With so much focus on what’s happening in Ottawa, it’s easy to miss out on the beautiful story that has happened in Thailand.
Protesters there had been occupying Bangkok’s two main airports for several weeks, demanding the ouster of the government on the basis of electoral fraud. Yesterday a court ruled against the government officials, including the Prime Minister, and banned them from political office for five years. As soon as the Prime Minister assented to the judgement, the protesters turned the airport over to its management and left.
This case is a great example for students of non-violent action. The protesters began six months ago with street protest, then escalated the conflict in August by occupying the Prime Minister’s office. Last week they occupied the airports. The fine line that the leaders of people-power movements must walk is between engaging as many people as possible in escalating the conflict so that it becomes a problem for the opponent and avoiding unsustainable levels of violence against supporters. It involves a careful pushing back of the limits of acceptable dissent. The leadership of the Thai movement has done an excellent job of walking this line, first denying popular legitimacy, then political office and then economic functioning to their opponents, while at the same time maintaining a peaceful situation.
Knowing when to back down is key. The airport occupation has been ended despite the MPs of the outlawed governing party in Thailand forming a new party that will likely maintain their majority in parliament. This cements the good will that the people’s movement has created with the public while demonstrating to their opponents that there is room for a change in behaviour. This stands in contrast to the August 2007 non-violent movement in Burma. The protests there were largely successful for several days, following which the government began signaling that a violent crack-down would begin if protests were not curtailed. Rather than de-escalating the protests or shifting to forms of protest more difficult to attack, the movement continued street demonstrations. The brutal crack-down that followed destroyed the movement and led to the imprisonment and torture of many of its leaders. If the movement had ended street protests and instead moved to a home based protest, such as the banging of pots and pans during the night or extinguishing all lights, they could have continued their momentum without putting the movement at risk, and returned to street protests later.
Like the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., Solidarity in Poland, Otpor! in Serbia and many others, the Thai movement was able to negotiate the slim trail between escalation and violence. It is unfortunate that the media is not recognizing it with the “non-violent” label, as that recognition often sows the seeds for people in other countries to understand and organize non-violent people’s movements of their own.
