The Cascading, Book II: Fellow Girl

by CW Ullman

  They arrived at a rice plantation owned by an old family friend of My Ling’s father that had hundreds of acres where the tribes could camp until they made the final push into Bangkok.

  The first night, everyone assembled in a field for an address from My Ling.

  “I am Tiger Girl,” she said and chorus of shouts rose into a unifying roar. “We are going to show the world that we are peaceful. We will show the world that while we are peaceful, we are not invisible,” interpreters called out what she was saying to their individual tribes. “I told you to bring your families, your children, your babies, and your courage.”

  There was a pause for the interpretation and then a loud cheer.

  “I also said to bring your drums. They may not listen to us, but they will hear us,” she waited for the translation and heard the crowd rustle.

  She brought a Pear tribesman to stand next to her and she stepped back from the microphone. He then raised his arms over his head and the crowd raised their arms over their head. His hands circled high and he shouted out a count down. On the last number the Pear leader and six thousand drums were struck simultaneously. It was the first beat of a native drum call that echoed off the walls of the mountains and throughout the nearby river channels. It was heard miles away as it rolled across opened fields and rice paddies. It would be heard often in the next few weeks and it became known as the Voice of the Tiger

  The drumbeat brought the primal out in everyone. It vibrated throughout one’s body and made all who heard it stand. Buddhists Monks appeared rolling five foot tall drums to the center of the crowd. Every fourth beat of the smaller drums was joined by the sonorous booms of the six larger drums. The steady, rhythmic beat was hypnotic; a kind of meditation that was full as opposed to loud.

  The sound reminded Charlie of the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but the feeling it engendered was of the ashram. He looked at Gaston who had a large smile and tears.

  “Why are you crying?” Charlie shouted over the drums.

  “I don’t know,” Gaston replied.

  The Pear tribesman raised his arms over his head signaling all to stop. In the distance they could hear the continuing echo of the drums traveling out, or so they thought.

  Carlos said, “Listen…”

  “The echo?” Charlie asked.

  “It’s not an echo,” Carlos replied. “Look.”

  He pointed to a river valley two miles to the east and saw flashlights swinging in the night sky.

  “It’s them, they’re responding to our drums,” Carlos said excitedly.

  “I got news for you,” Curtis offered pointing in the opposite direction. “It could be them.”

  It was Mani tribesmen numbering in the thousands coming into the camp from western Thailand. The Mani walked to the beat of their drummers. The Pear tribe leader called out and replicated the beat as six thousands drums joined in.

  “Look,” Rusty shouted as a shooting star arched across the night. “We’re shaking the stars out of the sky.” The Americans laughed and cheered.

  Later that night, Thanh implemented the next part of the plan and called his drug lord friend, Xais.

  The following morning Charlie looked out of his tent at the field of people sleeping to see it had grown in size. He awoke Carlos who wiped the sleep from his eyes, and stood next to him.

  “You’re good at crowd estimates, how many you think are here?” Charlie asked.

  Carlos created a square with his fingers the way a filmmaker does and placed over succeeding sections of the mass of people.

  “Minimum thirty thousand give or take,” Carlos estimated.

  “And look in the distance,” Carlos pointed.

  From all directions, more people came. Some walked, some rode scooters, and some came in three-wheeled vans. Later in the morning, a meeting was called by the organizers.

  “We’re about to show up on Thailand’s radar,” the publicist said. “My Ling and I are going into Bangkok where she is going to turn herself into the police for the murder of the Thai pirate. I am bringing the Times reporter with me but the CBS crew will stay with the…caravan,” the publicist fumbled to come up with a word to describe the small city camped outside. “I’m in contact with twelve foreign reporters already in Bangkok.”

  My Ling left with Rusty, Charlie, Carlos, the publicist, and the reporter. They drove in by cars, arriving in Bangkok that night. The publicist worked the phones to let the local press know that My Ling was turning herself in for the 1985 death of the Thai pirate. A number of reporters and television news crews came to interview her about the case. During the interview a few of the reporters received notifications to come back to their bureaus because a bigger story was breaking.

  A massive fire was reported in the Don Tan District near the Thai-Laotian border. A war had broken out between drug lords and remnants of the Khmer Rouge. The Thai National Police Department (TNPD) which rivaled the Thai Royal Army in size, decided to send all available officers to Don Tan District.

  Both events in Don Tan had been staged by Xais and his fellow drug lords. They had poured canisters of fuel along a ten-mile stretch of trees near the Mekong River. They picked this area so the TNPD would be pulled north, out of Bangkok focusing their energies on putting out the fire and stopping the drug lord conflict. Xais and his cohorts also wanted to put a rival drug lord out of business and used the cover of the fire to do it. A day later when police and fire crews arrived to fight the blaze and look for the combatants, Xais, the other drug lords, had already boarded sampans and escaped south down the Mekong River into Cambodia.

  It was just the distraction Thanh wanted. The day he saw the fire on television and heard that TNPD forces were heading north, he knew this was the time to mobilize the crowd. The government had pulled many of the border guards out of the area where the people planned to cross. He hoped the second phase of the mobilization was prepared.

