This article was originally published in August 2020.
The Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand has tilted too far toward China for Washington’s liking.
The country – with nearly 70 million people and the second largest economy in Southeast Asia – counts China as its biggest trade partner, its largest source of foreign direct investment, the largest source of tourism with China providing more tourists per year than all Western nations combined, and a key partner in developing infrastructure including the already under-construction China-Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore high-speed rail link that will only further cement these ties.
Thailand is also replacing its aging US military hardware with Chinese alternatives including Chinese-made main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, naval vessels including the Kingdom’s first modern submarines, and jointly developed projects like the DTI-1 multiple rocket launcher system. Thailand and China have also conducted joint military exercises in recent years.
To reverse this trend – the United States is attempting to destabilize Thailand politically and economically – topple the current government and place into power a political opposition led by abusive billionaires who have specifically vowed to roll back Thai-Chinese relations.
This has manifested in protests the Western corporate media has claimed are “student-led” and “organic” despite what are clearly centrally led protests with easily identifiable leaders tied directly to US government funding.
The protests are leveraging a nation-wide network created by US government organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and other funding mechanisms to overwrite Thailand’s indigenous institutions with Western-style alternatives across Thailand educational, labor, media, and political spaces.
The protests also have direct ties to US-backed opposition parties including those of fugitive billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party and corrupt billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit of Future Forward/Move Forward Party and even foreign opposition movements the US is funding in China’s territories of Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Thailand’s US-backed Billionaire-led Opposition
Thailand’s political opposition – while portrayed by the Western media as “progressive liberals,” is in fact run by two corrupt billionaires.
One – Thaksin Shinawatra – is a convicted criminal who currently hides abroad as a fugitive. Despite this – he still openly runs his political party Pheu Thai – as New York Times would note in their 2013 article, “Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand Wields Influence from Afar.”
Thaksin also runs a number of nominee parties operating in lockstep with Pheu Thai – including Future Forward/Move Forward Party headed by fellow billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit.
Thaksin had served as Thai prime minister from 2001-2006 and openly and repeatedly served US interests at the expense of Thailand’s own best interests.
These ties and interests included:
- In the late 1990’s, Thaksin was an adviser to notorious private equity firm, the Carlyle Group. He pledged to his foreign contacts that upon taking office, he would still serve as a “matchmaker” between the US equity fund and Thai businesses. It would represent the first of many compromising conflicts of interest that would undermine Thailand’s sovereign under his rule.
- Thaksin was Thailand’s prime minister from 2001-2006. Has since dominated the various reincarnations of his political party – and still to this day runs the country by proxy, via his nepotist appointed sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
- In 2001 he privatized Thailand’s resources and infrastructure including the nation’s oil conglomerate PTT – much to Wall Street’s delight.
- In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq, despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.
- In 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council who just before the 2011 elections that saw Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s “red shirt” “United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship” (UDD) in Washington DC.
Ahead of Thailand’s 2019 elections Thaksin Shinawatra would create a myriad of nominee political parties in the event one or more of his core parties were disbanded by courts for the obvious fact he is a fugitive and those acting on his behalf are aiding and abetting a criminal.
This included Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit’s Future Forward Party (now renamed Move Forward) whose headquarters is literally next door to Thaksin’s Pheu Thai HQ on Phetchaburi Road, Bangkok.
Both parties hold joint press conferences, have identical political platforms, and Thaksin’s Pheu Thai even nominated Thanathorn as their candidate for prime minister following the 2019 elections – as Bangkok Post in their article, “Pheu Thai offered Thanathorn nomination for PM’s post,” reported.
US-backed Billionaire-led Party Has Anti-Chinese Foreign Policy Platform
Thanathorn – the heir of his parents billion dollar autoparts manufacturing fortune and before entering politics helped bust unions at his family’s factory – maintained an anti-Chinese foreign policy platform during his 2019 election campaign.
Articles like Bloomberg’s “Thailand needs hyperloop, not China-built high-speed rail: Thanathorn,” illustrates clearly the agenda US-backed political parties and leaders like Thanathorn represent – particularly in rolling back Thai-Chinese relations. The article would note:
A tycoon turned politician who opposes Thailand’s military government has criticised its US$5.6 billion high-speed rail project with China because hyperloop technology offers a more modern alternative.
It should be noted that not only does the “hyperloop” exist only as crude prototypes versus China’s high-speed rail technology already moving billions of people a year – the Thai-Chinese high-speed rail line is already under construction with a new grand station nearing completion built specifically to serve as, among other things, a terminal for Chinese-built high-speed trains.
Thus – Thanathorn’s proposed “alternative” would mean cancelling actual ongoing construction and waiting years if not indefinitely for theoretical “hyperloop” technology to be developed let alone deployed. In other words – Thanathorn would cancel an important infrastructure project that would greatly expand the movement of goods and people across Asia, just to spite China on Washington’s behalf and leave Thailand with absolutely nothing except PowerPoint presentations as an alternative.
Just months ago – after losing the 2019 elections by millions of votes and his party being disbanded for blatant election law violations – Thanathorn vowed to take his pursuit of power to the streets.
Addressing the demonstrators, Thanathorn said the rally was just a harbinger of more political activities against the Prayut government. He threatened to “bring people to the streets…”
Many of the protesters and organizations present during rallies openly led by Thanathorn are now the very same ones leading current protests. And while Thanathorn is not leading the protests from the front in order to maintain the illusion they are “student-led,” they have adopted his “3-finger salute” and he openly eggs them on through the media his family owns and personally on social media through his official public account.
Members of Thaksin and Thanathorn’s political parties regularly attend and directly participate in recent protests.
Mobs that billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit vowed to put into the streets just months prior are finally here and receiving widespread support from the same Western media organizations, embassies, and fronts that backed his and Thaksin’s bid for power during the 2019 elections.
US Government Funds Core Protest Leader Anon Nampa
While these billionaire-led opposition parties push the protests from behind politically and through media concerns they own in the country – the protests themselves are led by an army of US-funded fronts posing as “nongovernmental organizations.”
The most prominent of these is “Thai Lawyers for Human Rights” (TLHR) whose staff member – Anon Nampa – is openly a member of the protest’s core leadership.
TLHR’s US government funding was openly displayed on the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website in 2014.
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https://www.asia-pacificresearch.com/us-government-role-thailand-student-protests/5629711
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