Ch8
Forging Relations
It was the 1960s. My country was being
used as a base for doing
great harm in the name of
anticommunism. But I came from a mid-
dle-class background and could afford
to keep my mouth shut and be happy while other people were suffering. In fact,
British Quakers in my country had wanted me to demonstrate against the American
bases, but when I consulted my Buddhist advisor, the English monk Pannavaddho,
he said, "Sulak, if you take Buddhism seriously, don't get involved with
these people. We Buddhists should calm ourselves." So I didn't get
involved. But my Buddha-nature eventually made me feel that I must do
something. Communists are also human beings. I realized that for Buddhists
simply to keep themselves at peace within was not sufficient.
American Friends Service Committee
Through meetings hosted by the
American Friends Service Committee (AFsc), I became exposed to the political
issues. I got involved with the AFSC through Russell Johnson, who was running
their South Asian office in India. Their idea was to arrange seminars and workshops
to raise people's consciousness about peace and social justice issues in order
to cooperate internationally. He himself was not a Quaker but an outspoken
Christian minister from New England—very pro-Mao Tse-tung. The East Asian
office was run by Dewitt Barnett, a prominent Quaker, the child of missionaries
to China. He had a small office in Tokyo but no knowledge of Southeast Asia.
His first job in our region was to call a meeting in the Philippines. It took
place in 1966, and I was the new man from Siam.
The purpose of the seminar was
regional collaboration. We met in Manila but stayed in the countryside at the
headquarters of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM). (The Thai
Rural
93
94 1 LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT FORGING RELATIONS 95
Reconstruction
Movement was later modeled after this group.) The governor of the province was
Benigno Aquino. He came to talk to us, and I found that the Philippine and Thai
systems were entirely different. A Thai governor behaves very properly and
speaks carefully but without much substance. He has to wear a necktie and
jacket or a uniform like Western colonial administrators in our neighboring
countries. By contrast, Mr. Aquino was very American and very informal. He
would challenge the presenters and wore just a shirt. He and another man we met
both said they aspired to become president. I was quite surprised. "Good
lord, I have met two persons aspiring to become president!" In our country
nobody aspired to become prime minister----or if someone did, one kept one's
mouth shut.
Although this was not
my first time in the Philippines, it was the first time I went to the rural
areas and really got to meet the Filipino people. Before the war, the
Philippines was a model for democracy and higher education, a kind of window
display for American activity in Asia. The Americans treated their former
colony very well. We used to send our sons to be educated in the Philippines if
we could not afford to send them to Europe or America. But by the time I went
there in the middle sixties I was shocked. I went to Forbes Park where the
superrich live. They had their own guards on big estates, their own islands,
their own troops, their own private yachts. And then there were the slums. The
gap between the rich and the poor was so great. My main fear was that my
country would follow that model. At that time we had no big gap between the
rich and the poor, and not even the king had a private yacht. We had no
absentee landlords. Unfortunately, within thirty years we have become just like
the Philippines.
The AFSC tended to go
out of their way to develop leaders from various walks of life through their
seminars or youth training camps. Many of the people who attended the meetings
eventually became recognized leaders in their own countries. I met quite a few
future leaders from Siam and other countries at this meeting. I also met former
President Magapagal at his official residence, the Malaganyang.
After our meeting in
the Philippines, the AFSC organized another meeting in Japan. It was at this
meeting that I became seriously committed regarding the Vietnam War. I was
already working to pre serve our culture and environment—to keep the American
troops from destroying our culture and creating more prostitution—but I had not
been very aware of the political issues because I tried to keep myself from
getting involved in politics. Not any longer.
The SoutheastAsian
Intellectual Exchange Program
Japan was now a
nouveau riche country. They wanted to show off their riches and establish a relationship
with other countries, including Southeast Asia. The International House ofJapan
was formed to promote internationalism and end their insularity, which America
felt had been a factor in the Second World War. A year after the AFSC meeting
on Vietnam, International House invited me to Japan as a cultural
representative for their Southeast Asian Intellectual Exchange Program.
International House had a good library on Japanese culture and history for
foreign visitors, as well as accommodations and wonderful Japanese gardens in
the heart of Tokyo. I stayed in Japan for a month. I wanted to know about
Japanese Buddhism, so I was taken to Mt. Koya, the sacred place of the Shingon
sect. I also stayed at a Zen temple. It was interesting culturally, although I
was disappointed not to meet a practicing Zen master.
During my stay at
International House, the Quakers were holding their own meetings on China. They
didn't invite me since I knew nothing about China, but I invited myself. I
found out about the situation in China. Although we didn't meet any Chinese, we
talked with people who had just come back from China. They gave us firsthand
reports. It was the height of the Cultural Revolution. At that time I was
publishing the Social Science Review, so when I got back to Siam, I wrote an
article arguing that we must recognize China. We should not simply follow the
Americans. Of course, we should keep China—and the Americans—at arm's length.
