Page 9 - สิทธิมนุษยชน : เส้นทางสู่สันติประชาธรรม

ecological degradation. As a resource-based society, this dependent

and exploitative style of development amounts to a gross violation
and destruction of the common peopleûs economic, social, and
cultural rights, and eventually of the right to life itself.

Thai capitalism and the middle classes now constitute the

new elites, and have fallen victim to globalization-the so-called
ùfree marketû- as dictated by industrialized powers and
transnational corporations. With technological supremacy and the

newly-created intellectual property right regime, the global capital

market has proceeded to expand its power of control. Not
only over economic and financial resources and institutions, but
also the common peopleûs sources of livelihood. In the process,

an already authoritarian ùfree marketû becomes totalitarian. In the

process, privilege and dependency-prone Thai elites have become
increasingly alienated from their own people. ùDemocraticû
institutions, like political parties, elections, parliament, and the

governmental machinery itself, become the instruments for

subjugating common people to the tyranny of the market. All in
the name of economic freedom and çgood governanceé.
Thai society has gone through a hard struggle for freedom.

Yet the resulting ùfreedomû itself has been anything but freedom.

As far as understanding human rights is concerned, there is a
real need for serious rethinking of what is being learned from the
West, with its exclusive emphasis on unbridled individualism. Its

historical and intellectual contribution in the matter of civil and

political rights is being called into question. Serious attention is
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