This is the part one of a two part interview and discussion I conducted with the UK’s Ambassador to Thailand, His Excellency Asif Ahmad, earlier this month. This part deals, in the main, with the UK’s view on Thailand’s political and human rights situation and a typical day in the life of an ambassador. Part two will focus Ambassador Asif’s journey into the diplomatic corps, his time working at 10 Downing Street and the trade situation between the UK and Thailand.

Born in the UK to Pakistani parents, Ambassador Ahmad moved at an early age to what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and then followed his father around the world as he worked for the Pakistani Foreign Service.

Returning back to the UK to attend both college and university, Ambassador Ahmad then worked in banking in the UK for 20years before moving into community-based business support schemes and from there into the civil service and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

I began by asking Ambassador Asif  to reflect on UK Foreign Minister William Hague’s September 2010 speech on human rights and foreign policy and the context of Thailand, where pretty much every single credible international monitoring organisation has said human rights are on the slide. I asked him what kind of action do he feel the UK can take to stick to its avowed foreign policy principles when dealing with Thailand and how might the UK mission help improve the Thai HR situation?

If you look back over recent UK government policy, whether it was Robin Cook’s ethical foreign policy, Tony Blair’s speeches or Gordon Brown’s concerns about Burma and the way William Hague has recently reiterated those values, I think our foreign policy has always had a value driven part at the middle of its agenda. There are other agendas as well, commercial, consular care but there has always been a well accepted consensus that values do have a place. Which is why we are members of so many international conventions and actively pushing and supporting them. This is not something new nor is it something we have ignored. Even if you look at something like a free trade agreement which might be signed by ourselves on behalf of the EU or whoever and there are two bits to that. One is called the partnership and cooperation agreement which is entirely political and value driven. Then there is the bit that says what has import tariffs and what doesn’t have tariffs and who buys what. But we do both together. We had the option of saying “lets forget about that, values have nothing to do with trade” but we explicitly agreed that certain conditions or commonality must be in place or we’ll be doing business on a purely mercantile basis which is not good.

There are many issues regarding UN human rights commissions or whatever that Thailand might be members of and we expect them to live up to those standards. Our job is to continue to remind them of that. I am also aware of the neighbourhood that Thailand is in. Which ever way you look, to China, Burma, North Korea and even Singapore, where there are certain issues, absolute monarchies, socialist reform states in Vietnam and Cambodia, this is a environment where many of the universal values we would take for granted still remain aspirational. In some places they haven’t even got to that stage. So we will continue to work on these. In Thailand in particular we’ve been pretty vocal and on the record about our view that media controls, control of internet, monitoring of websites, how that has all been conducted, the closing of radio and TV stations etc is the wrong approach.  Our belief is, yes, if you want to impose some sense of control as we do via defamation laws, libel laws and, as we have in the UK,  broadcasting authorities that have obligations to enforce impartiality and source and evidence based assertions, I think that is a more sensible to way to do things than simply shutting down radio stations etc while claiming they are a threat to national security. That’s a very crude way of dealing with things. Equally in a place like Thailand you see the opposite as well. There is a vibrant media. It’s not like there is some entirely state-controlled Light of Myanmar type organs. The Thai media do test quite a lot of boundaries.

Do you have the Thai language press translated for you? In my view the political commentary in papers like Khao Sod, Matichon and Thai Rath is far more in tune with what you might get back in the UK than the Nation or the Bangkok Post.

Yes we do. But that’s true anywhere, whether it’s in Islamabad or wherever. It’s a different market. The sort of article that might get put into the Nation of the Bangkok Post wouldn’t get time of day in the local papers.

And of course Thai language newspapers sell in huge amounts.

Yes, it’s the flipside of this whole environment. I’ve seen similar in Indonesia, where the media is very vibrant and that space is busy and well occupied. The genie is out of the bottle in that sense. I agree that there are ways that the authorities have reacted at times which goes contrary to what we would like Thailand to be.

One human rights issue I am interested in and have written about before is lese majeste. It is obviously quite complex and must be quite difficult for an embassy to address, but how do you deal with something like that?

It is complex and for a number of reasons. Firstly there is a cultural grounding.  If you take the UK and the way we treat our royal family, with TV satire, parodies and the like and then to state occasions when people just love the way the royal family conducts itself, that range is just not available in Thailand or in many parts of Asia. Quite simply that’s not the way people deal with figures of authority, whether it’s in a family setting, a political setting or in a constitutional setting.  At one level, what I call gratuitous offence, drawing cartoons, mocking people and the like, you could get away with that in a Western environment. Over here most ordinary people would be offended let alone the institutions themselves.

