Thai Student Protests Past and Present - Transcript

00:00:02 This is the Nordic Asia podcast.
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00:00:08
Duncan McCargo OK, welcome, everyone, to the Thailand Update 2021. We have been running the Thailand update for a few years now. We started it back in 2015 and it's become a kind of popular, regular event. What we've typically done in the past with the Thailand Update is a kind of overview of different things that have been going on in Thailand. We've typically had people talking about politics, about economy, foreign policy, society, justice, media and a range of issues. We're not quite doing that this year. We decided to focus in on a topic and make this very much a thematic update, which is a little bit different in style from what we've done before. So the theme that we're focusing on today is that of political protests revisited. As most of you following Thailand will know, there were a large number of demonstrations that took place last year, many of them inspired and initiated by student groups that called for the resignation of the government, that called for revision of the Constitution. And after the 10th of August and a very, very important protest event that took place the ranks at the campus of Thammasat University. They were also calling for reform of the monarchy and breaking a lot of taboos in terms of previous discussions about Thailand. So we wanted to focus this year on the question of protests and bring together a number of people who've been working on related issues. One of the proximate reasons for that is that along with Aim Sinpeng, Saowanee Alexander and Kanokrat Lertchoosakul, we were able to put together a special section of critical Asian studies. So four articles about the 2020 protests are already out. This brings me to an incredibly important book that appeared last year, which is Moments of Silence by Thongchai Winichakul who is here with us today.
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00:02:03
Duncan McCargo It's a book that focuses on the subtitle, tells it already the forgetting of the October 6th, 1976 massacre in Bangkok. It's a Hawaii University Press Book. Thongchai Winichakul needs no introduction to most of you. I know it's a cliche to say that, but in this case it's really true. He's such a huge figure in Thai studies. We all know his incredibly important book, Siam Mapped, and we've been eagerly awaiting this very important book, which in many ways helps us to think about and to understand what has been going on in Thailand more recently in a different way. So it's a kind of synchronicity about the appearance of this book in 2020 and the re-emergence of student protests in 2020 t hat made me feel like we really, really had to bring Thongchai here. He is, as many of you know, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And we're going to have a chance to talk about his book and also to talk about how themes and issues in this book relate to things that have been going on in Thailand more recently. So Thongchai, welcome to the Thailand Update.
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00:03:04
Thongchai Winichakul Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
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00:03:06
Duncan McCargo This is a great privilege and something I'll be looking forward to for a long time. We mentioned the book and I know you've given a number of other talks about the book. I would, if people really want to hear Thongchai talk at length about the book, I'd recommend the University of Michigan talk, which I think you did in January, that is on YouTube. And there you show a lot of images and talk through the book in a much more systematic way than perhaps we will have time to do today. But for those who aren't yet in a position to say that they've read the book, maybe you could tell us a bit about it. And it's a highly personal book, but it's not primarily a memoir. Can you explain how the writing of Moments of Silence came about?
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00:03:45
Thongchai Winichakul It has been a long process I have in mind for a long time. The first rule I have in mind: I'm not going to write a memoir. And second thing is that I'm not going to write what happened on that morning. I want to try to talk about the massacre in such a way that, I mean, I believe other people have talked about what happened in the past some years when they first thought about it, nobody talked about it at all. This is about 20 years ago. But even that, I think, is not the place where I want to write anything that people could say t hat kind of typical explanation of a massacre, what political context, who did what, I try to avoid. At the same time, I have this idea in my head of time and memory study. That's the imprint from World War II anniversary Holocaust anniversary. So at that time, I thought back about what happened in Thailand that time 20 years ago now, 40 years ago. So I have been doing this for about two decades. Slowly, at the same time, this process parallel with the process that I would call memory project for October 6th massacre, try to dig up more information, try to learn more about relatives, try to find a body of my friend. If you, if people read one chapter is about finding the body of my friend, that's all the same process of writing the book. The same process of memory project, in actual memory project in Thailand. At the same time it is hard to say, but let's to make it short. It's the same process myself. You can see somebody say a catharsis, that's fine, but it's in process myself, making sense of what happened, making sense for myself.
