Luk Suea Chao Ban

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Luk Suea Chao Ban ( Thai ลูกเสือ ชาว บ้าน ; translated village scouts , English Village Scouts ) are a politically right-wing social movement and voluntary paramilitary militia in rural areas of Thailand. They are funded by the Thai Ministry of the Interior and report to the Border Police.

The "village scouts" were raised from 1971 to fight the uprising of the Communist Party of Thailand as well as the democracy movement and the progressive farmers' association of Thailand. Thailand was then a military dictatorship. The "grassroots" defense organizations in South Vietnam served as a model. Independent, wealthy farmers formed the core of membership. The Luk Suea Chao Ban were divided into small cells, which were usually run by a right-wing politician from the city. They were trained to confront “radical elements” and to defend the symbolic trinity of nation, religion and monarchy. As the “eyes and ears” of the government, they were supposed to report strangers who came to their villages to local officials. The organization was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior and promoted by wealthy royalists from the larger cities. Its main patron was King Bhumibol Adulyadej , who visited units of the "village scouts" with his family and blessed their scarves and flags. Shortly after the founding of Luk Suea Chao Ban, five million Thais (10% of the population) took part in the organization's five-day training course. By 1985, there were a total of ten million adult Thais taking part in the training.

Even after the end of the military dictatorship as a result of the popular uprising in October 1973 , the “village scouts” were used against demonstrations by the democracy and student movement. In view of the victory of the communists in the Second Indochina War in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in 1975 and the self-confident demeanor of left-wing students, parties, trade unions and farmers in their own country, politically and economically insecure members of the urban bourgeoisie joined in alongside farmers. During the protest meetings against the continued stationing of US troops and against the return of the exiled dictators Thanom Kittikachorn and Praphas Charusathien , the Luk Suea Chao Ban were called by radio to strategic points in all major cities. Their best known and most serious mission was during the rally against left-wing students and activists, which culminated in the massacre at Thammasat University on October 6, 1976, in which at least 46 people died before a coup brought a return to military dictatorship.

By increasingly addressing right-wing conservatives in the cities, the organization gradually developed away from its actual, rural basis. It gradually silted up in the 1980s.

After the turn of the millennium, the “village scouts” were revived as an ultra-nationalist mass organization against the background of the conflict with Muslim-Malay separatists in southern Thailand .

See also

literature

  • Katherine Ann Bowie: Rituals of National Loyalty. An Anthropology of the State and the Village Scout Movement in Thailand. Columbia University Press, 1997.
  • Katherine A. Bowie: The State and the Right Wing. The Village Scout Movement in Thailand. In June Nash (Ed.): Social Movements. To Anthropological Reader. Blackwell Publishing, Malden (MA) 2005, pp. 46-65.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Bowie: The State and the Right Wing. 2005.
  2. ↑ a b c David Streckfuss: Truth on Trial in Thailand. Defamation, treason and lèse-majesté. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 2011, pp. 213-214.
  3. ↑ a b c Somboon Suksamran: Buddhism and politics in Thailand. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 1982, pp. 79-80.
  4. ^ Paul M. Handley: The King Never Smiles. A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) 2006, ISBN 0-300-10682-3 , p. 223.
  5. ^ Rachel V. Harrison: The Man with the Golden Gauntlets. With Chaibancha's Insi Thorng and the Hybridization of Red and Yellow Perils in Thai Cold War Action Cinema. In: Cultures at War. The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia. Cornell Southeast Asia Program, Ithaca (NY) 2010, pp. 195-226, at p. 208.
  6. ↑ Chris Baker, Pasuk Phongpaichit: A History of Thailand. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Melbourne 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-76768-2 , p. 192.
  7. ↑ Alexander Horstmann: Violence, Subversion and Creativity in the Thai-Malaysian Borderland. In: Borderscapes. Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2007, pp. 137-160, at p. 149.