Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Will gentrification respect city's people?
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/06/2023
» We've lived for over a century in the shadow of grandeur: near the Customs House, known to Thais as rongpasi. "We" means my maternal family and the community of Haroon Mosque. Each day before sunrise, the muezzin's sing-song call rings through the neighbourhood, carried on the river wind towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the French Embassy and Assumption Cathedral.
A tower of our glory, except the foreign bit
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/09/2016
» I happened to be there at the opening of the sparkling corn-cob skyscraper, the trophy of high-capitalism and symbol of wealth. No fireworks at the launch of the MahaNakhon Tower, that would have been tacky, but we had the beam-me-up light dance and iridescent sky painting, cued to booming music. Jose Carreras sang arias.
Never forget, death is not an illusion
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/03/2014
» In our season of mass delusion, what is real? Life and death are real, but particularly death. Death by suicide or by murder, but particularly murder. Deaths of adults and of children, but particularly of children, at Ratchaprasong and in Trat, as well as in Narathiwat, where three siblings, the eldest 11, were killed on Feb 3, and which of course we’ve almost forgotten about because even in death there’s a hierarchy of public attention and allotment of air time. There was also the 14-year-old boy Kunakorn Srisuwan, shot dead by a military bullet (as the Criminal Court ruled) near Soi Mor Leng in the red-shirt riots of May 2010. That’s one death we've definitely forgotten. The only story that orphan boy ever had in his life is about his death.