But an 18 to 20year prison sentence for doing something like that?

Yes, that’s the other extreme. But one also has to see how the royal family here has evolved from being something that was divine to being a constitutional monarch. And my assessment is that many of these things have taken place not because that is what the King himself wanted but because of people around him, whether it’s the military or other parties who’ve decided ‘enough is enough, we want a much more disciplined approach’ or start love the King campaigns or what have you. My own experience of dealing with the UK royals, and I’ve worked directly with HM the Queen in the Commonwealth environment and the Duke of York in his trade role, is that when you deal with them directly they are far more casual and easy going about things.  The King here in Thailand at one stage, I seem to remember, said he didn’t need all this bowing and scrapping and prostration and that it was imposed after one of the coups as a way to restate their position. I’ve heard the Prime Minister here say, and other former ministers as well, that it is perfectly legitimate to talk about the constitutional role of the monarch but what you should not to do is co-opt it to suit your politics. We have had people here almost seeking to brand themselves as royalists without it being something explicitly the royals have actually wanted. And whilst it stays in that political domain in that way that’s when the issue becomes more complex than it might otherwise be. I think people could have a dispassionate discussion  but at the moment the minute anybody steps into that arena somebody else will jump in and say “that is anti-royal and lese majeste”. The system here is also more permissive and I know that this administration has started to do something and I think more work will be needed. But how an allegation is actually processed complicates things because in a way it is open to anybody. Any Thai citizen can turn around and say that “that thing you did 4 years ago or 3 years ago or 2 days ago is lese majeste” and the police are obliged to investigate. The potential for draconian sentences is there. Maybe they need something like a prosecution office which assesses the merit of each case. The most sensible people I speak to say that it is only the most extreme cases that should then qualify for any kind of action rather than just sabre rattling.

There are other human rights concerns and abuses in Thailand and there is certainly potential for a worsening of that situation. The UK has a pretty good relationship with Thailand so how would it influence the Thais to move away from such abuses?

The foundation has to be, and this goes to the heart of what we are about, is that in an environment which, as you say, is a friendly and a constructive one,  is to actually use those channels of influence. So you sustain them, maintain them, across party lines, through civil society and individuals, academics, the whole spectrum. The idea is that you have that broad network that is well maintained and usable. You can only influence somebody when you have a link to them. Just broadcasting it is not enough. And then you have to pick and choose the issues you think you have some traction with or where there are other political imperatives. If you look at the Burma situation because of our very strong policy objective there we have very directly, with the [Thai] military, the government and the police, talked about the treatment of refugees not only in camps but those who are fleeing conflict and who are then sometimes being pushed back too early. We have done this every time it happens. Not every once in a while but every time it happens we are on the case. We have people on the border who tell us exactly what is going on. I have also broadened the dialogue to saying that it’s not just about whether the people around the camps have documents or not. There are roughly 2million Burmese people who are essential to the Thai economy, working on construction sites, in catering, in fisheries, in agriculture. In some ways these people don’t have a high profile, they are almost invisible. But we’ve talked about the need for labour laws to be transparent, that these workers receive the correct documents so that they are not beholden to some gang master. We’ve also talked about victims of crime, women in particular.  There are some practices here we find distasteful, where the victims are paraded and the media come in at the same time as the ambulance arrives, about protecting somebody until they are proven guilty etc. So you can choose areas where to engage. Trafficking of children is another area we’ve worked on.

I am interested in the point at which an Embassy with friendly relations with a host country switches to a mode where it becomes openly critical of a regime. When you look back on what happened in Bangkok in 2010 and then set it against recent events in the Arab and I wonder, given the changes in the international community in the light of the Arab uprisings, why is it ok for the UK to send in Apache helicopters to Libya yet not even issue harsh words to Thailand?

There is a danger people start to weigh up moral equivalences. For example, why can’t what happens in Libya happen in Darfur?

No, I’m not saying there should be similar action in all cases I am just saying that when it comes to Thailand there is not even harsh words. It’s either military intervention or nothing is said at all. People rightly expect a commitment to the values expressed not just military action.