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00:05:27
Duncan McCargo Yeah, that's a great summary of how it comes across to me as a reader, I guess to understand what's in the book. And it's a big book, it's a long book. There are 10 core chapters. We may not have time to talk about all of those chapters right here and now. But perhaps I could focus in on three key words that appear in the title that in many ways help to define, at least to my understanding, what the book is about. And the first it's in the subtitle, not before the colon, but still it leaps out, of course, and overpowers all the other words in the title is the word massacre. At the core of this book, there's a terrible episode of violence that looms large in Thailand's modern political history that you were centrally involved in. How does the book help us to understand that violence differently?
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00:06:14
Thongchai Winichakul I'm not sure we understand the political mass violence in Thailand that much, even though it happened too many times over the past 50 years. I mean, not just the October 6th, '73, '76 in May, '92 and then 2010. But if you count, Duncan, you're more familiar with this, if you count all the major mass violence in the South, I would say maybe a dozen over the past 50 years. But typical explanations usually focuses on political content and action. Who did what? I think if we take a different approach, in fact, such as you did in your book on Thailand south, Tearing Apart the Land, we step back and look at it from a broader perspective. We can see some common threads across those political violence, mass violence in Thailand, although people talk about it. But let's say, I don't think it's you now, they have far more to examine, far more to talk about that. I take that approach to see the October 6th, not just the political factors in the book. I focus on what happened and political factors, mainly in the first two, maybe only one chapter, chapter two. The rest of them is more about the silence, about the enigmatic effect, the long lasting impact of violence, such a scale without justice or closure. It's about changing memory and many reasons for silence for many people. So in other words, October 6th massacre is not just political, but ideological and cultural ones, too. For example, the police action and inaction on that, there is very much ideological and cultural factors are part of that that make the palace roll, palace action inaction in the massacre. So I hope that the book says something more, ask something more about those factors, non-political factors. And I hope that contributes something to how people think about other massacres, other mass violence in that way, too.
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00:08:14
Duncan McCargo Right, I mean, the massacre is the word that looms largest in the title, but probably the second largest word right there before the colon is the word silence. Why has there been so much silence even to this day about exactly what happened on the 6th of October, 1976?
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Thongchai Winichakul I think first, fear, fear for retaliation by the royalists. Second, shame or at least uneasiness, discomfort among the victim, among the perpetrators and among the public and the public too, a discomfort to talk about it for different reasons of course. The uneasiness of each group, maybe it may be down to every individual, but for different reasons. And in the third one, is evasion for the sake of superficial and immediate peace, which in Thailand they call reconciliation. I think those three: fear, shame and evasiveness for different reasons at different times, at different degrees to different groups, depends on the changing political context over the past 40 years after the massacre that that's a main thing, main content of the book.
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00:09:24
Duncan McCargo Which naturally leads us to the third question, which is this word unforgetting. I guess I puzzle over the words because I wonder what's the difference between unforgetting and remembering and also the moments? I guess there are moments of silence. There's a moment of unforgetting. Could you say something about this word unforgetting and in what sense you'd say that the '76 massacre has been or was unforgotten? And when that took place?
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00:09:48
Thongchai Winichakul I intentionally, I didn't use the word unforgotten because people are too familiar with the word. I use the word unforgetting. I'm not sure this is good English, but the word unforgetting would be a bit disruptive to the common familiarity with unforgotten. Disruptive because I want to emphasize the condition of memory, which cannot be voiced out. The inability to articulate the memory in public so it's not fully remembering or fully forgetting. No, it's a kind of emphasize the discomfort, the conspicuous state of memory between remembering and forgetting the kind of state of memory in-between. And in my argument, I hope it is clear in my argument, that is visible and loud, but it is also absence in a lack of voice. So inability to articulate, but people know it is. Inability to create a systematic or let's say a clear narrative of what happened and why is painful. But people recognize that, yes, it is that kind of condition we can think about silence in music, a theme, those I would call meaningful silence. So I want to forget or focus on that silence of that kind. That's why I called it the ‘unforgetting’ rather than unforgotten. I believe that the October 6th memory and forgetting, the silence of it is a haunting condition. And I believe that, in fact, is common to every society. But I think it's more striking in an authoritarian society in which weapons may not be the primary means of control, but that society with strong ideological and cultural repression, such as Thailand. I think silence of this kind, a liminal state between remembering and forgetting would be more in place.