  Thanh gather three hundred village leaders in the morning and told them they were going to march five miles that night to the border. He had people familiar with the mountain routes. The people gathered their belongings, waited for nightfall, and then followed Thanh as he walked point into Thailand.

  By the time they reached the border, they had spread out on a line eight miles wide. They avoided the main roads until they were three miles inside the border of Thailand. The Americans left behind when My Ling went to Bangkok to turn herself in, pretended they did not understand where they were and distracted the few border guards left with endless questions about protocol.

  Ronnie yelled repeatedly, “I have a diplomatic passport. I want to talk to the American embassy.” When the border guards offered to let him call, he became indignant about some other uncorrectable problem. The border guards were trying to help him and his party, but he went on complaining. In an effort to get him out of the border checkpoint, one of the guards offered to drive Ronnie and the others to Bangkok. After five hours of alternating outrage, anger, and melancholy to cover for the people crossing the border, Ronnie said he had to go.

  Ronnie barked, “Your superiors will hear about how I was treated today, and so will Oprah Winfrey.”

  Even though the guards had never heard of Oprah Winfrey, they were nervous.

  On the outskirts of the resort town of Koh Samui, Thailand, the Oklahoma ex-Green Berets connected with Mike Wellington in a three-wheel cab who directed them to a road that led into a shuttered resort. The mass of people, under the cover of darkness, trekked down the road.

  “How many are there?” Mike asked, unable to see the end of the group.

  “I think we’re over 50K,” one of the Oklahomans said.

  “I got every bus within thirty miles; Cambodian and Thai buses, too. I’ll try to get more,” Mike surmised.

  The closed resort had a one hundred and fifty acre golf course where the people set up camp. Sister Marie Celeste along with two local orders of Catholic nuns and sixty Buddhist monks had organized makeshift food stations. I
n a three-hour period, using four food lines, they fed over fifty-five thousand people. Thanh met with the elders and suggested the drums stay quiet that night.

  The following morning buses rolled in from Highway Three. Thanh had heard nothing on the radio about a mass of humanity camped out on the golf course, but there was report about a woman who turned herself in for the murder of a man ten years ago. The reporter said that while she had given herself up to the police, she entered a plea of not guilty. The story suddenly competed with the report of the fire in the north, because as an American citizen, she requested the presence of the United States ambassador. He appeared on camera and said he would not interfere with the Thai justice system, but wanted to make sure Mrs. Nyguen was treated fairly.

  The Thai government had been expecting My Ling to show and had actually filed papers with the U.S. government months earlier for her extradition. But when My Ling had left to go to Cambodia, the U.S. State Department informed the Thai government, “That we do not know where she is,” even though they did.

  While the Thai government may have been expecting My Ling Nyguen to turn herself in, they were not expecting what turned out to be an overwhelming problem. Nearly a half a million people over a three day period moved into the city of Bangkok. The majority of police were still in the north, and the small cadre left in Bangkok was quickly overwhelmed by the numbers of people arriving continuously on foot, bus, scooter, car and truck. The fifty-five thousand that came in with Thanh were joined by another four hundred thousand that were Mani-Thai.

  Once My Ling was arrested, the CBS film crew shipped their tapes to New York showing the migration of thousands of people into Bangkok in support of My Ling. The network ran stories on her case, and the status she held amongst native people who referred to her as Tiger Girl.

  The publicity generated locally and internationally about My Ling created a dilemma for the Thai government. My Ling’s story about what led up to the Thai pirate’s murder resonated with most Southeast Asian woman who had either suffered abuse or knew of others who had. Women were marginalized, and their complaints went unaddressed. Many were forced into servitude and were frustrated by an ineffectual, uncaring legal system. Now, each night their television broadcasted the story of an eleven-year-old girl who endured rape and beatings twenty years ago in order to save girls even younger than her. Empathy for My Ling’s story recruited women because of the shared maternal instinct to sacrifice oneself in order to protect children. Woman at every level of Thai society had been denied their voice, but they wanted to hear My Ling’s.

  There were added complications for the government when international movie stars stood in solidarity with My Ling, and the younger women within the royal family joined in support. The massive crowds were harder to control and the usual police tactics of wading in with truncheons and tear gas could not be used when the royal women mixed amongst the assembled people. The head of the nation’s police force was enraged at the position in which he was put, and the head of the royal family faced a population he did not recognized.

  Everyone in authority had conflicting suggestions about how to handle the ever growing crowd that was getting relentless press coverage. The eyes of the world were focused on My Ling. No one in charge in the Thai government knew how to control it.

  When the U.S. ambassador gave an interview, he threw his personal support behind My Ling, and said he would closely watch the proceedings involving an American citizen.

  But the government of Thailand was not going to be intimidated by the press or the U.S. government. This woman would be tried for murder and justice would prevail; at least this is what they said publicly. Behind the scene there was heated discussion about a half million tribal people clogging roads and filling up city parks. They wondered what the mob would do if she were to be convicted; would they riot, would they disperse, and what was an acceptable number of deaths if the police attacked?

