Bombs in Bangkok: how will Thailand’s military junta react?

Site of the Erawan Shrine bombing, Bangkok. Lillian Suwanrumpha/Demotix. All rights reserved.More than a week after Bangkok was rocked by what the Prime Minister
called “the worst incident that has ever happened in Thailand”, in
which at least 22 people lost their lives and scores were injured after a
remotely detonated 3kg pipe bomb went off at a popular Hindu shrine, the
country’s authorities are getting nowhere close to solving the whys and whos
behind the attack. Caught between sprawling governmental corruption, lack of “CSI technology”, broken CCTV cameras, the absence of any
claim of responsibility for the bombing, and armed with only a blurry image of
a yellow-shirted male suspect lingering around the Erawan shrine, the Royal
Thai Police (RTP) have little to go on. These inherent ambiguities raise
significant obstacles to unravelling the implications of the attack, which
means that until the RTP uncovers more clues analysts should tread carefully.

Bombings and terrorist attacks have a long history in Thailand, a
country that has for decades dealt with two main sources of violence: a bloody
separatist insurgency in the Malay-Muslim southernmost Pattani province, and political upheavals stemming
from innumerable coups and decades
of military rule. What is different about this attack though is the fact
that it targeted Bangkok, a city that had so far remained almost unscathed from
the strings of attacks rocking the country’s restive deep south. There, at
least 50 improvised explosive devices were detonated or
defused in May of this year and several pipe bombs were used in 2015. This
year’s biggest attack had been a car bomb that wounded seven people when it went off in
April on the island of Koh Samui. In Bangkok, no casualties were recorded when
two pipe bombs exploded outside a luxury shopping mall in early February, in this year’s previously most significant
attack in the Thai capital.

According to analysts, the 17 August bombing could
have been perpetrated either by anti-government radicals, Muslim extremists
fighting for autonomy, renegade elements from the country’s powerful military
or even by outside actors (such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Turkey’s ultranationalist
Grey Wolves, or regional groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah). However, judging
from the scarce information available there are serious issues with almost
every theory.

The fact that no outside actor has claimed responsibility,
coupled with Thailand’s lack of appeal for international terrorists, and the
modus operandi used (the lack of suicide bombers) largely disqualify the
involvement of jihadi organizations. The Malay separatists from the south, who
have been waging a low-level insurgency against the government for more than 50
years, have never strayed away from their immediate region for fear of
eliciting a heavy-handed government response. The so-called Red Shirts (supporters
of ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her equally ousted brother
Thaksin) would stand to win nothing from targeting civilians and would have
sought to attack government buildings instead. There’s equally scant evidence
that the military was involved.

Soldiers on the streets during the May 2014 coup. punloph/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Whatever the nature of the attacker, the short-term effects will be the
same: the Thai military junta, in power since last year’s coup, will continue
down the same road of eroding the country’s democratic liberties in the name of
ensuring stability and security. The claims of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army general who came to power in May 2014 after ousting
the democratically elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra, to restore
Thailand’s democracy will become even murkier.

The ruling junta has already pushed back the date for democratic elections
repeatedly, ostensibly to give it more time to prepare for a constitutional
referendum or work towards greater stability before holding an election.
However, it is more likely that the delay is to give the junta enough time to
eliminate the Shinawatra family from politics completely and ban the leaders of
Yingluck's Pheu Thai Party from running for office. Prime Minister Prayuth — under
the controversial Article 44 — retains absolute power over the
executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government, giving him
unchecked power while internal reforms are underway. According to a new
law enacted just days before the Bangkok bombings, protesting
in front of Thailand’s Parliament could land you a one-year trip to jail.

Complicating everything is the fact that the country's revered monarch,
H.M. King Bhumibol Adulyadej is old and
frail. The present King, reigning since 1946, enjoys tremendous moral
authority on all sides, and has used his influence in the past to bring order
out of the chaos. However, the heir apparent, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn,
enjoys no such universal respect, and the monarchy may lose its influence when
the King passes away. The Thai military-controlled government is highly
motivated to remain in control when that transition occurs, adding one more
element to the complicated equation of Thai politics.

Thailand is also under the lens of the international community, after
the US State Department issued a scathing report on the country’s human
trafficking record. Alongside 23 other countries, Thailand is listed as a ‘Tier
3’ violator in the same company as North Korea, Iran, Libya and other regimes
often viewed as far more anti-democratic than Thailand. The State Department
report suggests that Thailand's labour abuses are persistent and ignored by the government,
and specifically highlights workers’ rights violations in Thailand's seafood
industry.

Such abuses have been widely documented, with a recent Associated
Press series tracking the supply chain of US retailers to Thai processors
selling seafood provided by fishing boats manned by slave labour. The State
Department now has 90 days at its disposal to decide whether to enact
sanctions. Predictably, Prayuth and his government protested the report’s
“uninformed” assessment, and denounced it in an embassy statement from Washington that highlighted progress in
the Thai effort to address human trafficking.

The European Union has equally been critical of Bangkok. In April, the
European Commission put Thailand on a formal
notice for its insufficient reforms in tackling illegal fishing — just
one step away short of imposing a ban on all Thai fisheries imports to the
Union. The country could lose between €575 and €730 million were a ban imposed.

Redshirt protest, September 2010. Ratchaprasong/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Prayuth’s government has galvanized inter-community tensions and has put
Thailand’s economy in a fragile situation, two ingredients that could plunge
the country even deeper into chaos. Irrespective of the nature of the Bangkok
terrorist attack, all the challenges facing Thai society, whether upticks in
violence or dwindling economic fortunes, will be met by the junta with more
repression — give a man a hammer and all the problems will be treated like nails.
As such, it takes a special kind of naivety to assume that Thailand’s junta
intends to pass the baton to a democratic government, and if anything, the
Bangkok bombing provides more reasons for Prayuth to delay elections even
further. Without stronger involvement from western leaders, expect more human
rights abuses coming from the ‘Land of Smiles’.