This was very controversial because we could not even import shirts, let alone
books, from China. Many of those who went to China in the fifties had been
arrested and were still in jail. People said I was very brave to write what I
did because I could have been put in jail for it even though I was known as a
royalist and anticommunist.
On my way home from
Japan, I stopped in Hong Kong for the International Press Institute (ipi)
meeting. I had been elected a mem-
96
LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT
FORGING RELATIONS 97
her. The IPI,
headquartered in Zurich, was supposed to be the guiding light of the free
world, promoting freedom of speech and freedom of the press. They wanted to
help the Thai people by training our journalists to present news in depth and
commit themselves to freedom and liberty. They felt we needed an Asian who
wrote well and had worked his way up from nowhere, so in 1965, they sent us
Victor Anant, an Indian. He had gone to London as a- boy and worked his way up
from porter at the British Railways to office boy in Fleet Street and later
columnist with the Daily Telegraph. When Anant came to Bangkok, he asked me to
be his interpreter, and through him I came to know many more journalists.
In those days, to be
elected a member of the IPI was very prestigious. Many Thai journalists were
jealous of me because in their eyes I was not even a journalist; I was only a
journal editor. I was elected partly because my magazine stood for what the
international press stood for— freedom of expression. Most of the Thai
newspapers of that time simply went along with the government, which was
understandable because we had a dictatorship.
I wrote a book on my
trip to Japan named after the Japanese classic, A Pillow Book. I continued
working with the International House of Japan and the Quakers. In fact, many
Japanese working against the Vietnam War eventually became my friends. They
worked on various peace projects and later protested Japan's exportation of
toxic waste to our part of the world. They also worked against the building of
Narita Airport and to preserve the tram in Kyoto. I often joined them. I even
bought land symbolically. Somçof my friends asked, "Why do you interfere
with other countries?" I said, "Some issues are universal. Trams
should be preserved everywhere."
Cultural Relations
for the Future
At the meeting in
Japan in 1970, I met a young assistant in the AFSC named Brewster Grace. He
came from a distinguished Quaker family in Philadelphia. He was selected to
open a new AFSC office in Singapore. He consulted me about having seminars in
my country and in other countries in Southeast Asia. We became good friends and
were quite active. He was also selected to attend a meeting in New York called
"Cultural Relations for the Future," funded by the
Edward Hazen
Foundation. Paul Braisted of the Foundation felt that since the Americans had
been all over the world educating people to develop according to the American
model, it should be a two-way street. Americans should be educated by others.
A very important man
at that meeting was Soedjatmoko, then the Indonesian ambassador to the U.S. He
was one of the best Southeast Asian intellectuals I had come across.
Soedjatmoko said, "You Americans have wonderful ideas, but you always
think of America as being at the center. Why don't you think globally? Why
don't you let other people think for themselves? You have the money. Set up
five or six committees in different parts of the world. Ask them to meet among
themselves and find out what they would like to do in their own regions, and
then vis-a-vis the Americans, the Europeans, and other regions." His idea
was adopted, and they set up six committees: in Southeast Asia, India, Japan,
the Middle East, the U.S., and Africa. Brewster Grace represented Southeast
Asia, and he proposed my name to lead the committee. Although I was fairly
unknown at the time, I became chairman of the Southeast Asian study group on
Cultural Relations for the Future.
With the Cultural
Relations for the Future committee, I could now conduct my own seminars. Our
first meeting was in Singapore in 1970- I felt that the Southeast Asian group
must not be limited to the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), the successor to SEATO—Siam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia,
the Philippines, and later Brunei. I said we needed to try to bring in Laos,
Burma, Cambodia, and Vietnam. (Later, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam joined ASEAN.) I
managed to get some Vietnamese, and I went to Phnom Penh to get a former
minister whom I had met in Manila. The idea was first of all to get to know
each other within our region. We would try to understand our own cultural
identity and think about our cultural relations. Nobody else was interested in
these things. The military was interested only in power, and businesses only in
money. Secondly, we wanted to understand our relationships vis-a-vis the other
groups. We met and made an agenda for the next two years, including what we
ought to learn from each other and where and when our next meeting would be.
The Hazen Foundation
gave me a small amount of money to tray-
88 1 LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT
FORGING RELATIONS
99
el around that part
of the world in the Quaker manner—no per diem, only airfare and expenses. We
met every nine months in a different place. We had local hosts to look after
us. At the end of two years, all the chairmen of the six groups met at the
Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, to compare notes and talk about what we
should do in the future. Out of these meetings we produced two books. One had
the very ambitious title Reconstituting Human Society. This was published by
the Hazen Foundation and distributed free of charge to U.S. organizations and
various foundations. Later on, we produced Questioning Development in
SoutheastAsia. As far as I was concerned, it had been wonderful to get to know
my region of the world. I now had many good friends from each country. I got to
know all sorts of people involved in alternative development and alternative
education with many different religious and cultural backgrounds. With some I
still keep in touch.