If you go back to that period I know from the statements I made to the likes of CNN, BBC, Sky News etc I spoke about violence. The Minister of State spoke about violence. But we also knew, unlike some of the examples you just cited that there was still, and there still is, a political process through which you can actually head towards reconciliation and away from physical confrontation and which may lead to a longer term settlement. And we’ve been consistent about that, whether it is the truth and reconciliation process, what Anand was trying to do or what the Pheu Thai party wants oir what the UDD want, there is still that avenue available to pursue. We haven’t got to the situation yet where, at the end of all that, the military simply declare martial law, take over and say “forget about all that, we’re now in charge, there’s a curfew etc.” If that was to happen we might be closer to the kind of reaction you might see happening regarding Burma or other places. That’s not to in any way belittle the losses of people here. You also have to remember it was not just a case [regarding April/May 2010] of finding out who was wrong and who was right. There were claims and counter claims about who was armed and who wasn’t and that investigation is still in process. There wasn’t a point where we could categorically say “this is what happened and we condemn x, y or z.”  If that sort of conclusion was reached we would clearly have a view but we genuinely think, and this is why we are working the way we are now, is that there is still something we can help to influence or mould. One thing we were going to do, and the timing of the election has simply delayed it, is we want to look at ways in which, what I describe as the pillars of the state, whether it’s the judiciary, the military, the press etc, to what extent these have been corroded by Thailand’s experiences. And to bring in statesmen from the UK and other places and to sit in a room privately with people from all spheres and find out what is actually, given the chance to have some introspection, the way they want to conduct politics here because I am certain nobody actually enjoys the way it is.

It seems very clear that people on all sides are going to have to sit and talk to each other at some point.

Yes. I had a very interesting discussion with a very young politician, someone in their 20s, and it’s not important what party that person came from but the discussion I had was “here you are, you’re the future of your country, what vision and what answers do you have to these big questions of energy security, climate change, rising sea level, cyber security?” I|t was as though I was talking in an alien language. These are the real issues not what colour is in and which colour is out. I also then talked about personality-based politics and said if you have a position where your entire party’s ideology is based on that individual there are two things – first if you are in opposition to that party you can only focus on that individual. Secondly, if for whatever reason, that individual is removed, and it doesn’t have to be a coup, what happens if that person is no longer around? People who are patricians of the state or feel that they are the future would look at that and say “this is not a safe way to progress”. So I think there are all these challenges. I spoke to the Cambodian politician Sam Rainsy recently and said to him “what happens when there is no Sam Rainsy” and he looked at me and then said “there’d be no party”. Where are the sustainable politics? That’s what I mean by going back to some of the basic foundations.

To be fair I do think that many of the Red Shirts have moved on from purely Thaksin worshipping. In my assessment, the views of many of the so-called “radical” Red Shirts would likely fit into the centre-ground of the UK Labour Party, for example, while some of the wealthier members of the UDD would possibly be at home in the Conservative Party. Even some of the more liberal elements of the Democrats could feel at home in either of the UK’s main parties. But in my view democracy has been stymied in Thailand for particular reasons. People who try to form socialist or social democrat parties in Thailand are banned from doing that. Specific laws are created and enacted to suit the interests of certain groups and, in my view, that is more why democracy hasn’t taken hold.

I can understand why you would look at it that way. Even in the Western context there is a greater convergence of ideology and people are competing over competence to manage. That’s where things are at now. The reason why in Thailand such things as socialist parties are banned and seen as anathema is because of the whole history of the “domino theory” and why the USA came into the Vietnam War etc etc. It’s not like that is ancient history. From Japanese occupation to the media savvy, well-read person, that whole spectrum exists here. Some people are still fearful that the country could lurch towards some kind of Maoist style state. And I’ve come across one or two who still pride themselves on what they did in the good old days and they are real characters.  But even here it has got into a competition for competence or, more crudely, who has the hand on the village water pump. The idea is not to wait for four years and an election and when you might get a chance but rather to kick over the bucket and try to force out the person whose hand is on the pump. Therefore there is another issue, which I want to put forward, which is that of constructive opposition, which is something that hasn’t really matured here, it’s just the politics of overthrow. Well the politics of overthrow is a self-fulfilling circle because when you’ve got your hand on the pump guess what the other guy is going to be doing?

Dissolving political parties and banning politicians certainly hasn’t helped such an maturation process to develop.

