Having join many of Nitirat conference, I have a conclusion that Nitirat never intended to have their proposal the come to effect. Obviously PT is too scared to even talk about the topic. I agreed with Ajarn Somsak and Andrew that the proposal doesn’t go far enough. However, the more important aspect about this movement is, in my opinion, to give people “courage” to talk about the matter in public. In the past, talking about the law itself might be considered as lese majeste, but after this campaign has been initiated, I can already noticing people talking about this topic more openly.
Time will tell will Thai people ready to face the reality.
@Conductor #7 wrote: :I urge you to flee to the EU or America and apply for Political Asylum. Go over the border surreptitiously and enter an EU or American Embassy in Cambodia.:
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought going to the embassy in Cambodia is not enough. To seek asylum, she needs to enter the US/EU soil first. Then she can notify the staff at the airport or at the border that she wishes to seek asylum. Simply entering the embassy is still not an act which other country must grant her an asylum. This is because each country has the right to protect its own territories from overseas migration. However, the responsibility for each state to grant asylum according to the Refugee Convention begins when those people can successfully escape into their territories.
But again, I am not an expert in asylum seeking. So if I am wrong please let me know 🙂
RU must read pretty narrowly in the Thai press. There has been plenty of pro and anti comment on this letter including rejection by Chalerm and another (name escapes me just now). Further interviews by the Thai media with some of the signatories have been reported.
“Abhinya Sawatvarakorn, nicknamed Kantoop, or “Joss Stick”, a 19-year-old student at Thammasat University, will be charged with lèse-majesté over comments she made on Facebook two years ago.”
Wait a second … is this basically saying that in a country where legal age for drinking / driving is 18 and age of majority / voting is 20, 17-year-old’s may get 5+ years for something others claimed in forwarded emails? Thailand keeps amazing me!
There is not a single significant swat of land that has not been enclosed from Pago to the most southern tip of Myanmar.
This enclosure has been ongoing since Ne Win era awarded to the military, active and retired.
In the delta regions most none titled land are simply made available to private ventures with the military blessings and participations to start acres of fisheries. The titled one are bought and sold openly. Since the delta area is flooded 1/2 of the year, as well as similar areas else where, making the usefulness of that area requiring intense labor which the military cannot/will not afford. Therefore remain productive in the hands of the most traditionally poor farmers.
Most of the blatant land taking has been in the dryer regional for the purposes that Stephen described plus, especially mining, commercial orchards and farms that benefit the military as well as Thailand, Korea and Singapore.
This proof is one of many enduring testimonial to the failure of the useless careless policy of last 4+ decades!
So does it make sense that working with this present entrenched entity will make any difference +/- DASSK ?
It is utterly disgusting what some Thais have done to this brave Teenager. They have shame. Pity them.
But enough of them.
Now it is time to vote with your feet Joss. Give up on Thailand. It is a hopeless case.
I urge you to flee to the EU or America and apply for Political Asylum. Go over the border surreptitiously and enter an EU or American Embassy in Cambodia.
Better to be an alive and breathing free than killed by extradicial forces or placed into a grim thai prison.
Perhaps go to UC Berkeley and become an advocate for Freedom there where such views are incouraged and supported.
You are brave to be want to stand up to the dark forces against you, but they are hopeless. Freedom is moree important. As is life itself.
Just as history is littered with terrible acts of violence so it is also filled with those who strive to change things as peacefully as possible and who show great courage in the face of such intimidation.
In my view those Thais, like Nitirat, who are now choosing to show courage in the face of these threats from the neo-fascist PAD hate mobs and their backers, need to be supported not told they are “going too far”.
As for your analysis that things have “never gone this far before,” well, any student of Thai history will tell you to look at 1932. And of course no direct equivalence can be drawn with today but that period was certainly emblematic of a hegemonic shift of the sort we are witnessing today.
Also, for both me and you, this isn’t really “our fight.” I’m sure if we’d both been alive when fascism was running rampant over Europe we might have felt strongly enough to challenge it directly then, even if we might both have been terrified.
And that for me is the key – people still act even though they are scared. The most significant part of the Red Shirt protests was when they came back onto the streets in their tens of thousands AFTER the massacre. This showed genuine courage, resolution and fortitude. It also showed that they might’ve been blooded but they were unbowed.
In no. 7 I wrote: “The 224 will fade away easily in the river of conflicts in Thailand.” Now it is true; no one talks about the 224 in the Thai media. It is important to note that most in the Thai media are not acquainted with the 224 names. Even the famous Noam Chomsky–the Transformationalist linguist turned to international affairs–may not be known among them. Although they are open and can be asked about personal, Thais will resist others’ involvement in their very personal affairs. Then the 224 easily faded away in the river of conflicts.
I belong to the ones who fear violence – actually, i am quite terrified of it. And i think that i have ample reasons to be so, given all that occurred in the past years (quite often in front of my camera).
While you are right in the point that we have to be careful when drawing comparisons with ’76, the present conflict is in direct relation to past (unsolved or barely patched up) conflicts within Thai society. Many players of that era are still players today.
