Scrubbing Away Memories and Covering The Fires

Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

For 'curfew' the French say 'couvre feu'. Literally it means to cover the fire.

The Thai government's curfew feels very much like the French version of the term: an attempt to cover the fire, or perhaps hide it.

It reflects a fear that while the government may have succeeded in snuffing out the Red Shirt protest at Rajprasong, the order it has imposed may be as fragile as it is combustible.

Many Bangkokians would rather wash the memories of these past two months away and move on.

It would be comforting to believe that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva, ever the unruffled, ever the reassuring, has dealt with the 'problem' and life will now return to normal - whatever normal may be in this city of mysterious yet charming madness.

On Rajadamri Avenue yesterday, where days earlier soldiers and protesters had fought, where bloodied corpses had lain, a different kind of army was at work.

Platoons of cheerful volunteers, wielding brooms and brushes, could be seen scrubbing frantically at streets and sidewalks, desperately trying to remove any last trace of the Red Shirt protest. It was as much about purging the city of dark and violent memories as it was about a literal clean-up.

Like a dazed boxer gathering himself from the floor, dusting himself down and preparing to fight another round, Bangkok is already regaining its old momentum. The city's inimitable energy has begun to flow again.

Familiar traffic jams have resumed their slow, jolting procession through valleys of skyscrapers. The sidewalk vendors are trundling back to their allotted spots. Most important of all the shoppers have begun, gingerly, to reclaim their malls.

Apart from a few visible scars, where fires set by retreating Red Shirts still smoulder, Bangkok has begun to look just as it always has. One could even detect a smile, here and there.

But the kind of trauma caused by the intense street violence which roiled through this city in recent weeks can't be erased with a broom and some disinfectant. Thais can put on a brave face - something they're famous for. They can tell the world it's OK now, that the 'terrorists' are being rounded up, that pretty soon it will be business as usual in the Land of Smiles.

It would be tempting to do that - to pretend. To do so, however, would be to mistake order for peace, to mistake the government's victory at Rajprasong for the reality that the Red Shirts' losses and their brusque eviction may well have lit even fiercer fires among their ranks.

The danger now would be to apply the literal meaning of the French term for curfew and to simply cover the fires which are still burning.

In moves to imprison and stifle the Red Shirt movement, there are ominous signs that this government intends not to engage the Red Shirts but to suppress them, not to extinguish the fires of discontent through compromise and reconciliation but merely to hide those flames from view.