After a few years,
the foundation money ran out. The study group wanted to stay together and carry
on even though the Americans would no longer support us. We decided we had to
link with another study group and contacted the Japanese. The chairman's
assistant, Mr. Yoshiyuki Tsurumi at the International House ofJapan, was my
good friend. He secured some money from the International House to keep us
going. The Southeast Asian group and the Japanese group kept meeting every
year. I did not want to be the perpetual chairman, so I asked my friend William
Lim from Singapore to succeed me. He is a well-known architect and intellectual
in Singapore. He was succeeded by Randy David, a young, very articulate
Filipino who ran the Third World Study Center at the University of the
Philippines. Unfortunately, he got very involved in other work, and the study
group is now more or less defunct. I feel sorry about this; however, everything
that grows will eventually die.
The PacficAshram
My role in Southeast
Asia did not end with the Cultural Relations for the Future study group.
Brewster Grace, after leaving the AFSC, became the Southeast Asian
representative of the American University Field Staff (AUFS). AUFS is a
consortium of American universities interested in worldwide exchange. He made
arrangements for stu-
dents who wanted to
study in the region. His predecessor in the AUFS felt that when American
students came to Asia, they should also study the spiritual tradition. When
Brewster took over, he was in charge of implementing these ideas.
A meeting was called
by the AUFS in Singapore. The upshot of the meeting was that the group would
get a small sum of money from
the Danforth
Foundation in the U.S. to collaborate with the AUFS to create what they called
a "Pacific Ashram." The idea was to experiment with young people
living together for three to four weeks to share spiritual traditions. If they
were to be our future leaders, they should get to know each other beyond a
purely intellectual encounter. Whereas our Cultural Relations for the Future
was more or less a forum for intellectuals in their late thirties and forties
who were already fairly well-known in their countries, this program was for
youth under thirty. I was just giving up the chairmanship of the Southeast
Asian study group on Cultural Relations for the Future and was asked to become
the secretary of this project. There was no pay involved, but AUFS would take
care of all my travel expenses. I accepted the challenge. It was 1973.
Being Thai, I did not
want to hold the first Pacific Ashram in my own country. We found a beautiful
site at Kuala Dungun on the east coast of Malaysia. At that time there were no
tourists, and it was quite undeveloped. We used a small hotel—not ideal for our
ashram—but there were also bungalows and campsites. We were there for three
weeks in 1974. As chairman of Cultural Relations for the Future for the last
four years, I had been exposed to a lot of people. We chose our participants
mostly through personal contacts. These budding leaders had been recommended to
me by their professors and interviewers. My job was as a kind of
guru-in-residence, and Brewster was there as the coordinator-administrator.
There were quite a number of leaders from all over Southeast Asia as well as
some Japanese and Americans. I remember one Filipino and one Thai quarreled
like mad.
We tried to combine
everything, both American and Asian traditions, and not be exclusively
Buddhist. We taught yoga and whatever else they wanted. Meditation was not
compulsory, and people could write or work on other things. I myself translated
Thomas
100 1 LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT
Merton's book on
Chuang Tzu. It took me three weeks, and it became one of my bestsellers.
I thought the second
Pacific Ashram should be in my own country. We held it in Chiang Mai at a
beautiful monastery halfway up a mountain. This was more to my liking. I wanted
to make thgath-ering more spiritual. Mr. Karuna Kusalasaya was the
guru-in-residence. He had a deep understanding of Indian culture, he knew yoga
and Buddhism, and he was a very humble man. We invited the Buddhist Thich Nhat
Hanh and Swami Aganivesh from the Hindu tradition. We also invited Bhikkhu P.
A. Payutto and Bob Bobilin, chair of the Department of Religion at the
University of Hawaii. These four acted as senior advisors. Bob later wrote an
article entitled, "Three Men on a Mountain," a very moving account of
the one Hindu and two Buddhist monks at our meeting. We had a wonderful three
weeks together. That was in 1975.
The third gathering
was held in Japan. Unfortunately, it lasted only ten days. I didn't go. I felt
that this moving ashram had no roots and wanted a more permanent ashram. I
tried to get more money from the International House of Japan, but the director
wanted to set up a kind of International House of Siam instead of an ashram. He
put me in contact with one of his protégés, Dr. Saburo Okita, who later become
Foreign Minister. Dr. Okita agreed to help me with some money. From there I
went on to speak at the Smithsonian Institute and visit the Aspen Institute, a
kind of American ashram. Unfortunately, my idea for an ashram had to be put on
hold. The 1976 coup took place when I was on my way home.
CH9 Clashes
My work at this time
generated its share of conflicts. In fact, one episode involved the king
himself. It began when some of my
academic colleagues
and friends decided that the Social Science Association wasn't fulfilling its
function by producing enough textbooks. They claimed that I was spending most
of my time running the magazine when the Social Science Association was really
supposed to be a university press—that I only published what I wanted, instead
of representing the whole academic world. Of course, there may have been some
truth in this. In fact, I argued that a university press shouldn't produce
textbooks anyhow. So they went to the Rockefeller Foundation asking for money
to form a rival organization, the Social Sciences and Humanities Project.