As to violent groups – we may not have “Red Gaur” (yet former members of this and other groups are still somewhat active today on both (!) sides), but there are on both sides several violent groups with different levels of organizational capability, and also politicians, military and police officers with sufficient “look nong” to have formidable militias in case of future violent developments.
Another unknown factor here is that the stakes in this game are very high – never before has the legitimacy of the monarchy been questioned so directly and on such a large scale especially in the common sectors of Thai society, and we have no precedent in Thai society how royalist sectors of Thai society may react once they have reached their consensus on how to counter this perceived threat to what they define as the Thai state. What we do know though is that throughout modern Thai history violent reactions against perceived threats to the state more often than not followed after periods of inactivity. We can only hope that this time things will be different.
The PAD is not (!) a main player anymore, presently. It has been replaced with another alliance with possibly far more potential (it remains to be seen though if this alliance will be able to stay together).
I would not though judge from the number of protesters of any group their potential – many of these groups are like icebergs: what you see in the open is just the tip of what lurks below. Influential figures can muster quickly quite large numbers of underlings depending on need.
Yes, there is a looming crisis. And exactly that makes things so volatile. How far will those (on both sides) with guns go? I guess 2010 has shown us that they may go quite far (and in 2010 both sides held back).
Especially when increasingly the most sensitive issue is at stake.
“john francis lee”, “Sam Deedes”:
I think it is wishful thinking to expect the police force to fulfill their “constitutional” role in this conflict as it would in a modern society. As we all know, Thailand is not exactly a modern society, and it has a police force that exactly reflects the position and inner conflicts of its society including all the increasingly conflicting loyalties of a somewhat collapsing paternalistic patronage system.
“Khon Ngai Ngai”:
I am convinced that the developments we see now, and especially the demands of Nitirat, are a logical development of first the history of the past decades, and secondly the emergence of the Red/Yellow conflict. It was inevitable. Change/progress/conflict is a historical force – social stability is a pipe dream.
I also believe that the compromises offered by Nitirat and moderate counterparts of the royalist sectors will be rejected due to pressures of the more radical sectors of their respective sides, and that we may see further radicalization and quite possibly more violence.
Academia and reasonable discussion/debate is only one aspect, but we should not/cannot underestimate the force of both the street and non-academic elites – there the game is played according to different and quite unpleasant rules.
I think the people he will look back upon in sadness will be those reactionary right-wingers who have refused for seven years now to heed his request to them on the occasion of his birthday in 2005.
Despite HM plea to be allowed to be human, the reactionary right-wing have polished his image, like a fetish, and used him as a blunt instrument with which to thrash their adversaries.
It is the most belittling, insulting thing I can imagine for them to have done, and gives the lie to their claim to ‘love their father’. Recalcitrant children in need of strict discipline is what they are.
“Abhinya Sawatvarakorn, nicknamed Kantoop, or “Joss Stick”, a 19-year-old student at Thammasat University, will be charged with lèse-majesté over comments she made on Facebook two years ago”
But according to this recent Bangkok Post interview she herself is quoted as saying:
“What I wrote on my Facebook page isn’t what the police are charging me with. They are basing their case on the forwarded emails of the people who accused me. Those people took screen captures of my Facebook page and added messages that I did not write and forwarded them around. The entire thing is based on forwarded emails.”
I wrote this piece back in August 2011 about Kantoop and the hate campaigns she has endured – http://bit.ly/p439lh.
The point of that piece was to put forward the argument that freedom of expression needs to be protected by laws as much as it is protected by the absence of laws (i.e. 112).
I still think the hate campaigns that the likes of Kantoop and others have suffered are as much a threat to freedom of expression as the lese majeste law. And, ultimately, this is going to have to be something Thai liberals and progressives are going to have to deal with.
And before someone pitches in with an “equivalency” argument – I don’t see anyone from the anti-112 movement threatening, intimidating or stalking anyone.
The world is on fire in the land of smiles. For the Lao, I always found it regrettable in what we did to our monarch. In his last dying days, Rama IX will probably look at his people in complete sadness, and only when he’s gone will the Thai people regret their actions in his last remaining years.
I spoke to my former Thai colleague who was a member of the CDA for the 2007 constitution on his own campaign against Nitirat. I asked him whether he really felt, as a long time member of the Thai media, that what Nitirat was doing was really unconstitutional.
His response – “The law has a lot of loopholes.”
Thais who support the loyalism mantra will never admit that inherent in the Thai constitution, in Thai laws or Thai culture is the right to voice offensive opinions. That is, unless they are offensive to Nitirat. This is a bit of a stretch but reflects the strength and dept of feelings.
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International solidarity for the Amendment of Article 112
Having join many of Nitirat conference, I have a conclusion that Nitirat never intended to have their proposal the come to effect. Obviously PT is too scared to even talk about the topic. I agreed with Ajarn Somsak and Andrew that the proposal doesn’t go far enough. However, the more important aspect about this movement is, in my opinion, to give people “courage” to talk about the matter in public. In the past, talking about the law itself might be considered as lese majeste, but after this campaign has been initiated, I can already noticing people talking about this topic more openly.
