New Violence

Nobody died of protest-related violence for several days following the night of April 10, when twenty-plus (the original estimates were 8-18) protesters and soldiers were shot dead near Democracy Monument. The tension hasn’t lessened, but people’s nervousness has unfortunately started to seem normal. Nobody I know has been hurt, but nearly everyone I know expresses a mixture of discouragement and fright.

The number of protesters and soldiers standing off against each other have risen and fallen daily, but by and large they’re now concentrating in a known part of Bangkok. For most people who prefer not to be involved, that consolidation means clashes are easy to avoid. This part of town is several miles from where we live, and it’s not on the way to where I work.

Then last night explosions hurt several people, and killed one. I happened to be at a book club gathering. The host’s apartment was walking distance from the place where the person died. We didn’t hear any loud sounds, but in the middle of our meeting, suddenly everyone began to get text messages at the same time. We stopped talking and turned on the TV.

It emerged that the trouble was also quite close to the apartment of one of our members. She had left the meeting early because she wasn’t feeling well. A quick call reassured us that she had reached home safely, but there was definitely no going back to discussing the book we had all read.

Not since September 11th do I recall a topic being so close to the surface. The red-yellow-multicolor conflict is the kind of all-encompassing, unavoidable subject that you wake up to and fall asleep to. With a mixture of fascination and dread, you are lured to check the news often. Nearly all conversations here now eventually find their way to the question, “How will this all end?”