The Rockefeller
Foundation representative in Bangkok was Bill Bradley, whose great-grandfather
had been one of the first American missionaries to Siam. He had also been a
famous doctor who introduced Western medicine to Siam, along with printing,
publishing, and newspapers. Bill Bradley said, "That's a wonderful idea.
If you people want to start something, the Rockefeller Foundation will help
you, but none of you academics knows anything about publishing. If you want to
start this new venture, you must have Sulak involved. With all his faults, he knows
about publishing." They were very angry, but they had no choice. They had
to take me. They also asked Dr. Puey Ungphakorn, who was a very honest man, an
able technocrat, and the governor of the Bank of Thailand, to help with the
project. Dr. Puey talked to me, and I agreed, adding, "But I'll just help.
I'll give you what advice you want. All I want is one vote in a
committee." They quite liked that.
The brain behind this
whole idea was Dr. Neon Snidvong. She was also a member of the royal family.
She had been my contempo-
101
Ch12
POLITICAL UNREST 13
134
Political Unrest
The
1971 coup
Nineteen seventy-one
was a very bad year for me. The coup d'etat came at the end of the year. The
prime minister, Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, had succeeded Sarit Thanarat
as dictator in 1963. He had experimented with democracy in 1967, but by 1971 he
was fed up with the constitution and fed up with Parliament. He had to put up
with their questions and bribe them to get his work done. He'd had enough. He
dissolved Parliament and declared a state of emergency and martial law on
November 17.
I had just returned
from Italy, the U.S., and Mexico, but had planned a big conference before I
left. The Komol Keemthong Foundation was bringing together young people from
all over the country to meet in Chiang Mai. The coup occurred one week before
our meeting. What could I do? I called one of our board members who worked in
the Prime Minister's Office: "We have been planning this meeting for
months. To cancel it will be very difficult. Can we go ahead?" He said,
"Let me check with my boss." Eventually, we were allowed to go
ahead—it was educational, nothing revolutionary. I had planned a meeting of the
Cultural Relations for the Future study group to be held in Chiang Mai simultaneously.
I wanted the Thai students and the older people from Southeast Asia to meet
each
other.
While these meetings
were taking place, Chiang Mai University had invited me to speak.
Unfortunately, I lost my temper—I never liked coups or dictators. I made a
speech denouncing the coup leaders. I said, "These people treat the
soldiers as if they were in the zoo, giving them fruit. (The Field Marshal
himself had brought fruit and drinks to the troops.) What is this coup? You
staged a coup against yourself!" The tape was sent straight to Thanom. He
was furious.
The Special Branch of
the Police was sent to our meetings. When one speaker referred to credit
unions, they thought we were Communists. The next day, forty-five armed
policemen showed up. Had any of our boys run, they would have been shot. I went
to talk with them. "What's going on here? Why are we surrounded?"
They said, "You need special permission to call a meeting of more than
five people. You cannot talk politics."
"What do you
mean by 'politics'? If we came to plan to overthrow the coup leaders, I would
call that politics. Talk like this I wouldn't call politics. If so, all the
words in my vocabulary would have to be considered political, except what
people say in bed while making love." They didn't know what to say.
"Anyhow, you need special permission," they repeated. "I have
permission from the Prime Minister's Office," I said. "If you don't
trust me, call them. Besides, do you think all the principals, rectors, and
presidents of the government colleges would allow their students to be here had
I not gotten permission?" Again, he didn't know what to say. Finally, a
major or colonel came: "I'm very sorry. This young chap made a mistake. We
came to ask the students to return to their hostel since there is a curfew at
ten p.m." They didn't dare to call the Prime Minister's Office. They even
offered to take all the boys to the prostitutes to make up for it! I couldn't
believe how they made such a serious thing into a joke.
I continued to write
articles and speak out against the coup. I was invited to speak at colleges, my
articles appeared everywhere, and we had meetings at our bookshop every week.
The Field Marshal didn't know what to do with me. One day, the chief of the
Special Branch of the Police came to see me. I was sitting in the office of the
foundation, on the floor, as is our custom. The chief sat down with me. He was
very polite. He said, "Professor Sulak, you know we have a state of
emergency. The last Parliament was full of bad MPs. That's why Field Marshal
Thanom dissolved it. He wants to have a new Parliament with good, clean MPs. If
one's house is in need of repair, we must all help to repair it. But if unruly
children are running about and shouting, it's bad for the people to see. Mr. Sulak,
if you keep quiet and collaborate with us, we can repair the house much more
quickly. If you like, I can arrange for you to meet the leader of the
coup. He would love
to listen to you. If you're interested, we would like you to become a senator
and help draft the new constitution." I replied, "I don't like your
analogy. We are not children. The house belongs to all of us. We are not
misbehaving. We are shouting that you do not do the right thing. I don't want
to see him—I dörft want to be bribed or bought."
