A Little Trip to Bangkok

Our third unit of the semester is a Collaborative Community Consultation (CCC). Traditionally students spend a day in a village facing economic, social and culture human rights violations resulting from irresponsible development schemes. In the villages students discuss a community’s strategy with villagers and organizers. Then a report is written that should proposal a project that students can work on, in solidarity, to further that community’s strategy and movement.

As civil and political rights pick up an increasing focus in Thailand’s public discourse on Human Rights, the CIEE-Thailand program has begun to shift its focus too. For this semester’s CCC we had a group focus on the deaths from last year’s April-May crack down (HERE) and various reports on it from civil society. Each report maintains a different focus and lens through which they attempt to understand and explain the events from last year.

A few of the reports we examined:

Robert Amsterdam’s White Papers (Thaskin/Red Shirts’ lawyer based in the UK):

http://robertamsterdam.com/thailand/?p=211

Maintains a HR focus and the historical context of the crackdown

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (interim report to be released next month)

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/188880/home-truths-vital-for-reconciliation

The People’s Information Center (to be released April 7^th)

http://www.peaceandjusticenetwork.org/

HR analysis of the crackdown

The group of students got to travel down to Bangkok and speak with Professor Sriprapha (Chairperson for the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights) to get her insight on the crackdown and Professor Ee, a representative of the People’ s Information Center. Then we got the incredible opportunity to sit down with the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to talk to them about their report.

Please check out our students’ final CCC report (!!!):

Crackdown of April-May CCC Report

It was written in about 12 hours, half of it at night during a six hour van ride coming back from Bangkok.

One student made this short video as well:

A little propagandist, but…