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00:11:47
Duncan McCargo Yes, I was actually about to follow up by asking you whether this was exactly what you're saying, a liminal space between memory and forgetting. And who is in the liminal space? Is everybody in that space? Or are the state sides as well in the space? Or is it the participants?
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00:12:02
Thongchai Winichakul I wouldn't say everybody, of course, because not many people have memory of it. I would say people who have memory of it. Which means, I argued a lot. I mentioned, in the book I mentioned, I have examples, but let's say into to generalize, I would say both the victims and perpetrators for different reasons. And also the public means I'm not sure who, but let's say a large number of people who know the incident, who remember the incident, but it doesn't mean everybody, of course. So they are all kind of in the limitless state, such as, for example, for the victims. They don't want to voice out because they're not sure of the retaliation. For the families of the dead, they're not the same victim as their families, but they are also silent. As recently as 2016, when I mean, I have a team of research assistants tried to contact them. So many of them still refuse to interview, refuse to give, to talk to us because they're still in fear. For the perpetrators, over time, political situation has changed. I think they know they know that the public, the society at large did not support the action, on that day, did not support the killing. But as far as I have talked to twenty people, former enemy, you might say, or former adversaries, none of them feel shame. None of them feel remorse. They just know that it's not time for them to speak up. They're boasted in the first year after the massacre, boasted of their accomplishment. But since then, they have graduated into silence. Until, when I met them in the mid 2000s, I took a real killer, the real killer who boasted about, yes, they are the real killer, yes to laugh at it. But they said they want to speak out. Many of them, including a number of Red Gaurs, the infamous group, that people blame them a lot. I mean, they tribute the killing to them. In fact, they argue they didn't do. They feel betrayed. Betrayed because of what? Because they did the right thing, did a good thing, save the country, but the public society never honored them so they go to silence.
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00:14:13
Duncan McCargo I hadn't planned to ask you this, but now you're talking about it. I mean, what was it like to talk to those people with that kind of view, given your own history with them?
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00:14:21
Thongchai Winichakul Oh, maybe we don't have enough time. All I can say is that there are a number of questions I should have asked him. I wanted to ask him more. And my research assistant at the time encouraged me to go back and in the end I refused. I said, that's enough, I can't do it.
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00:14:42
Duncan McCargo Yes, understandable. Very understandable.
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00:14:45
Thongchai Winichakul Apart from the three key words in the title, I would invite anybody who is interested in the book to look at the three main components of the cover. That's how you can conceptualize the book as well. The hanging, the palace, and the emptiness on the cover.
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00:15:03
Duncan McCargo Yes, you know, it had been a kind of cliche to say, well, students used to be at the center of political protest and political activity in Thailand in the 1970s, and after 1976, they ceased to perform that kind of role. And, in most of the protests that we've had since, students didn't play a leading part in those protests. It really makes us ask questions about what were the parallels, the similarities, the differences with earlier events. So could you tell us from your own knowledge and research, and of course, having been there as one of the leaders of that protest, what was the nature of the political protests that you and your fellow students were engaged in during the period that led up to the 6th of October massacre? What were you protesting about on the 5th of October exactly?
