What is reconciliation? Many of the supposedly great and good have called for reconciliation in Thai political life as a means of ‘healing wounds’ and providing ‘unity’ – but these are nearly always self-serving attempts by members of the elite to influence the pro-democracy movement to give up its political aims and return to slavish obedience of the powers that be.
What is the nature of actual reconciliation such as it has been experienced elsewhere?
Firstly, it seems impossible that there can be reconciliation without a full and proper exploration of the events of the past. Whether the term is used in its religious sense, in the sense of repairing a personal relationship or in finding ways to bring inimical factions to live together, there is consistently the expectation in place that all events of the past will be laid out in full and responsibility taken by perpetrators – which may or may not lead subsequently to prosecutions. Hence, there can be no reconciliation in Argentina until the fate of all the disappeared is revealed and which children were forcibly removed from their parents and adopted. In South Africa, it was a crucial part of the peaceful end of apartheid that those who committed crimes admitted their activities and the details of what had occurred.
Can this process ever happen in Thailand? It seems difficult to imagine that the stifling atmosphere of silence and self-censorship will ever be dissipated to the extent that people will be permitted to speak freely about the past. It is also hard to imagine that those people whom we largely believe to have been responsible for the military coups and repressive use of violence in the past ever admitting what they have deliberately achieved. The principal reason for all of this cannot even be hinted at.
