Thailand
The face of globalisation

by Andrés Alsina

At dawn on 30 May 2000, 500 people wade into the water and once again start to remove rocks from the southern end of the Rasi Salai dam, in Thailand’s north-eastern province of Si Sa Ket. The wreckers are forcibly removed, but they return. They want to open up the dam to allow the water to return to its natural course in Moon River. They had been at the dam on 18 and 19 May, they set up camp and some chained themselves to the doors of the dam, when they heard that the police were going to come and evict them. These people are fighting to recover a way of life, which, they say, is worth more than a single life.

In Prachuab, Thailand, Khiri Khan, a 72 year old coconut farmer, suffered severe burns to the left side of his body when he set fire to himself to protest the government’s refusal to subsidise the sharp drop in the price of raw and dried coconut. Other protesters flooded the Phetchakasem inter-provincial highway with coconuts, literally throwing away all their work, which had been made worthless by a decision taken beyond their control.

In Rome, during the Social Watch assembly at the end of November 2000, Ranee Hassarungsee looks this reporter in the eye as she tells these stories and shows the reports in the newspapers and magazines. These news items reflect the day-to-day face of globalisation. In the first four months of the year 2000, 622 protests were directed at a single government policy, claims the 29 May copy of the daily newspaper Krungthep Thurakij. The demands for higher prices for agricultural produce are resolved more quickly (one way or another, one could add), since they depend exclusively on a government measure, explained Prasert Noun-anan, spokesperson for the prime minister’s office. In contrast, demands regarding land and forest are more complex, because in these cases the demonstrators are opposing government projects. Prasert admitted that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can mobilise farmers on a massive scale because the latter are disillusioned with the government’s record and have nowhere else to turn. So says the government.

The social scientist Saneh Chamarik does not disagree, but gives a broader analysis. In the ceremony in which he received the annual Toyota Thailand Foundation (TTF) award, Chamarik claimed that instead of taking into account the World Bank’s recommendation to recognise the importance of human rights in economic development, the government of Thailand always prioritises capitalist objectives that favour foreign investment, and adopts the demands of multinational corporations or foreign capital as the foundation for national development policy. As a result, Thai society is currently experiencing a conflict of interests between local rights and economic value.

Ranee Hassarungsee recounts these and other true stories, and it is not merely figurative to say that she does so as if her life depended on it. This determined woman refuses to talk about herself, wholly dedicated as she is to providing information about the situation in her country of 60 million inhabitants, whom the severe economic crisis in 1997 immersed —as if they had no other problems— in what she calls “a comprehensive crisis of society. The people began losing their way of life and the country lost its sovereignty”.

Her organisation, Social Agenda Working Group, was set up two years after the 1997 crisis, to monitor its impact on society. The stories she recounts are part of that work. And there is an endless stream of them, covering all aspects of social life. The problem is that they have a government that “has no trouble in quickly allocating the 112,000 hectares that a Chinese firm needs to plant eucalyptus, but can’t find the land to distribute to small farmers,” she explains.

There has been an intense reaction to this situation. The oldest and most revered Buddhist monk from the north-east of the country, Luangta Mahabua, called for a million signatures to demand the resignation of the government, for these and other similar reasons, including corruption. Thai women, long considered “the elephant’s lame foot”, have organised in 19 provinces and formed a network to take control of matters relating to development, people’s rights, environmental protection, alternative crops, AIDS, children’s and gender issues. Their constituent declaration stated that in the last forty years women have been prevented from participating in the administration of natural resources and today have no chance of promoting women’s values and their role in the struggle to preserve the country’s biodiversity and to promote sustainable development.

Market-driven development does not offer women any security with respect to vital questions such as income, food, and safety. Quite the opposite, in fact: the drop in agricultural prices has forced the sale of land to pay off debts, resulting in a loss of independence and tradition, and the rural way of life is disappearing. “All members of the family have to work more,” she points out. “Many find themselves obliged to migrate to other provinces, splitting up families. On the whole they are unskilled workers and, since they have no chance of improvement, all they can hope for is a minimum wage. And the women have to struggle against a political and social system that restricts the opportunities available to them. They become lifeless objects; cheap, brainless labour.”

The consequences of all this are apparent in a second circle of hell. The younger generations are targets for consumerism and media pressure, the economic crisis excludes them from the education system, and the drug culture emerges as an escape from the lack of work and a future. This situation brings with it conflict, physical, mental and sexual violence, and leads to prostitution and AIDS.

This is happening in a country that culturally despises the poor, according to the academic Prawase Wasi. “The population have been taught that poverty is the result of bad karma in previous lives, which they can only redeem by doing good and making sacrifices for the sake of others. Social difference has been used by the elite to justify their exploitation of the poor.” Ranee Hassarungsee and many others simply want to change the way things are going.