Siddhi Savetsila

Siddhi Savetsila (1980)

Siddhi Savetsila ( Thai สิทธิ เศวต ศิลา , RTGS : Sit Sawetsila, pronunciation: [sìt sàʔwèːtsìʔlaː] ; * January 7, 1919 in Bangkok ; † December 5, 2015 ) was a Thai air force officer and politician. He was Foreign Minister of Thailand between 1980 and 1990 . Since 1991 he was a member of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's Privy Council .

Life

Youth, family, education

Siddhi Savetsila came from an aristocratic background. His father was a senior official in the royal government. His paternal grandfather was Henry Alabaster , who was British consul in Siam during the reign of King Mongkut (Rama IV) and then an advisor to King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). His mother came from the influential Bunnag family .

Siddhi studied engineering and metallurgy at Chulalongkorn University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he received a bachelor's degree (BS) in 1943. During the Second World War he joined the Seri Thai movement , which resisted the de facto occupation of Thailand by Japan. He collected data for the then US foreign secret service OSS (forerunner of the CIA ) and was briefly imprisoned by the Japanese. One of Siddhi's sisters was married to former OSS agent Willis Bird and one to CIA agent William Lair.

Military and political career

He began his career in the Thai Air Force and rose to general. At the time of the invasion of the Vietnamese armed forces in Cambodia in 1978/79, he was Secretary General of the National Security Council and worked in this position on Prime Minister Kriangsak Chomanan .

In 1980, Siddhi Savetsila was appointed Foreign Minister under Kriangsak. He retained the post even after Prem Tinsulanonda took over the government a few months later. In ASEAN and the UN , he took a hard line against Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia in 1979 and held it. In order to counter the pro-Vietnamese regime in Cambodia, the Foreign Ministry supported the Khmer Rouge under Siddhi . After their disempowerment, they waged a guerrilla war against the new government, using bases on Thai territory. Through the mediation of the influential agricultural company Charoen Pokphand and its Chinese-born owner and CEO Dhanin Chearavanont , Siddhi encouraged the People's Republic of China to support and arm the Khmer Rouge. In addition, he worked hard to get the three main opposition groups against the regime in Phnom Penh - Khmer Rouge, the FUNCINPEC of Prince Norodom Sihanouk and the anti-communist National Liberation Front of the Khmer (KPNLF) of Son Sann - to form a common counter-war, Cambodia should represent at the UN. To this end, he personally traveled to Prince Sihanouk in Beijing and threatened that the three groups would no longer receive financial support from Thailand if they did not work together. Siddhi played a decisive role in the formation of the coalition government of the Democratic Kampuchea in 1982, which was supposed to appear before the world community as the legitimate representative of Cambodia and thus serve as a cover for support for the Khmer Rouge. In 1985 Siddhi described the military leader of the Khmer Rouge, Son Sen , as "a very good person".

In 1983 Siddhi was elected to parliament and in late 1985 took over the chairmanship of the Social Action Party , which did well in the July 1986 elections. In 1986 he was also Deputy Prime Minister for a short time. In August 1990 Siddhi was replaced as Foreign Minister, as Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan sought a more pragmatic relationship with the communist-ruled states of Southeast Asia. In the late 1980s the Social Action Party was in trouble and in September 1990 Siddhi resigned from the party leadership. A month later he also gave up his parliamentary seat and his party membership. He said he was tired of politics. In 1991 King Bhumibol Adulyadej appointed him to his Privy Council.

On May 8, 2000, Siddhi was one of five Thai veterans to receive the Agency Seal Medallion from CIA Director George Tenet .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Privy councillor Siddhi dies at 96. In: Bangkok Post (online), December 5, 2015.
2. ↑ Derick Garnier: Henry Alabaster, 1836-1884. ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. AnglicanThai.org.
3. ↑ สาย เจ้าคุณ พระ ราช พันธุ์ นวล ชั้น ที่ ๔ สาย เจ้าพระยา สุร พันธ พิสุทธิ์ (เทศ บุนนาค) ได้แก่ The Bunnag Lineage Club.
4. ↑ Who's who in Thailand 1987. p. 471.
5. ^ Robert O. Tilman: Southeast Asia and the Enemy Beyond. Westview Press, 1987, p. 54.
6. ^ Daniel Fineman: A Special Relationship. The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 1997, ISBN 0-8248-1818-0 , p. 133.
7. ^ ^{A b c} Michael Leifer: Dictionary of the modern politics of South-East Asia . 3rd edition, Routledge, London / New York 2001, ISBN 0-415-23875-7 , p. 244, entry “Siddhi Savetsila”.
8. ^ ^{A b} Susan E. Cook: Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda. New Perspectives. Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 84.
9. ^ Duncan McCargo , Ukrist Pathmanand: The Thaksinization of Thailand. NIAS Press, Copenhagen 2005, p. 33.
10. ↑ Chanthou Boua: Thailand Bears Guilt for Khmer Rouge. In: The New York Times , March 24, 1993, p. 20.

Note on Thai names : This article addresses people by their first name.