"I know you are
a man of principle. I ask you not to write articles attacking the coup leaders."
"My articles are
published by colleges, and those colleges belong to the government. If I write
anything illegal, you can put me in jail."
"You are too
clever. You are a lawyer. We can't put you in jail. Your writing hurts him—you
are always punching hard. Can't you stop speaking out?"
"How can I? I
don't like speaking, but nobody else will do it. Mr. Kukrit Pramoj has put a
notice up in front of his office: 'State of Emergency. I don't accept any
invitations to speak.' This leaves only me. Besides, it would be very easy for
you to stop me from speaking. Send a circular to all the colleges saying, 'Mr.
Sulak is a dreadful man. He should not be invited, and none of his articles
should be published."
"We can't do
that. We want to show that we respect freedom of speech. I must ask you,
however, to discontinue your weekly meetings here at the bookshop. You know it
is illegal. We can put you in jail anytime."
"You can put me
in jail anytime, but my meeting is not illegal. 'Political' to me means that I
am planning to overthrow you. But in our meetings we discuss situations like
traffic jams and pollution. We discuss the wrong goals of development and
propose alternatives. We discuss the conservation of trees and buildings. I
don't think that's political."
"Well, in that
case, may I have one of my boys come to listen to you?"
"Certainly, we
advertise in the newspaper. You're most welcome to come." They were very
fair. When they came, they announced that they were from the Special Branch of
the Police. Our boys enjoyed attacking the police department.
Dr.
Puey Ungphakorn's letter
Dr. Puey was in
England when the coup occurred. He had left the governorship of the Bank of
Thailand, but he was still dean of the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat
University. Thanom and Puey knew each other well and trusted one another, but
when Thanom staged the coup, Puey could not restrain himself He wrote a famous
letter called the "Letter from Mr. Kern Yen Ying." (When Puey was in
the Free Thai movement during the Second World War, he used the nickname Kern
Yen Ying.) He wrote as a humble man would write to the headman of the village,
instead of the former governor of the central bank writing to the prime
minister.
It was a very simple
letter saying, "You, headman, are wonderful, good, and honest. You have
rules and regulations for our village. After the long absence of a
constitution, you even gave us a new constitution. It is not perfect, but it's
better than having none. At least there's the rule of law. We have a
parliament. It's not great, but it's better than having none. Unfortunately,
only one year after the elections, you abolished it all, as if trampling on
something with your foot that you wrote with your own hand. It's a shame.
Please be sensible. Restore law and order, return the constitution as soon as
you can, hold elections. Keeping power within your clique is very bad for the
country. However good your intentions, abuse of power can take place
anytime." The letter created a big response, and people circulated it. Though
it was a humble, polite letter, Thanom was furious. His son, Colonel Narong,
said Puey was Enemy Number One. "Puey can legally come back, but I will
not be responsible if he is run over by a ten-wheel truck!"
The coup leaders used
all kinds of psychological warfare. Colonel Narong said about me, "Mr.
Sulak is very clever. What's white he says is black, and people believe
him." My wife was afraid for my life. When the postman came to our house,
her knees were trembling. She thought the police had come to arrest me. They
told my cousin Sala, then first secretary at the Embassy in Tokyo, "You
must talk to Sulak. He should kowtow to the powers that be or at least shut up
for the time being." Even my father-in-law became very angry with me. He
said, "You brought difficulty to my daughter. You have been very well
educated, and you have refused everything that has been
130 1 LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT POLITICAL UNREST 1139
offered to you. You
have no security. In ten years you have not risen—you still make only six thousand
baht a month." But my wife, Nilchawee, was very supportive.
The
1973 uprising
By 1973, the students were becoming a
powerful force. They were upset about a case in which three MPs were jailed as
traitors merely because they took a case to court charging that the prime
minister's actions were unconstitutional. Scandals emerged among the leaders of
the universities. The rector of Ramkamhaeng University was Thanom's lackey; the
students attacked him. The vice rector at Chulalongkorn University was involved
in corruption; the students demonstrated against him. They also demonstrated
against Japanese goods. The Social Science Review became even more political,
attacking the Americans. (I was no longer the editor of the Social Science
Review, although I served as a member of the editorial board.) The dictatorship
wanted to preserve its benevolent image, so they did not act.
The students demanded democracy within six
months. They consulted with me, and I said, "This is silly. They won't
give it to you." They said, "Never mind, we want to make a
point." At first they planned to teach democracy at the Reporters'
Association, but the association was afraid of the dictator. The students said,
"Okay. We'll use the bookshop." They created a big flyer:
"Anybody that wants to learn about democracy, come to the Suksit Siam
Bookshop."
The vital incident of the '73 uprising is
still a mystery. On October 6, eleven people started distributing a leaflet
asking for democracy, a constitution, and elections. Some were students, some
professors. They were arrested on charges of obstructing traffic. Within two
hours the charges had changed to treason for Communist activities. The sentence
for Communist activities can be life imprisonment. That's why people protested.
