Thai Air TG971: Implicit Hostage Taking in Modern Thai History

The TG971 incident has been widely covered by social media, and mainstream media, with commentators alleging the pilots of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited (THAI) of taking their own passengers hostage. The accusation of ‘hostage taking’ seems to be the keyword that is garnering popularity for the events that took place.

 

According to a disclosure by Facebook user name Yuwaree Pankla that was posted in an article by Khaosod, on duty pilots of flight TG971 from Zurich to Bangkok refused to take off until their fellow pilots who were passengers as deadhead pilots were seated in First class. As a result, herself and her husband decided to give up their seats in First class because none of the other passengers in the other First class seats would give up their places.

Further, in the post Facebook user name Yuwaree Pankla accused the on duty pilots that in order to accommodate themselves and their own acquaintances, the pilots, both on duty and deadhead, implicitly took the passengers hostage to have their demands met. The post was dated 14th October. Later, news would emerge that the Miss Yuwaree Pankla’s husband would be Sakda Pankla, former industry deputy secretary-general, and his wife Yuwaree, a science lecturer at Chulalongkorn university.

 

Then, on the 19th of October, in a report by MGR online, Captain, Lieutenant Commander Chakkri Jongsiri came out of his hiatus from public attention to disclose information behind the incident in defense of the pilots of Thai Airways. According to Captain Chakkri, the Pilot in Command (PIC) became aware of the seating arrangements of the deadhead pilots which were not according to protocol, and pilot’s rights, the PIC refused boarding until seating arrangements were sorted accordingly. The PIC cited that the flight did not operate with first class ticketing, thus the first class seats had to be made available to pilots according to rights granted to the pilots.

Captain Chakkri, gave a chronicle account of the events where the Zurich ground manager’s failure to communicate and respond to the PIC’s request caused the delay. The accounts reported each silent struggle between the PIC and ground control like a military court scene from a movie. Captain Chakkri also added suggestions to accommodate pilots with ground transport arrangements for safety concerns, orderly conduct, and the airline’s image. Captain Chakkri had made headlines in 2008 for refusing People’s Power Party MPs to board the plain he was the pilot in command of, citing a matter of principle.

 

Thailand has relatively few meditated hostage takings. It’s viewed as cowardly. Targeting the defenseless and those otherwise irrelevant to the perpetrator’s grievances. With exception to isolated hostage taking incidents involving psychotic breakdowns where hostages are usually someone close to the perpetrator, or an unfortunate passerby.

 

During Yaba’s height as an epidemic, before the culture of Yaba matured and became more endemic as it is now and no longer headline worthy for mainstream news, cases of cranked up users going berserk and taking hostages were all the rave. Subsequently, with the zealous live coverage of Yaba induced hostage situations in the background, the crackdown on Yaba initiated by concerns from the highest echelon of Thai society led to approximately 2,275 extrajudicial killings, according to statistics from Human Rights Watch. Giving Thaksin Shinawatra, then the Prime minister on a white horse, all the credit for Thailand’s War on drugs is totally unfair, for the handle, the thong, the fall, to the cracker of the whip are all essential to the marvelous ‘crack’ of the lashing.

 

Explicit, premeditated hostage takings that involve multiple hostages are an anomaly in Thailand, actually. Few Thais could give an example of a hostage situation that was planned ahead before being carried out. If asked about hostage situations in Thailand, most would refer to the Yaba cases. Some would recall the God Army incidents where in 1999, Karen armed militia stormed the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok holding 89 hostages, which ended without bloodshed. And in 2000, ten armed militants from the group held up a hospital in Ratchaburi province with 700 – 800 hostages to demand the Thai government to stop artillery attacks on their positions in Myanmar, and to give medical treatment to their wounded.

All ten militants were killed in the raid on the incident involving the hospital. The action and retribution differed greatly between taking Myanmese embassy staffs hostage, and taking Thai patients at a hospital hostage.

 

Thais interested in history, or academics in related fields, may refer to the 1975 situation when the Israeli embassy in Bangkok was infiltrated by four members from the Palestinian Black September Organization, again there was no blood spilt. The perpetrators even gave their submachine guns to Thailand’s two ruling junta leaders Thanom Kittikachorn and Prapas Jarusathian as souvenirs.

 

However, one infamous alleged hostage situation was that of Suan Kularb school during the Siamese Revolution of 1932. Allegedly, as the Khana Ratsadon seized power before the break of dawn, Suan Kularb school was besieged by armed forces from the revolutionary forces. The Suan Kularb siege has been mostly explained and proposed by alumni of the school as an attack to the integrity of Khana Ratsadon, as a cowardice act, holding the children of Siam’s most powerful officials hostage to force their compliance. The allegation of taking Suan Kularb students hostages places the school at the center of the coup’s success, and taints the moral integrity of the revolutionary forces into cowardly rebels who would stoop to anything for power.