Certainly and we saw that in the censure debate here in that once you get into 3rd generation politicians you are going to effect the quality of political activists.  That also goes back to some of the fundamental issues here. Issues surrounding political funding is not something unique to Thailand and even the UK has been discussing whether political funding should come from the state because core party membership is falling. And I think, even more so in the UK than here, there are greater worries about participation and turnout. Here, while people might be politically ambivalent, will certainly turn out and vote.

I actually think people in Thailand are quite politically engaged.

There is also a fed-up majority here for whom politics doesn’t drive their daily lives. But the point I wanted to make is this, and almost every single politician I’ve spoken to accepts this, is that if I was in the Election Committee and I wanted to ban politicians it would be very easy as almost nobody sticks to the financial limit that’s been set here. It’s an open goal. So, if for whatever reason I don’t like the way any party has achieved power and I wanted to go for them and target a handful, they would be quite legitimately disqualified because they could be shown to have broken the rules.

And then that party would be dissolved, which would be like saying lets dissolve the entire Labour Party because of the two or three MPs who broke the laws over expenses.

Yes, and that’s a commentary on the state of politics in Thailand. It still needs to mature and develop. And I think no objective observer would look at it and say “yes, that is the way a functioning democracy should operate.”

Onto something else – we had an exchange on twitter recently where you said that I had a misconception about the role of a diplomat. That comment partly inspired me to ask you do to this interview in that if I don’t understand then you can tell me. But there is a certain opaqueness about the role of an Embassy that is partly a result of the behaviour and image of the FCO, where it is all private, closed, posh Embassy parties and the like, removed from ordinary British citizens – so tell me what it is like to be an Ambassador, a typical day if you like.

I am happy to do so. Part of that is a dated image an part of that is a caricature that invariably, if you look hard enough, you’ll find someone who can fit that image. But if you look at the way the FCO actually is it’s pretty normal and business like and in many respects I don’t think we’re that different from our counterparts working in the UK. Part of it is that many things are purely ceremonial. If you have a state visit, the King’s birthday, wearing a uniform.

I believe I have three primary aims in this job. Number one, British citizens. Full stop. That is the primary focus of our attention. That doesn’t mean we give the citizen exactly what they want. Quite often we say “sorry, that’s not we are here to do.” Next one is the commercial and economic agenda [see part two of interview which will be published soon]. Thirdly is our values, human rights, climate change etc. That’s not to say that’s less important as it fits into every thing we do including when we deal with domestic Thai politics because then our businesses are not safe and our citizens are not safe if there is unrest.

A day here can be very long. I had breakfast this week with a senior board member of a UK company who just wants to spend 90minutes where we tell them everything we now, in private and behind closed doors. It also means going to talk to many of the political leaders. I have spoken to just about everybody who is at the hustings now, past leaders, current leaders, so on a typical day there would be at least one political call.

Have you spoken to Thaksin Shinawatra?

No, because he was before my time. But I have spoken to people who are very close to him. There is a whole range of government calls you have to make whether it is issue based or you just have to do the rounds. I still have the commerce ministry and a few others to do. It would unusual during a typical week if I didn’t have a government call. Then there are events we’ve sponsored, whether it’s a seminar on climate change or something at the British Council, I’ll go and do that. Media is also important and there’s not a day that goes by when I am not doing something. And our website is something that in my time we’ve made into a bit more of a broadcast media too.

I have to meet everybody from members of the Royal family, to privy councillors, to government ministers, members of the opposition,  NGOs, international organisations or anybody. If there is a British company company connected to the Democrat Party or any other party, then good luck to them. That’s not why I am engaging with them. In that sense, if a diplomat is dealing with someone it does not mean we are endorsing or supporting them it simply means we are keeping the communication lines open.

I’ve spoken to two of Thaksin’s former foreign ministers. I’ve spoken to the former minister who was his relative. I’ve spoken to their thinkers like Chaturon, to out and out Red Shirts. And for each one of those I’ve also spoken to members of the current coalition, to old timers like former Prime Minister Anand, four or five of the privy councillors, the military commanders. And even face to face with the military commander I’ve said the UK is allergic to military coups and said that I can’t think of a single instance where a military government has been successful. Military leaders such as Eisenhower transformed themselves into effective democratic leaders in the past of course. So it’s not like we sit there completely in awe of the power that these people have. We’re only really interested in objective analysis and we report that back to London. We are the eyes and ears but at the end of the day elected UK ministers establish policy and we can only advise them what to do.