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Thongchai Winichakul All I can say is this one point. If we talk about a comparison between 40 years ago and today, the movement today is not formed or inspired by a systematic ideology like the one in the 1970s. The current movement, in my view, is primarily the responses to the hyper royalist authoritarian condition in Thailand, not only in politics, but the hyper royalist condition, authoritarian condition, that I talk about is pervasive in every social institution, in everyday life. I think the movement today is a response, it's a reaction to that. The movement 44 years ago or even more than that since 1973. It may start as the antimilitary, but by 1976 it's a movement that was inspired, influenced pretty much by an ideology, by the Maoist ideology. That is a major difference. This nature, the nature of the current movement, I believe facilitator allows them to become much less organized, in which this is quite a contrast to the strong but rigid one in 1976. In other words, I think the government often tried to find a driving force, the people or person or organization, the hidden conspiratorial movement behind a student. I think the driving force behind the protest movement today is the royalist authoritarian regime itself.
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00:17:28
Duncan McCargo Absolutely. And as you're already hinting at, monarchy is looming very large in the 2020 protests, as I said, from the August 10th protest at Thammasat Rangsit campus when the ten demands on the 10th of August about Rama the X announced. Monarchy is also a sort of a constant presence in your book that, as you just noted, the little picture of the palace in the bottom left hand corner of the front cover. Was monarchy something that student protesters were directly concerned with in 1976? Were you thinking about monarchy or are you thinking about other questions in those days?
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00:18:05
Thongchai Winichakul A lot. A lot. Well, we didn't say much right in the movement that time, '73 to '76. I think the student movement even more the student into other groups in society. We started off as antimilitary rule, but around 1975, mid 1975, to be more precise, the movement turn left, way left. Partly informed by the knowledge, the awareness of the role of the monarchy and partly both cause and effect. I mean, partly informed by and also after that we pay attention more to the philosophy of the activists and the public know about the monarchy, politics, monarchy, strong anti-communist, even antidemocratic politics. We talk about the monarchy a lot among ourselves, among the activists. And yes, we did talk about the monarchy in public forum, such as in songs, in public discussion and so on. But most of the time, in coded language or evasively, we didn't do it as explicitly as the protest today because at the time, I think I still think is right. We understand that with the strong royalist anti-communist, mostly at the time if we crossed such a line because it jeopardized our movement, that that's why we talked a lot. But rarely explicitly, almost not explicitly.
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00:19:42
Duncan McCargo And another theme that comes out very strongly in your book that resonates with those of us who've been following more recent developments in Thailand is this media problem, distortion, misrepresentation, what we would nowadays call disinformation, which you very much faced as a movement. Do you see similarities between what is going on now or do you think the mainstream media is now better or much the same as it was in 1976?
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00:20:10
Thongchai Winichakul We talk about mainstream, right?
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00:20:11
Duncan McCargo Yes.
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00:20:12
Thongchai Winichakul Not about TV and major dailies. OK, I think the mainstream media in Thailand, especially the electronic media, the radio at the time is radio and TV. Now, radio may not have more much influence than TV to some extent, to a greater extent I believe. The mainstream media in Thailand either belong to the military or the government. So they all belong to the state, even the one run by private companies they rent or the lease, they get the concession to run the media. So all controlled by the state. And in October 6th, in '76, the military took it back and controlled the whole mediascape in the country for days, I think for months. Even the daily the printed media, they are under control of the state. So I think it's the same situation then and now to the extent that I believe this one, I never do research. In fact, I read your books, Duncan, yours on the media. I believe that submissiveness and working I mean, operating in fear is integral part of the media culture. Submissiveness and fear is part of the media culture in Thailand. Their behavior, a lack of professionalism, is as horrible today, as it was in the past. There's one difference, in my opinion. In the past, the media had resisted the control much more than today. I think today the mainstream media has surrendered its professionalism and its responsibility to the public even before any threat from the state, because they're interested and and their ideologies are in line with the with the ones of the state. So I, as an observer, I think threat and control is not much needed when collusion and collaboration prevails. They don't need that. So the state today didn't resist, it become part of that. I don't know if people call it a state or civil society. If the old fashioned theoretical thinking is separate between the two. In this case, I think this main function of civil society into media, it's part of the state by collusion and by collaboration. The difference today is the availability of the social media beyond the state's control.
