Thursday 8 May, 2014
An extraordinarily powerful image from Barbara Walton of EPA in the Guardian.
Demonstrators were out on the streets of Bangkok to celebrate a court ruling that the Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was guilty of abuse of power and must leave office.
This boy, decked out in the red, white and blue of the anti-government protests, surveys the scene with a wearied - almost cynical - eye and pursed lips that age him by decades.
How old is he? Nine? Eleven? Yet he has the air of a ranking officer in his thirties or forties.
What can this child know of the politics of Shinawatra and her brother Thaksin, forced from office in 2006 and now living in exile in Dubai?
At one glance, he looks so at ease in all the paraphernalia, down to the yellow whistle and the gun - can it be real? - that it's inconceivable that he was unaware of the statement it was making.
But look again, and he becomes a child again, posing as the hero of an XBox game. Who is to know which, if either, is the true interpretation?
An extraordinarily powerful image from Barbara Walton of EPA in the Guardian.
Demonstrators were out on the streets of Bangkok to celebrate a court ruling that the Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was guilty of abuse of power and must leave office.
This boy, decked out in the red, white and blue of the anti-government protests, surveys the scene with a wearied - almost cynical - eye and pursed lips that age him by decades.
How old is he? Nine? Eleven? Yet he has the air of a ranking officer in his thirties or forties.
What can this child know of the politics of Shinawatra and her brother Thaksin, forced from office in 2006 and now living in exile in Dubai?
At one glance, he looks so at ease in all the paraphernalia, down to the yellow whistle and the gun - can it be real? - that it's inconceivable that he was unaware of the statement it was making.
But look again, and he becomes a child again, posing as the hero of an XBox game. Who is to know which, if either, is the true interpretation?
RSS Feed
