Reconciliation anywhere else in the world requires two key things: truth and trust. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s five-point road map to end the political stalemate does include an element of truth but lacks any measures for building trust.
However, there are several problems on the trust front. The government, especially the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation, has created a lot of mistrust over the weeks-long demonstration.
At the beginning, the authorities and the mainstream media painted, or in some case smeared, the protesters as being an anti-monarchy movement that was using terrorism to topple the revered institution and turn Thailand into a republic.
A conspiracy theory was plotted to accuse a number of people, including academics and opposition politicians, of planning to bring down the monarchy. The emergency centre even released a flow chart linking people with the plot.
Many were charged with terrorism and lese majeste, with several others put on a watch list and summoned for questioning at the 11th Infantry Regiment since the state of emergency was announced.
Hundreds of people have already “reported” to the centre for reasons that, to this day, remain unclear. In fact, about 20 people report to the authorities daily.
Chulalongkorn University student Suluck Lamubol was one of the people summoned, and she still doesn’t know why she was summoned and what she is suspected to have done. She is on the watch list just because she works for the Student Federation of Thailand (SFT) and had expressed sympathy for the red shirts. Two other students, including SFT secretary-general Anuthee Dejthevaporn, were also summoned to the same inquiry session with her on Sunday.
“Basically the military said there was nothing to be afraid of because they just wanted our cooperation and ‘useful’ information that could bring ‘peace’ back to our country,” Suluck said in an e-mail to The Nation.
Suluck and the other people summoned, underwent three sessions in three different rooms, starting with a basic inquiry by the Department of Special Investigation and then a psychology operation where officials “felt like nice aunts telling me not to do drugs”. In the last session, they were asked several questions such as whether they were familiar with ex-communist insurgent Surachai Danwattananusorn and if any of the red-shirt leaders were planning to overthrow the monarchy.
Indeed, officials at the emergency centre typically believe that the students are linked to certain people believed to have anti-monarchist sentiments.
However, Suluck was surprised to find her name attached to Surachai’s Red Siam group. “I was very puzzled by this because I’ve never been involved with this group,” she said.
Besides, even though the officials keep saying they needed to collect information, they have never clarified what they were planning to do with this data.
“All I can say is that it was boring and a waste of time, rather than being intimidating. I must say, the intelligence here is not very functional,” she said.