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00:22:43
Duncan McCargo While I could say a lot myself about this, obviously, I guess and I haven't been in Thailand the past few months, but what people tell me is that if I had been, if you didn't know, then you probably wouldn't be aware from mainstream media what the ten demands that the students articulated on the 10th of August were, what are the ten points that need to be reformed about the monarchy. Some reference might be made to monarchy reform, but the ten points printed in mainstream media or announced on mainstream TV hasn't really happened. You've had to go to alternative media to get information, and that's very sad in 2020 and 2021. I mean, another central question that comes up, and this obviously must be in our minds now, again, is that of impunity. That those responsible for massacring civilians have never been brought to justice in Thailand. What's the relationship between the culture of impunity that we've seen in '76, '92, 2010, in the South, as you say, and the ways in which the current situation may unfold?
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00:23:39
Thongchai Winichakul Impunity has always been part of the Thai state. I think in Tyrell's 2018 book, In Plain Sight, it's about how impunity has been inseparable from development of the Thai state, at least over the past 50 -60 years. She focuses more much on the authoritarian regimes at different times. In my study of Thai legal history, which I presented last year and published last year, impunity is integral to Thai jurisprudence. The whole ecosystem is built on providing the prerogative. Impunity is a kind of prerogative the state always enjoys. The link between impunity and all those cases because as they always have the prerogative the state knows to some extent, to great extent, how to give that impunity. And it looks like in the past seven, eight years the Prayuth regime, I use this word, I know it's Prajak’s word, but I use this word in a broader sense than him, than government, in the sense that people above and behind it, in a sense beyond the extended regime. I mean, beyond the government, including the court. It looks like the police regime in the past seven years is aware of his prerogative, his privilege aware of that, that they can use impunity, they're shameless. They're taking advantage of it, that's how they become shameless. It's like Trump keep doing what they did, even though he's wrong. Shamelessly because they know that nobody can touch them.
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00:25:17
Duncan McCargo And that is worrying for the current situation of the student protests.
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00:25:21
Thongchai Winichakul Yeah, because it's built in the state, it'ss built in the legal system,
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00:25:25
Duncan McCargo They can be pretty sure they're not likely to be called to account for whatever they do. in other talks on the Michigan talk. You gave a very intriguing reference to Chapter 11. You've talked, we talked about how the book really has 10 chapters. And you've said that now after these recent protests and the opening up of previously taboo discussions about monarchy since the August 10th rally and so on, that you you would, if you went back right to Chapter 11, at one point, you read out something, it seemed like the opening paragraph of Chapter 11. Could you explain to people joining us today what might be in this Chapter 11 of yours? We're hoping there'll be a second edition, including this Chapter 11 will give us a further preview.
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00:26:08
Thongchai Winichakul Actually, I haven't thought much about what the rest of the book. I talked to Michigan, talking about the book in particular and in Thailand too talking about the book. I have in mind that, oh, I didn't regret that I finished the book before the what we see in 2020. But had I known or I had delayed a book about year two, I would have had the next episode. The book is about the pending memories and silence in the condition of changing political conditions. Right. So I would say that the call for reform of the monarchy last year is huge. It's a huge next episode and I delayed a book for a couple of years. It's impossible to miss it, to ignore what happened last year. So I have written the first paragraph of Chapter 11, introducing what happened on August 10, the day that the student protest movement today announced the ten point demand for reform of the monarchy. I was there to keep the book coherent about the haunting memory of the massacre. Chapter 11 would explain how the memory of the massacre has contributed to the rise of the youth movement today. I mean, I think on that day, August 10, 2020, when they make the announcement of the call for reform, the first paragraph that I spend on the background, they showed the famed clippings of October 6th. But the song is a song composed by the monarchy, and the song and pictures on the screen are so disjointed, they're disconnected and after that 10 point demand. So I think October 6th has been one of the entry, put it that way. One of the contribution to the thinking, to the awareness of the problem of the monarchy in Thailand is today. I think with the weakening hyper royalism, the youth of this generation has been receptive to the narrative that counter to the hopeless political conditions that they have experienced in their young lives.
