It's not that you were wrong, that you were careless or misinformed. It's not that you were on the "wrong side", or expressed unacceptable truths from anybody's point of view.
It's that you were not covering what was actually happening. You were covering what was supposed to be happening, from the point of view both of the leaders who welcomed you into their ranks, and of your well-intentioned managers back home. Everybody was encouraging you to be brave and to get back from the front lines with the news we so badly wanted to hear: that there was hope that the poor could be in control of their own destinies. We wanted to hear that demonstrations could convey what demonstrators really wanted, that protetsts could work for the poor and provide ordinary people with democracy, freedom, and justice.
But what you did in the end was cover the medium and not the message, the text without anything between the lines — no doubt, no historical nuance, no confusion or humility on your part, or shame for your ignorance or cultural limitations. You unabashedly took sides when the sides, all of them, were all hell-bent on disguising their real motives, all of which were ignoble on some level, compromised and compromising, everybody benefitting from a level of disorder that only force could control. Because that's what everybody that mattered wanted in the end - dysfunction and chaos, the guns to go off and the buildings to burn. At the leadership level that's all anybody wanted. That's what you missed entirely - the cynicism that was running things everywhere, and the fact that human aspirations were being rolled around on a floor that would soon be ashes.
Read Jonathan Mirsky's fine article, "Vietnam Now", in the current issue of The New York Review of Books (June 24-July 14), and then ask yourself about how that disastrous war was covered by the press. Like the Americans of the Vietnam War, you reported home an interpretation based on your own ideals and assumptions. You began writing the history of an event that hadn't yet started to come out of the closet, and now you and the BBC are going to have to work hard to clarify what actually happened. Indeed, just to acknowledge that you didn't really have much of an answer would be a huge service to the future of this country.
C Woodman
Chiang Mai
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Sinister use of selective memory
Meechai Burapa slates the government for labelling the red-shirt protesters as "terrorists". Does he seriously believe what Bangkok endured for two months was simply protests and not acts of terrorism? I lived through it and I was terrorised, as was a large part of Bangkok.
Sat up there in Chiang Mai, maybe he didn't notice the reds storming Chulalongkorn Hospital. How was that "protest"? Do you believe the nurses and patients were not terrified? Do you think those being attacked with M-79 grenades in Silom believed it "was just a protest" and not terrorism? Do you think tourists at the Dusit Thani, having RPGs blowing up outside their rooms, just went down for breakfast and chatted calmly with other non-terrified guests. "Oh it's just a peaceful demonstration, no worries." All these attacks happened just a few metres from red rally sites. A coincidence?
He says, "killing and beating protesters" is now "reclaiming the area". What else to do? Just leave the mob to carry on with grenade attacks at will? I could fill pages of what the red shirts did in Bangkok, but it's all been said and proven. Maybe Meechai just has a sinister use of selective memory.
Victor Meldrew
Bangkok
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The scornful gaze of the world
I have never been a supporter of Thaksin Shinawatra, and I am not now, as his misdeeds are too much for me to stomach, but the current Thai government has botched things so badly over the past months that anyone with any knowledge of international politics can only conclude that the current government has put Thaksin in the driver's seat, politically.
The government must engage in damage control, and at this point, this is what must be done: The government must come clean about the crackdown and do so with the utmost of expediency. There are dead and wounded foreign journalists to account for. Who shot them and why? There are dead and wounded Thais to account for. Who shot them and why? There are 40 or so Thais missing. What happened to them and where are they?
There is no other way for Thailand to regain credibility than to open the records for all to see, and no other option than to do so within days, not months or years.
I know this letter is futile as the government is apparently a bunch of over-educated fools bent on their own political destruction while at the same time dedicated to their own political gain at the expense of Thailand's existence.
Guy Baker
Bangkok
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