Opposing opinions more keen on historical reviews than anecdotes counter the accusation as being false. Proponents of non-Suan Kularb centric views points out that at the time there was just one student from a family noteworthy of taking hostage actually attending, the coup had already succeeded since before dawn of that day, and the occupation of the area was the reason for the tanks closing off the entrances and exits of the school, not the school itself or the students of Suan Kularb.

 

Most explicit incidents of hostage taking in Thai society, thus are isolated cases of drug induced psychosis. Thais being held hostage implicitly, on the other hand, occurs much too often. As in the case of flight TG 971, where the passengers were not the direct target of capture for the guarantee of having demands be complied, but rather that the affected passengers’ negative circumstances would pressure those able to accommodate the demands to comply.

 

Prolonged mass protests have similar affects. The closing of Thammasat university in 1973 to call for democracy, for example. Surely some of the students of Thammasat university would have preferred to just take exams, graduate, and lived their lives without the democratic flare and glory the students who would later refer to themselves and their compatriots as the people of 14 October were demanding. One could say that the 14 October took hostage the normalcy of student life from their fellow students, from the public, and shamed the government to have their demands met. And consequently, those students were prosecuted, and chastised by society. But not as severely as what would happen to the 6 October students in 1976. The retribution to the people of 6 October was atrocious and utterly cruel.

 

The PDRC, the red shirts, the yellow shirts, even the cell phone mob of Black May in 1992, could all be accused of taking the country hostage. The closing of streets, business districts, the occupation and shutdown of the country’s only major national airport, the Bangkok Shutdown, could all be accused of being amoral, and constitute to legal offenses. All the unfortunate incidents mentioned have two common factors.

 

One, it is grievance. All the perpetrators felt they were in distress, especially the cranked up Yaba addicts. And yes, even the pilots that distressingly felt pilots needed to be seated in first class. From the pilots perspective, it was their right. Flying first class is guaranteed when seats were available, and unavailable for them meant the seats had to be sold, not given to attract customer loyalty. It was for safety reasons too, for adequate quality resting time because piloting is so hard they can’t possibly get proper rest on a business class seat which doesn’t provide 180 degree reclining. And of course, proximity to the control cabin in case of an emergency like if one of the on duty pilot died mid flight. So, it could be seen as a matter of principles, for keeping precedence with concern to safety, to uphold Thai Airways’ pilot’s prestige, and as one article puts it, “If you give them an inch, they take a mile”.

 

Then, of course, everyone have grievances if they really dig down. It’s the default human condition to be discontent, you could say.

 

The other common factor is how they went about addressing their grievances, they all committed something they knew was wrong to correct something they believed was wrong, well maybe not the pilots. It is this willingness to do wrong things to achieve something they believe was right that categorically casts them as accusable. This ‘the end justify the means’ mentality is the seed in every dictator’s garden of destruction and suffering. It is the extremists’ motto, the seed that blooms the flower of evil, the grains of sand for the road to hell that is paved with good intentions, the would be hero’s hamartia, why Batman realizes he must stay in the shadow.

Doing something wrong to address another wrongful act doesn’t contribute to doing something right, more likely it adds to the cycle of wrong doings to get what you want. A contribution to the swirl of the vicious cycle that threatens us all, and it has delayed Thailand’s progress towards a developed society for too long. Progress comes from doing something right, from giving reward to people who work hard to achieve and create, not to those willing to wrong others to achieve what they want. And to have whole societies progress, society as a whole needs to do the right thing.

Thai society’s willingness to permit evil acts to be committed towards people they see as evil keeps it on a morality hamster wheel. Without moral integrity, one can not really see right from wrong, actions become mere means for achieving ends. In this sense, disinformation is especially detrimental. Thai society’s willingness to slander, falsely accuse, and its readiness to accept then spread those slanders and accusations against those that is antagonized by Thai society may afford a sense of retribution, but it erodes the society’s ability to discern what is true. And in too many instances, enables Thailand’s worst atrocities. Atrocities that are then fed back as justified actions.

 

We don’t have any choice in being born into this human condition of discontentment and distress, and we shouldn’t passively endure the wrongs done onto us. But how we go about trying to be content and happy with life, how we address the wrongs, those are the life choices that defines us.

 

In the case of the pilots of Thai Airways, it is unfortunate that Thai Airways seating allocation system put them in a tight spot between upholding their brethren’s rights, and ethical conduct. But, the choice to delay the flight, choosing to cause distress until their distress was addressed, that choice has defined them to the Thai public, and perhaps added another nail to the coffin for THAI’s chance at making a turnaround from its non-stop route towards bankruptcy.