Thailand’s Red Shirts bullying behavior

Sometimes you can’t help but roll your eyes when The pro-Thaksin Red Shirts don’t get their way. What is worse is they escalate to threats and often violence to get things reversed to be in their favor. Looking on from the sidelines the words childish, immature, and perhaps even Narcissism come to mind.

If anything, the behavior of the Red Shirts is an embarrassment for Thailand. Their inability to see or accept the views of others is truly sad and tends to reflect a lower educational attainment when violence is so easily employed as a solution. Thuggery quite honestly reflects on the lowest tiers in any society and the Red Shirts have no qualms at all about employing it.

When the leader of the Red Shirts make statements along the lines of; ‘We will attack anyone who will oppose us’ with the emphases on physical attack and not verbal attack, that is about as far away from democracy and free speech as you can get.

Even to attack the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) because their findings matched common sense, shows the childish nature of the Red Shirts. The (NHRC) found in favor of then Prime Minister Abhisit with the action he took to disburse the Red Shirt rally that was causing financial harm to merchants and other businesses at their downtown rally site. Abhisit sought a ruling from the courts before he proceeded, as well as going much further and taking a much more lenient approach than international standards outlined.

So there is little wonder why Abhisit is not in the least bit worried that he is being dragged through the courts with politically motivated trumped up charges on this. He did what the court both authorized and instructed him to do. It is just a consumption of time that he needs to spend time in court. The only advantage is as compared to Thaksin Shinawatra, Abhisit listens to the court rulings even when they go against him, where Thaksin only listens to the rulings that are in his favor and ignores the rest.

So when you start to look at this and start to consider the Amnesty bill that is in the middle of the political unrest, because it mostly benefits Red Shirts and other Thaksin supporters, it really comes down to allowing anarchy. If this aggressive behavior is not punished, then Thailand will become a much more dangerous place for Thais, tourists, and businesses as there will be no rule of law and punishments can be washed away.

So with that analogy it is difficult to see any qualities in the Red Shirts. They seek not to be punished for violation of the law, they attack others who do not share their view, and they pose a threat because without laws, the severity of what they do will continue to escalate. Some minor news stories suggest that in certain Red Shirt strongholds, people have already died and or have been brutally assaulted for having different views.


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