang Mai, and other incidents throughout Thailand, all U.S. citizens should avoid nonessential travel to Thailand.

The reason for the State Department’s consternation was a protest by anti-government demonstrators (or, as they would have it, pro-democracy advocates) who have been camped out in part of Bangkok’s business district for some seven weeks.  These so-called “Red Shirts” have barricaded themselves behind bamboo fortifications, and by some accounts have set up a mini-city, complete with food vendors and first aid stations, in a park, along some streets, and in a major intersection. They have so far successfully repulsed efforts by security forces (who enjoy the support of loyalist “Yellow Shirts”) to dislodge them.

Although the demonstrations have severely disrupted life in parts of Bangkok, for most of the city, as far as I could tell, life is going along pretty much as usual.  This is a very big city, with some 10 million residents, or about a third of the country’s urban population, spread out over nearly 8,000 sq km of land. Bangkok is by far the largest city in Thailand, the economic and financial heart of the country, and the seat of political power. It is, in short, a classic primate city.

Generations of geography students have dutifully written down and memorized the definition of a primate city: a city  ”at least twice as large as the next largest city and more than twice as significant” (The definition was coined by geographer Mark Jefferson in 1939.) But why bother to identify primate cities? Why does urban primacy matter?

The current political conflict in Thailand provides a vivid answer to this question. Although the conflict is complicated it is, at its heart, a clash between a political and economic elite, based mainly in Bangkok (largely the Yellow Shirts and their supporters) and a poorer, marginalized, and predominantly rural populace (represented by the Red Shirts.)

By the late 1990s, the Southeast Asian economic boom had brought rapid growth to Thailand and some of its Southeast Asian neighbors.  The benefits of this growth, though, were not evenly distributed. Educated urbanites have become a lot wealthier, and the streets of Bangkok are today lined with modern skyscrapers, multinational hotels, and stores selling imported electronic gizmos and designer clothing. The rural and small-town poor, though, feel that they have largely been left behind.

Around the turn of the century, Thailand’s rural poor found a new and unlikely champion in Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire cell-phone entrepreneur turned populist politician. Thaksin was elected Prime Minister in 2001, and quickly set about seeing to the needs of his political base by promoting cheaper health care and education, especially in rural areas.  He was re-elected in a landslide in 2005. Thaksin’s election and his policies greatly displeased Thailand’s Bangkokian elites and, importantly, their allies in the military. In 2006 Thaksin’s government was overthrown in a bloodless coup, and in 2007 a new government was elected, headed by Eton- and Oxford-educated Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva (Thaksin’s party was banned from participating in the election.) Thaksin and his wife were both were convicted on corruption charges (trumped up, his supporters say) and he was stripped of his Thai citizenship. To avoid imprisonment, Thaksin fled the country, and now lives and holds court in Dubai, and has, intriguingly, become a citizen of Montenegro.

The government and its Yellow Shirt supporters claim that Thaksin is bankrolling the Red Shirts’ protest. A friend in Bangkok muttered darkly to me last week that the reason for the Red Shirts’ protest is that they are each being paid 300 baht a day – about $9 – to protest, more than they could make if they were working. He went on to describe the Red Shirts as “disgusting,” and said that he is “ashamed” that the authorities have not acted more decisively to put an end to the protests (Update: Two weeks after I wrote this, the authorities did just that, with bloody consequences. See my note at the end of this piece.)

The main demand of the Red Shirts is that the current Prime Minister dissolve Parliament and hold new elections – elections which the Red Shirts believe that they would win.

As I left Bangkok on May 6, the Red Shirts were still camped out in central Bangkok. Violence had flared up two weeks earlier, and 25 people – protesters and police – were killed. Another two died the day I left Thailand. But the Red Shirts and the government appeared to be inching toward a compromise. The Prime Minister agreed to hold elections in November; the Red Shirt leaders welcomed this but demanded more guarantees before dismantling their barricades.

Perhaps this phase of the conflict is drawing to a close. But the basic economic and political geography of Thailand’s troubles, and the profound imbalance between the primate city and rural areas, remain. If elections are held in November, and if they are free and fair, it seems likely that parties championing the rural majority would triumph over those representing the Bangkok elite.  It is difficult to imagine that an era of political stability would follow. I hope, though, that if political instability does continue, it is the kind of peaceful instability that seems to be a Thai specialty.  It was epitomized in the bloodless 2006 coup, after which the military general who took charge appeared on television to apologize to the Thai people for any inconvenience caused by the coup.

Meanwhile, life in most of Thailand and most of Bangkok proceeds as normal. The streets are clogged with traffic, sidewalk vendors sell some of the world’s most delicious street foods, and thriving day and night-markets ensure that the city bustles 24/7.

Except that is, for those who rely on the country substantial tourist industry for their livelihoods. The demonstrations, and the recommendations of the U.S. State Department and others, have hit the tourist industry hard. For the first time ever, I did not have to wait in line to pass through immigration or customs at Bangkok’s Suvarnambhumi Airport. A friend and I were the only diners in large tourist-oriented restaurant near my hotel (which was offering 40 percent discounts in an effort to attract visitors.)

Update – June 2010

I was back in Bangkok a couple of weeks after I wrote this blog entry, and the situation was very different. On the day I arrived, government forces had acted forcibly to eject the Red Shirts from their encampment in central Bangkok. Red Shirt leaders surrendered, and protesters set fire to Thailand’s largest shopping mall, near the protest site. The government imposted a curfew, prohibiting anyone from been out of doors overnight in Bangkok and several other parts of the country.

I arrived in Bangkok late on the first night of the curfew.  I had been advised by a friend in the city not to try to go to the city center; it would be too dangerous, he said.  As it turned out, I wouldn’t have been able to get there. Although taxis transporting foreigners were exempt from the provisions of the curfew, there were hardly any taxis at the airport, and as far as I could gather none of them would have taken me into the city center anyway. I eventually found an overpriced airport limo to take me to a hotel on the outskirts of the city.

I have been to Bangkok many times, and in my experience, there is always traffic on the roads. On this night, I had the surreal experience of traveling along a six lane highway from the airport, with no other cars on the road for most of the 20 minute journey. As left the airport, I saw a small pile of burning tires on the roadside; in the distance I could see plumes of smoke rising above the lights of the city center. My taxi was stopped twice at military roadblocks, but we were waved through without incident. Next day, I returned to the airport, again without problems, to catch a flight to Cambodia

A week later, I returned to Thailand, this time to visit the city of Pattaya. Much of the country was still under curfew, but Pattaya had been exempted after two nights because its economy depends so heavily on the kinds of economic activity that take place primarily by night. Although the town was bustling, some local business people I spoke to told me that they had been seriously affected by Thailand’s political troubles during the preceding months.

My advice to would-be visitors to Thailand – or any other ‘troubled’ part of the world – is that they look at a map, do the math, and understand that the advisories issued by the U.S. State Department sometimes tend toward the paranoid.  Thailand is a country the size of Spain and home to nearly 70 million people. Protests – which despite the violence that ended them were primarily peaceful – took place in a small area of the very large city of Bangkok. Around 40 people died in the protests, none of them foreign tourists (most of whom were far away the beaches of Phuket, Koh Samui, and Pattaya) For Americans or Europeans coming to Thailand on vacation even at a time like this, the greatest danger will be the same as it has always been in Bangkok and London: looking left instead of right when crossing the street.

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The photograph at the top of this post is from an excellent collection by photographer Gavin Gough, who also provides a compelling description of the events and atmosphere in the streets of Bangkok during the protests.