Red shirts: Once upon a time in Bangkok


  • Photographer
    Chairat Jongjarrernsook
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    April-May

In 2010 The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), whose supporters are commonly called "Red Shirts” held the large-scale demonstration to call for the government to dissolve the parliament and to hold a general election. The protesters mostly including the rural people and the low-income earners marched to Bangkok and then occupied its business and shopping area. I join the demonstration to take photographs in the way that an ordinary protester could see. I intended to depict their identity, conflict between the rural and the urban district and the development of situation through their daily live.

Story

In April 2010 The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), whose supporters are commonly called "Red Shirts” held the large-scale demonstration to call for the government to dissolve the parliament and to hold a general election. The protesters mostly including the rural people and the low-income earners marched to Bangkok and then occupied its business and shopping centre area. They believed that their chosen government had twice been taken away from them, once through a coup in 2006 and once through a court decision dissolving the political party supported by them in 2008 that led opportunity to the party backed by the army and the upper classes formed a new government. A month later the situation was more stressful and could easily turn to be violence when the urban people call for government to crack down the demonstration so the protesters built the barricade around their protest site. Some of them had come to Bangkok first time and didn’t expect to live here so long like this. “Red shirt: Once upon a time in Bangkok” focused on the red shirts identity, the conflict and the development of situation through the red shirts’ daily live in the way that an ordinary protester could see. The conflict depicted here is not the confrontation between protesters and soldiers but it is the conflict of identity between the poor and the rich, the rural and the urban district that cause the situation developed to the tragic end.

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