Font size: 
If anyone in Thailand can be blamed for dragging the monarchy into politics and using it in efforts to draw a Bush-like “You are either with us or against us!” line in the sand, it is Sondhi Limthongkul of the Manager Group.
Donning the royal yellow early on and citing how loyal he and his supporters were to the monarchy – and how his opponents were not – Sondhi led a movement that was initially received with wary discomfort by Thais who were not accustomed to having the monarchy used as an open political symbol. But then they embraced the actions by fundamentalists and conformists as they realized the value of playing the royal trump card.
First, it portrayed them as loyalists and nationalists, “real Thais” out to save the nation. Secondly, it identified all who did not go along with them, or who opposed what they were saying or doing in full or in part, as people disloyal to the monarchy.
To top that off, Sondhi began preaching that besides not being loyalists, these opponents were out to topple Thailand’s revered institutions – the nation, religion and the monarchy – thus posing a threat that the Thai government has now said is a threat to national security.
There were and remain groups and individuals who have had more than enough of being forced to stand up in theaters, who were and are subject to the most vile name-calling, cursing, threats and even physical violence because they happen to believe in freedom of choice. Not in agreement with the majority? Then you are not a “real Thai.”
That’s more than embarrassing for people who in fact love their culture, country, religion and people as much as anyone else. The difference is that they are not mesmerized by monotonous brain-numbing repetitious propaganda that has for decades told the Thai people that to be Thai they must love their king the way they are shown. By extension, it is implied that to love their king they must demonstrate that love, conforming to the way others demonstrate that love. They are told that unwillingness to do so is wrong, that it is not Thai.
That Thai academics should also enter the fray with very nonintellectual rancor is regrettable. Recently, for example, a group of Thai academics, staff and others from Chiangmai University got together to demand the dismissal of Assistant Professor Somkiart Tangnamo from the deanship of the Faculty of Fine Arts. His crime? He signed the “Repeal Article 112,” Thailand’s lèse majesté law petition that also contained over 1,000 other names. That he was exercising his God-given right to demonstrate his own thoughts and ideas seems not to be relevant, not in today’s Thailand.
Just how bad things in Thailand are getting with the clampdown on freedom of speech and the right to make an informed choice is reflected in a written statement submitted by the Asian Legal Resource Center that was published on Prachatai website on Feb.18. The center is “a consultative independent organization holding general consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. It is the sister organization of the Asian Human Rights Commission.” Among other things, the statement laments:
“… strong resurgence of regressive anti-human rights forces, especially within the military and the network of their allies in ultra-conservative political circles … repeated overthrow of elected governments by antidemocratic forces … large-scale public criminal activity not followed with investigations or prosecutions … Internet censorship and lèse majesté witch-hunts … threats to human rights defenders … refoulement, murder and impunity on the high seas … Thailand is today languishing under another government that came to power not through electoral process but through the machinations of the revived internal-security state, one that manifestly has no regard for the values for which the Council stands …”
There is more. That Amnesty International has chosen to set on a quiet backburner what many see as a headlong breakdown of democracy in Thailand is lamentable at best, reprehensible at worst. That the Thai authorities have chosen to march forward with an unwavering use of the Army to spy on citizens so as to “protect the monarchy” is a living nightmare beyond Orwell or Animal Farm or The Butterfly Revolution.
One might look back over time and realize, sadly, that historically Thailand either had to choose a path toward democracy or emulate its more reprehensible – for the time being – neighbor Burma, putting more and more people in prison without charge, failing to investigate state-sponsored killings and other acts of terror, and using the monarchy to justify the safeguarding of state security, itself made questionable or even impractical by stupidity, corruption and growing fear.
Same Sky, a Thai network that advocates human rights and free speech and fights against corruption and censorship, published a book in 2008, “People that live together, people that kill one another.” It carries accounts of past massacres in Thailand in the name of national security and “protecting the monarchy,” and contains 18 detailed accounts of Thai human and environmental rights activists who paid for their activism with their lives – by being murdered.
Who was responsible for these killings remains as much a secret today as it did back then. A village headman, a lawyer, a mother, environmentalists and anti-quarry activists ended up shot in front of their own homes, kidnapped or otherwise murdered and missing. Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit was one of these fatalities.
To those Thais who insist that the foreign media are distorting the situation, the only way to agree with this spurious charge is to respond that the distortions are due to the lack of further evidence that would produce even more damning accounts.
--
(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com – he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)