  Thailand had fifteen constitutions since its modern founding in 1932. It was a country plagued with military coups and its practice of democracy was shaky at best, but its king, a constitutional monarch, had been on the throne since 1946.

  My Ling was going to be tried against a unique backdrop: over a half million people camped out in support, a police chief who did not like crowds, especially those composed of tribesmen, a government not used to being under the scrutiny of a world press, a judicial system without juries, a prosecutor reluctant to take up the case, and an outcome no one could have predicted.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The case against My Ling was riddled with so many problems the lead prosecutor did not know where to begin. The first was the issue of bail. Should My Ling Nyguen be offered bail, and if so at what amount? The prosecutor Panyarachun Rattanakosin, nicknamed Lek, was aware of the high profile nature of the case and sought his superior’s advice.

  For months, the government had been hearing about a Vietnamese woman confessing to a 1985 murder in the Makham District. The police had to dig through their cold case files to find out what she was talking about. A village elder by the name of Waraporn Montri was found dead after being shot multiple times. The Vietnamese woman’s confession to Montri’s death included a 1975 account of how she and other women had been raped by him, and that in a chance meeting in 1985, she took her revenge and killed him.

  However, the woman became a war refuge who had immigrated to the United States and was now an American citizen. When she turned herself in, five hundred thousand people showed up the next day in support, and the government was left to wonder how and why?

  They wanted to know how this woman, an ethnic Vietnamese, had garnered so much support amongst native Southeast Asians. She had Catholic nuns, Buddhist monks, and celebrities pleading for her acquittal, even though she readily admitted to killing Montri. The politicians in the prime minister’s office thought she could be using the publicity as a platform to run for office. Some saw it as a feminist issue, while others viewed it as a human rights problem. The Bangkok police chief, who held as much power as any of the generals in the Royal Thai Army, did not care why My Ling Nyguen had come to Bangkok. He was only concerned that his authority remain unchallenged and that his city had been inundated with “jungle people.”

  The prime minister was worried that the whole situation could spiral out of control leading to riots, giving warrant to the military to declare martial law and take over the government. He had handed down orders to the police chief, who disliked being ordered to do anything, not to attack the protestors until the protestors struck first. The prime minister was also in contact with the judiciary to find out what they were going to do. They met at Phitsanulok Mansion, the residence of the prime minister, to discuss strategy.

  “We have information that it wasn’t a revenge killing at all,” announced the police chief. “It was a robbery.”

  The prime minister not wanting to agitate the chief offered, “That may be true, but if the motive was robbery, why did she come back and turn herself in?”

  The prosecutor feeling the same way as the prime minister about not wanting to offend the top policeman said, “Chief, if you’ve got evidence for a robbery, it would help us file more charges. She actually turned the murder weapon over for ballistic tests.”

  “I think she’s running on some feminist agenda?” the prime minister interjected.

  “Well if she is, how do you explain that half the crowds following her are men?” The prosecutor responded.

  “Why don’t we just pay her off to go away like the women in Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat?” the prime minister suggested, referring to cases in three western provinces of Thailand where victims were offered money to drop rape charges. Some of the victims, as young as ten, were forced to marry their attackers.

  “I don’t think she’ll take money,” the prosecutor stated.

  “I’ve got a more immediate issue. There are about four thousand people camping outside the jail. They’re bringing her so much food and clothing, s
he is giving most of it away to other prisoners and guards; and this is every day. What are you doing about her bail?” the chief asked.

  The prosecutor sat back, took a deep breath and exhaled, “I’m open to suggestions. What do you want to do?”

  “I want her out of lock-up,” The chief added. “Make her bail a half million baht. She’s not going anywhere; she wants to be put on trial.”

  “Do I want to do that tomorrow?”

  The three looked at each other; the chief and the prime minister nodded.

  “I’ve talked to the judiciary and we’re going to move the proceedings to a bigger facility to handle the extra press,” the prime minister said. “I want the world to know she got a fair trial.”

  My Ling’s lawyer, Somchai Neelaphaijit, was well-versed in Thai justice and had championed the defense of many women who had been attacked and raped. The authorities did not like him. They disliked his form of radicalism that championed the rights of women to charge men in rape. Southeast Asia, like many parts of the globe, saw rape as something women brought upon themselves, and instead of men being punished, the women should be shamed, punished, or put to death by family members.

  Somchai met with My Ling while the prosecutor was conferring with the prime minister and laid out the law regarding murder and how he intended to make a case against Montri by telling of his outlaw life. Somchai said the key was to get the judge to accept that My Ling killed Montri in defense of other children.

  “But, I didn’t. I killed him because he deserved to die for the pig that he was,” My Ling asserted.

  “And I agree. He was a scurrilous bastard and you did the world a favor.” He took a deep breath, rolled his eyes and continued, “But regardless of how dysfunctional our legal system is, we would still like to think we are a country of laws and you can’t kill everybody who’s a pig.”