T he value of a life for many Thais depends on their social status.
In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, which killed many Thai workers in Israel, I told the then Israeli Ambassador to Thailand Orna Sagiv that the Thai middle and upper classes did not feel any particular anger or sense of special loss regarding the 40+ Thai victims (killed and held hostage) during the Hamas attack because the victims were mostly migrant workers from rural provinces with low levels of education. (If the Thai victims were Embassy staff, it would have been a totally different story.)
The middle/upper classes did not feel a kinship or see themselves reflected in those losses.
As for the Thailand-Cambodia conflict casualties, a similar pattern can be observed in the context of the border conflict:
All 10 fatalities were low-ranking soldiers, mostly with limited education, who were sons of villagers, laborers, and/or farmers.
The middle and upper classes in Bangkok consequently felt nothing special about the loss and the ultra-nationalist among them can go on calling for more military attack. (This feeling was perhaps amplified by Bangkok’s geographical distance—at least 250 km from the border, safely outside the range of a PHL-03 rocket, Cambodia’s most lethal weapons, which maxes out at 130 km).
The Voice of a Victim’s Family
Here’s the heartbreaking words of the grandmother of one of the fallen soldiers, highlighting the war victim’s impoverished background and sense of duty:
A grandmother of one of the Thai soldiers killed was quoted by Khaosod on Thursday as saying that her grandson “did not drink or smoke, probably because he knew he was struggling [economically].”
”Due to the family’s poor status, he only finished M.3 (Grade 9) and worked in construction, saving money to buy land for his grandmother. He once said that after being discharged, he would be ordained for his mother and grandmother, but that day will never come.”
This is the class-based empathy gap in Thai society, where the sacrifices of the underprivileged are often discounted or overlooked by the urban elite, or at least deemed as ‘acceptable’ price to be paid.
This morning, I watched Khaosod news clip interviewing a young Thai soldier at the border—and it’s tragic.
He said, “I want this to end quickly,” “I feel sorry for the villagers,” and “I feel sorry for ourselves, having to endure something like this.”
But the most heartbreaking part is that the young soldier spoke confusing that he came to fight “for something, for some kind of thing.”
Interpret it yourselves.
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