BANGKOK (UCAN): Led by Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, a group of young Thai activists had applied for a permit to hold a candlelight vigil outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok in memory of the victims of the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 1989. However, police refused to grant permission, citing fears about the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
Undaunted, the 23-year-old Chotiphatphaisal and his fellow protesters decided to engage in another form of protest by making commemoration cookies in the shape of a Chinese pagoda with the date 1989 on it and distributed 89 of them to locals at the embassy and in Bangkok’s Chinatown along with social media posts about their initiative.
They also sought to give some of the cookies to embassy staff.
“We hoped they would eat the cookies with remorse over China’s violations of human rights,” Chotiphatphaisal said in a Facebook post. “China should learn from the Tiananmen massacre and stop oppressing Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hong Kong people. It should also stop building dams that destroy the Mekong River,” he said.
The young activist said that commemorating the Tiananmen Massacre is a moral obligation.
Since it seized power, Thailand’s military-allied government has largely jettisoned the country’s relations with the West in favour of closer ties with China and looks to the millions of Chinese tourists who help prop up its vital tourism sector.
Yet closer ties with Beijing have come at a cost. China has been widely blamed by Thais for environmental calamity on the Mekong River, which saw its water levels drop to historic lows last year.
Local environmental activists have pointed a finger at China’s massive hydroelectric dams upriver, while Beijing continues to dismiss all environmental concerns about its dams.
“This year marks the 31st year after hundreds and perhaps even thousands of citizens and students were murdered by the Chinese army,” Chotiphatphaisal said.
Last year, Chotiphatphaisal and a small group of likeminded young Thais were allowed to stage a rally outside the Chinese embassy. This year’s decision by police not to let the protest proceed should raise concerns, according to the young activist.
“This is a protest (planned) in Thailand. What right does a foreign embassy have to stop it?” the young activist asked.
Popular views of China, especially among young Thais, have plummeted, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In April a weeks-long online feud erupted between Thai and mainland Chinese Internet users after a well-known young Thai actor and his girlfriend appeared to express support for the independence of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Insults were traded liberally between the warring camps of young netizens.
The feud “is an indicator of how young Thais see China differently from how it wants to be seen,” a professor, Sitthiphon Kruarattikan, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Thammasat University in Bangkok, said at a forum held at Bangkok’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club last month.
“It might reflect how China is not successful enough in cultivating soft power or winning hearts and minds” in countries like Thailand, he explained.