This was during the university examinations period. Protesters at Thammasat
University refused to take their exams. They all demonstrated. The whole
university voted to demand that their friends be released. One of them was the
secretary of the Komol Keemthong Foundation. Many were former members of our
club. All were close friends of mine.
The government refused. Field Marshal Praphas
Charusathira, the second man, minister of the interior and former commander-in-
chief of the army, consulted an astrologer,
who advised the government not to yield to the students. If the government
stood firm for two weeks, they would win triumphantly. The thing dragged on for
a week.
The students started a big campaign, and many
people joined. Much of the country was fed up with the government because it
had been a dictatorship since '47. There had been no real elections since '57.
The same group of people—three generals and two field mar-shals—had been
running the country one after the other. The rich became richer, and the poor
poorer. More and more people—half a million—joined the demonstration. The poor
people fed the demonstrators and the students. Shopkeepers and fruit vendors
gave them free food. The shop next door to my bookshop toasted bananas and gave
them away. There was a wonderful spirit in the air.
One of the student leaders, a friend from our
club, Mr. Seksan Prasertkul, made a speech: "We want to walk peacefully to
the palace with a picture of the Buddha, the national flag, and photographs of
the king and queen. We want to demand that our friends be released and that we
return to democracy within six months." Supposedly, the government agreed
to release the thirteen people in jail and grant a constitution within six
months. Everything was settled.
But on October 14, something went wrong. The
king's words are still with me: "This is the darkest day, the most sorry
day in our history, because our own people were killed." Some
demonstrators had been attacked in front of the palace. First they were shot
with tear gas, then with real bullets. Some of them fled into the palace. Of
course, the king, the queen, and the king's mother were very nice, looking
after them. We don't know who started the incident—whether the demonstrators
had incited anything or whether it was a ploy by the army. It was said that
Colonel Narong had wanted to kill all of the demonstrators. Nobody has yet told
the truth.
I was at a meeting in Singapore at the time.
When I arrived home, things were very tense. I couldn't stay at my house—people
told me that it wasn't safe. My friends took me to my mother's home. Nobody
would know where I was, and there was no telephone. They said I
must pack and leave the next day, but by then
things had calmed down. The king announced that Professor Sanya Dharmasakti,
then rector ofThammasat University and president of the Komol Keem-thong
Foundation, would become the new prime minister. The king had persuaded the
three strong men—Field Marshal Thanorn, his son Narong, and the deputy prime
minister Field Marshal Praphas—to leave the country. The prime minister went to
Boston, his son went to Germany, and the deputy prime minister went to Taiwan.
It was announced that they had fled the country.
Aftermath
of the 1973 uprising
People had died, and
the dictator was gone, yet the army was still in power. In fact, the army was
delighted. These three men had wanted to control the whole army. Narong was
very arrogant and thought he had all the power. He was known to be corrupt and
outspoken in a bad way. He treated the generals very badly. They all hated him
and would not cooperate with him.
Of course, the
students thought that they had won. I told them that they hadn't really won.
"This is not your victory. Only three oppressive leaders are gone, and the
army is still a state within the state. Nothing has changed. The structure is
still oppressive to the people." I told them that we had been used as a
kind of convenience. I said, "Be careful, they will come back against
you." They didn't believe me.
Before I had been a
very popular speaker. I was the only one speaking out against the coup. But now
I became very unpopular because they said I only wanted the Buddhist way, the
Middle Way, the weak way. I had told them, "You must study our roots. The
Buddha's teachings are very radical—the Buddha left the palace to become a
beggar—but you have to change yourself first. Then you can change
society." They said we had followed the Buddha for 2,500 years, but it
hadn't changed anything for the better. We had also followed the Americans for
thirty years, and things had gotten much worse. Now we must march the Marxist
way. We must rebel against both Buddhism and the Americans. The students became
drawn to communism. They studied all the Marxist terms and imported the red
book of Mao Tse-tung. We got rid of the Americans, and we recognized China for
the first time. We also recognized Vietnam.
The king held a
"royal and people's assembly." He dissolved the old House of Assembly
appointed by the former premier to make way for a new Parliament. He selected
people from every profession—ten farmers from all over the country, ten labor
leaders, civil servants, and people from the military, journalism, whatever.
They met at the Royal Turf Club—a horse racing club next to his palace—so I
called it the "Race Horse Parliament." I was excluded. So was our
national hero, Seni Pramoj, Kukrit's elder brother. He was our minister in
Washington, D.C., before the Second World War; he led the Free Thai movement in
America all through the war; and he was prime minister a few times. Of course,
the thirteen people who had been in jail weren't invited either, although some
of them were invited later on.
There were over two
thousand people at the first meeting. Two hundred sixty people were elected to
the "constitutional assembly." Some of them would draft a
constitution; the rest would act as a kind of interim Parliament, with Mr.