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00:28:21
Thongchai Winichakul I think, I believe October 6th as memory is one of those counter-narratives and a powerful one, too. So that's how I would explain to keep the book coherent, how the memory contributed to the rise of the of the movement today without trying to suggest that is the main thing or is the only one. No, no, no, no. But I think it's important one. I would then the rest of the chapter I would talk about other massacre, other mass violence briefly in order to urge that we mean. I'm not sure who Thai people should extend the memory project into other atrocities of the Thai state. I believe that this memory projects have huge impacts, not only politically, but far beyond. In October 6th case I believe it has impact beyond politics into history. That's why awareness of history today, awareness of the danger and contribution, plus and minus of historical knowledge, the awareness about the monarchy, the awareness of impunity is far beyond political actions. I think if a Investigation Memory Project is done for the Tak Bai case or other cases in the South, the issue about religion issues, about ethnicity is about priority in society. It's not that that those are silenced, not those. But let's say it will become much more I mean, on the agenda or the social agenda. And especially as we talk the need to end impunity in Thailand, we must end it. I would put emphasis on that part somewhere in the chapter, maybe as the end of the book. The end of impunity, inseparable from establishment of democracy and the rule of law entirely.
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00:30:14
Duncan McCargo Thank you so much. Yes, you're reminding me that I have long said I was going to go back to Tak Bai and to that incident, which was so much the start of why I wrote Tearing Apart the Land. And I talked to people who were involved in that and caught up in that. And we don't have any systematic, thorough examination and explanation of that incident. And that could easily be another book in itself. And then there are all of the other books we could talk about that need to be written. And as you say, this is why we're starting with this historical perspective today, which we haven't done in the past with the Thailand update. To be fair, we've been guilty of this presentism and we try to make amends for that. Well, you've written an incredibly important book about October 6th and the unforgetting, the silence, the massacre.
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00:30:57
Thongchai Winichakul It will be hard for, I'm not sure for how long, but for this kind of issue, impunity. Usually this is the lesson from we learn from other societies. Usually the breakthrough come from small cases. Usually the breakthrough can, let's say it's hard to call for setting up the committee to examine the Tak Bai massacre. The October 6th massacre is to hard, but the breakthrough would come from smaller cases, much smaller cases that brought this state to justice and then extend that. I'm not sure because it depends not only on the cases, it depends on the right moment. You depend on the case that will have huge impact. I'm not sure. But let's say, for example, one case which so far has not been successful after the initial attempt to fight the case of tonight, Somchai’s disappearance. I think that very huge, that 's very important. That's a case that could send, check impunity, privilege, impunity problem in Thailand, but so far, no. The state holds on to its power. It didn't crack on it. I mean, unsuccessful yet. But let's say my answer will be smaller cases, maybe singular cases, that have huge impact like that. Let's say it's a long fight. Even that case, support for the Somchai case was successful. It's still a long way to go because it's in the legal system, is it part of the formation of the state in the past 50-60 years. This won't be easy.
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00:32:45
Duncan McCargo Yes. I mean, that's a really important point. I mean, to me, it's another terribly disturbing, and awful case. But the Wanchalearm case and the way that disappearance was able to capture the imagination of so many young people was a very, very important case. It seemed in some way to set the stage for the protest that then begin a few weeks later. Sometimes we don't quite know what the case is going to be that will capture people's imagination rather than other cases. And yet that one, maybe young people could identify with one Wanchalearm in some way that they didn't with other victims and that that caused them to mobilize in a very spontaneous way around that issue. I'm afraid we're going to have to bring our conversation to an end. This has been a fascinating conversation about some very difficult subjects. I'm really, really happy that we're able to have you here today to join the Thai Update. Thanks so much to you for agreeing to talk to us.
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00:33:39
Thongchai Winichakul Thank you so much.
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00:33:40
Duncan McCargo All right. Thanks a lot.
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00:33:43 You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast