Thank **** We Don't Live in Bangkok...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/i...THAI.html?8hpib
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February 27, 2004
BANGKOK JOURNAL
At 10 P.M., Thais Better Know Where Their Children Are
By SETH MYDANS
BANGKOK, Feb. 20 — Imagine a city where bars, nightclubs and even movie theaters shut down early, where young people are off the streets by curfew, where universities stage surprise drug tests and where a woman cannot enter a restaurant without a male escort.
That wouldn't be the racy, all-night Bangkok that people like to call "fun city."
But it is Bangkok — and the rest of Thailand — as imagined by powerful government reformers who have already begun to put a crimp in the fun.
Nearly three years ago, they began what they call a "social order" campaign, enforcing a 2 a.m. closing time that nobody had ever bothered about and by raiding nightspots and testing customers for drugs.
To almost everyone's surprise, the politically popular campaign has persisted despite the resistance of powerful businessmen and the complaints of Western tourists.
Now the screws are beginning to tighten.
On March 1, most nightclubs, bars and discos will have their closing times moved back to midnight, one of the most stringent curfews in Asia. After March 29, under another new regulation, all youngsters under 18 will have to be off the streets by 10 p.m. unless they are with their parents.
This month the Interior Ministry announced a 100-fold increase in license fees that, if put into effect, is sure to put scores of restaurants, ballrooms, massage parlors and other entertainment places out of business.
With Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra intimidating the press; packing the courts, the police and the military; and all but eliminating political opposition, and with social order added to the mix, Thailand could begin to be a somewhat different place.
There are those, indeed, who warn of a creeping dictatorship as the popular and powerful prime minister moves systematically to bring the country into his grip.
"There is a very troubling hint of a yearning to gradually turn Thailand into a police state," wrote Pravit Rojanaphruk, a political commentator, in the English-language daily The Nation last week.
"The state is now trying to become big brother, and if this occurs without any resistance from both young and old it is not too far-fetched to imagine that the government will impose more measures dictating how people should or should not behave."
Government officials are not shy about saying pretty much the same thing.
"I want my children to grow up in a polite, peaceful and orderly society," said Purachai Piemsomboon, a former interior minister who instituted the crackdown, in a television interview last year.
Curiously, polite and orderly Singapore is moving in the opposite direction. Last summer the police announced that bars would be allowed to stay open around the clock and that patrons could dance on tabletops.
As soon as it was started, Thailand's campaign was widely popular, with polls showing that 70 percent of the public backed it. For the moment, Mr. Purachai, became the most popular politician in the country.
"Students are reveling without a limit," he said. "Dancing is not dirty, but how they behave matters. They must not have sex in lifts or toilets. That's pathetic."
This is a time of wrenching change in Thailand as traditional social and family structures give way to the modern world. Mr. Purachai was voicing the fears of many people who see their country, and their children, running out of control.
On the other hand, there are critics who say Mr. Purachai and his fellow reformers have gone a bit out of control themselves.
At one point, a police district in Bangkok, resurrecting a long-forgotten law, ordered entertainment places to turn away any women who tried to enter without a male escort.
"If a girl walks alone in an isolated place police have to check on her," Mr. Purachai said, although the orders are never likely to be enforced. "This isn't infringement but a precaution."
Early last year, the police raided movie theaters in a shopping mall and ordered them to close at midnight, citing an old martial law curfew that was still on the books.
"Although the law was established 30 years ago, it is still practical, especially for today's generation, who face too many temptations," said Somchai Petprasert, a police colonel working as an adviser to the Education Ministry.
It is only a little more than a decade since Thailand was ruled by generals, and the rights and freedoms of its democracy are still fragile. It was only at the end of 1997 that these were codified in a new Constitution.
Mr. Thaksin's six-year-old government has been systematically rolling back those reforms, weakening safeguards against corruption and electoral fraud, muzzling government critics and using economic pressure to stifle the press.
Public morals and social behavior may prove to be a greater challenge, though. There is a forlorn hope that the problems of a changing society can be corralled by crackdowns.
"We are helping them keep their virginity," explained Nikhom Jarumanee, an Education Ministry official, when an experimental curfew was tried on Valentine's Day two years ago.
Plenty of people here think this is balderdash.
The Bangkok Post, an English-language daily, summed up the mood in a sarcastic headline last week: "Lock Up the Young, This Is Thailand."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company.
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Toooo beeee geeeeeiiiisha...u mus hav abirity...stop men ded in twak...
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