Sanya as the prime minister, until we had elections and a new constitution. The
country was supposed to be a wonderful country now.
Unfortunately, the
king's good intentions were exploited. Kukrit Pramoj was elected number one. He
got the most votes partly because the people who came all knew him. He had been
outspoken until Thanom staged the coup against himself in 1974 but then he shut
his mouth right away. Again, at the October 14 event, he had been with the
people, but when he felt that the demonstration might be crushed, he said he
was ill and went to the hospital. I had been active and outspoken throughout,
but Kukrit was a man who was very slippery—what we call an "eel."
Eventually he became very unpopular. Dr. Puey Ungphakorn was elected the second
man.
There was much turmoil
during this time. The Communist Party of Thailand had recruited quite a number
of leading students. They felt that we had to revolutionize everything in
reaction against overly traditional approaches. On the other hand, the civil
servants who ran the provinces didn't want any interference by nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) or universities who would challenge their author-
142 I LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT POLITICAL UNREST 1143
ity. The system was
very corrupt, from the top down and the bottom up.
Poor Dr. Puey was
caught between these two poles. He was a national hero. But the students felt
he was too liberal and too Western. Although he managed to keep everything that
he directed clean of corruption, his projects always helped the rich. He saw to
it that the first Friendship Highway outside of Bangkok was not corrupt, but.
once the road was built, elite land owners on both sides of the road sold out
for profits, and the farmers became landless laborers. Dr. Puey felt that was
wrong, and that he had failed in working with the government. He turned to the
NGOs, but then he was accused of being pro-Communist.
I got involved with
Dr. Puey around this time. I introduced him to Mr. Alec Dickson, founder of the
British VSO. He was impressed by Mr. Dickson and said he wanted to do something
similar in our country. He said the Thai equivalent should be recognized by the
government—otherwise they would regard it as a Communist orga-nization—but it
should be run autonomously by the university. He started what he called the
Graduate Volunteer Service. He asked me and a few others for help. This program
sends middle-class university students to care for the poor and oppressed,
helping to broaden their awareness. It is still going on.
Beginning
a book distribution network
Around that time,
Klett Verlag, the biggest German textbook publishing house in Stuttgart, was
interested in Siam. They wanted to do something for the Third World and had
started a sister company in Indonesia. Now they wanted to start one in Siam. They
became partners with someone who had no experience in printing or publishing.
They gave a lot of money to him and started a big printing plant, second only
to my former employer, Thai Wattanapanich. Eventually, the Germans found out
that their partner was a swindler, and somebody recommended me to replace him.
I told them that they didn't need a printing house, because in Bangkok we had
over two hundred printing houses, and they were all very cheap. "If you
want me, start small—only me, my secretary, and an office."
They liked my
proposal, and we started a small office called Klett Thai—a kind of sister
company to Klett Verlag. I was the managing director, and I asked one of my
former colleagues to become secre-tary—Mr. Anant Viriyapinit, who is now very
close to me. I wanted high-quality books. I repeated my experience from the
Social Science Press, but made it even freer. I was the boss. I formed my own
editorial board. This was just before the '73 student uprising.
It had been over ten
years since I had started the Social Science Review, and I knew that publishing
was not easy. I had enough connections, and the Germans would supply me with
the money, but the difficulty lay in selling the books. It was easy to send
books to the bookshops, but it was very difficult to collect the money.
Hitherto there had been only five distributors, known as the "five
tigers." These "five tigers" distributed only books that were
within their control, only bestsellers, and they charged for it. It was difficult
for a small publishing house like mine to make money when we only had one or
two books to send to the bookshops. If they couldn't sell our books, they
wouldn't pay us. But after the '73 uprising, there were many new publishing
houses, particularly left-wing publishers. They could not find anybody to
distribute their books, so they came to us. I thought we should put all our
resources together, and then the books could go out regularly through a
distributor, and we could collect the money. If bookstores refused to pay, we
wouldn't supply them anymore. So I started a distribution network.
The
Pha Mong Dam
Another project I got
involved with was the Pha Mong Dam. During the Vietnam War, the Americans had
spent a lot of money on bombing, and many people had died. Kenneth Boulding, a
prominent Quaker, wrote to President Kennedy suggesting the Americans spend
money on development instead of war, that they use their resources for peaceful
purposes and build a dam on the Mekhong River. The Mekhong is an enormous
river, and the dam would have to be bigger than the Aswan Dam in Egypt. Four
countries benefit from the
Mekhong Siam, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia—all
with Com-
munist infiltration.
The president acknowledged that Boulding's idea was wonderful, and set up a
Mekhong Committee.
Another American
Quaker, Stuart Meecham, with the AFSC office
144 I LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT
POLITICAL UNREST 1145
in Singapore, came to
my office in Bangkok. He said to me, "You know, if this big dam is built,
one province of your country will be entirely flooded. Hundreds of thousands of
people will have to be evacuated, and they have never even been consulted. What
can we do?" I said, "The least we can do is ask the people. We can
have a small seminar in the Quaker manner." He liked the idea. The AFSC
tried to encourage people to think differently—to work for peace and
nonviolence rather than war. This was in
We planned the
seminar to take place in the area where the dam would be built. We'd meet on
the Thai side, and then we'd cross over to the Laotian side. The Laotians would
come to join us, and we would go to join them. It was all planned, but the
American Embassy objected. They said, "No, you don't need to do that. The
decision has already been made. Why do you want to interfere? We don't need
your seminar. It will make no contribution." They thought it was a crazy
idea. Stuart told me, "Without the Embassy's blessing, I would find it
very difficult to work." I replied, "Well, then, you can work with
me. We'll do it through the Komol Keemthong Foundation."
Dr. Puey, the
president of Thammasat University; and Professor Saneh Chamarik, the vice
president, were involved in this seminar. So were many academics, specialists,
and ministry officials. Of course, we also invited farmers. It was the first
time farmers met with top officials. The first day of the seminar we met a
farmer named Thongpan. He had been affected by an earlier dam. He lost his farm
and was now a landless laborer. He and his wife were employed to spread
chemical pesticides containing DDT. We were shocked when his wife died the
second day of the seminar. We all contributed to her funeral. A very talented
man named Mike Morrow, a writer for the Far Eastern Economic Review, felt we
must document this, so we made a film called Thongpan, describing this man's
life and the seminar. The film has now become a classic.
At the end of the
seminar, we had a group photograph taken. The police got hold of this photo,
and it was published in a right-wing newspaper and in the Bangkok Post (a
mouthpiece of the military at that time). The Thai paper Dao Siam said that
this had been a meeting of the Communist Party of Thailand, whose chairman was
Dr. Puey. They circled his face on the photo. They also circled my face,
The so-called
Communist Party meeting (Dr. Puey is standing to thefar right)
saying that I was a
leading member of the Communist Party. Circling Stuart Meecham's face, the
Quaker organizer, they said he was a I Russian KGB agent. Stuart wrote a very
strong protest to the Embassy and the paper, but he got no acknowledgment. This
photograph 1 became a classic.
The
1976 coup
By this time, the
three exiled leaders from the '73 coup all wanted to come home. Thanom, who now
lived in Singapore, said his father was very ill, and he had to see him on
humanitarian grounds. The prime minister, Seni Pramoj, said, "We can't
stop him from coming; any Thai who wants to come home has the right to do so.
There is no case against him." Thanom's return made the unstable situation
worse. He had been ordained as a novice monk in Singapore, returning home in
yellow robes, and he wanted to have higher ordination as a fully ordained monk,
a bhikkhu. People put up posters against him saying that this man was using
religion and the sacred robes as a pretext. Two young workers in nearby Nakhorn
Pathom who put up one of these posters were found hanged. People were very
angry, and demonstrations took place.
The military had been
lying low for three years. With the current state of unrest, they wanted to
bring the country back to the "good
146 1 LOYALTY DEMANDS
DISSENT
old days" of
military rule. They felt the students were too Marxist. Dr. Puey had already
been accused of being a Communist. These things gave the military a good excuse
to have a coup. It came on October 6. Thousands of students were jailed; hundreds
were killed. Thousands more left for the jungle and joined the Communist Party
of Thailand. The right wing wanted to lynch Dr. Puey. He had to leave the
country and has lived in England ever since.
When the bloody coup
took place, I was not at home. The police came to my house, to my bookshop, and
to the office of the Komol Keemthong Foundation. The police who came to my
house were very nice. They talked to my wife, and they only took four books
away. In my bookshop the police were also very nice and only took a few books.
But at the Komol Keemthong Foundation, across the street from my house, they
were much more dramatic. They blocked off our small lane with two tanks. A
television crew climbed up to film the office, and they said: "This is the
national headquarters of the Communist Party of Thailand." It affected a
lot of my people. The police asked who was in charge. Everyone was afraid, but
my wife very bravely stepped forward and said she was in charge. They took her
to the police station and interrogated her. Luckily, we knew somebody who knew
somebody, so she was not put in jail. They took three or four truckloads of
books published by the Komol Keemthong Foundation and S athirakoses-Nagapradipa
Foundation. They even confiscated poetry books. Anything that had a red cover
was taken away to be burnt. I lost quite a bit. I wrote to the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), giving them all
the details, telling them my rights had been abused. UNESCO sent my letter to the
Thai government. They never replied.
But that was not the
only place where my books were taken. At that time I was working at Klett Thai.
Afraid of the Communists, when Laos fell, Klett Verlag, our German parent
company, withdrew, and I bought the company from them. By '76, most of the
books we distributed were leftist books. The police confiscated all of them.
The company went bankrupt as a direct consequence. Luckily, I was not there
myself Otherwise, I think they would have tortured or killed me. The military
thought I was a Communist, and most leftist students thought I was a CIA agent.