Time will tell will Thai people ready to face the reality.
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
@Conductor #7 wrote: :I urge you to flee to the EU or America and apply for Political Asylum. Go over the border surreptitiously and enter an EU or American Embassy in Cambodia.:
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought going to the embassy in Cambodia is not enough. To seek asylum, she needs to enter the US/EU soil first. Then she can notify the staff at the airport or at the border that she wishes to seek asylum. Simply entering the embassy is still not an act which other country must grant her an asylum. This is because each country has the right to protect its own territories from overseas migration. However, the responsibility for each state to grant asylum according to the Refugee Convention begins when those people can successfully escape into their territories.
But again, I am not an expert in asylum seeking. So if I am wrong please let me know 🙂
International solidarity for the Amendment of Article 112
RU must read pretty narrowly in the Thai press. There has been plenty of pro and anti comment on this letter including rejection by Chalerm and another (name escapes me just now). Further interviews by the Thai media with some of the signatories have been reported.
Crown Prince’s family update?
р╕Вр╕нр╕Юр╕гр╕░р╕нр╕Зр╕Др╣М р╕Чр╕╕р╕Бр╣Жр╕Чр╣Ир╕▓р╕Щ р╕Ир╕Зр╕Чр╕гр╕Зр╕Юр╕гр╕░р╣Ар╕Ир╕гр╕┤р╕Н р╕Вр╣Йр╕▓р╕Юр╣Ар╕Ир╣Йр╕▓ р╣Ар╕нр╕▓р╣Гр╕Ир╕Кр╣Ир╕зр╕в
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
Almost certain that Kantoop’s Facebook comments referred to here were made in April 2010 not 2009.
As far as I’m aware she has only just turned 19 so the comments, if they were made in 2009, would’ve been made when she was 16, not 17.
This needs to be fact-checked and corrected
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
“Abhinya Sawatvarakorn, nicknamed Kantoop, or “Joss Stick”, a 19-year-old student at Thammasat University, will be charged with lèse-majesté over comments she made on Facebook two years ago.”
Wait a second … is this basically saying that in a country where legal age for drinking / driving is 18 and age of majority / voting is 20, 17-year-old’s may get 5+ years for something others claimed in forwarded emails? Thailand keeps amazing me!
Burma and the debates to come
aiontay
There is not a single significant swat of land that has not been enclosed from Pago to the most southern tip of Myanmar.
This enclosure has been ongoing since Ne Win era awarded to the military, active and retired.
In the delta regions most none titled land are simply made available to private ventures with the military blessings and participations to start acres of fisheries. The titled one are bought and sold openly. Since the delta area is flooded 1/2 of the year, as well as similar areas else where, making the usefulness of that area requiring intense labor which the military cannot/will not afford. Therefore remain productive in the hands of the most traditionally poor farmers.
Most of the blatant land taking has been in the dryer regional for the purposes that Stephen described plus, especially mining, commercial orchards and farms that benefit the military as well as Thailand, Korea and Singapore.
This proof is one of many enduring testimonial to the failure of the useless careless policy of last 4+ decades!
So does it make sense that working with this present entrenched entity will make any difference +/- DASSK ?
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
It is utterly disgusting what some Thais have done to this brave Teenager. They have shame. Pity them.
But enough of them.
Now it is time to vote with your feet Joss. Give up on Thailand. It is a hopeless case.
I urge you to flee to the EU or America and apply for Political Asylum. Go over the border surreptitiously and enter an EU or American Embassy in Cambodia.
Better to be an alive and breathing free than killed by extradicial forces or placed into a grim thai prison.
Perhaps go to UC Berkeley and become an advocate for Freedom there where such views are incouraged and supported.
You are brave to be want to stand up to the dark forces against you, but they are hopeless. Freedom is moree important. As is life itself.
Good luck in the future.
Pushing Nitirat to the edge
Nick
Just as history is littered with terrible acts of violence so it is also filled with those who strive to change things as peacefully as possible and who show great courage in the face of such intimidation.
In my view those Thais, like Nitirat, who are now choosing to show courage in the face of these threats from the neo-fascist PAD hate mobs and their backers, need to be supported not told they are “going too far”.
As for your analysis that things have “never gone this far before,” well, any student of Thai history will tell you to look at 1932. And of course no direct equivalence can be drawn with today but that period was certainly emblematic of a hegemonic shift of the sort we are witnessing today.
Also, for both me and you, this isn’t really “our fight.” I’m sure if we’d both been alive when fascism was running rampant over Europe we might have felt strongly enough to challenge it directly then, even if we might both have been terrified.
And that for me is the key – people still act even though they are scared. The most significant part of the Red Shirt protests was when they came back onto the streets in their tens of thousands AFTER the massacre. This showed genuine courage, resolution and fortitude. It also showed that they might’ve been blooded but they were unbowed.
International solidarity for the Amendment of Article 112
In no. 7 I wrote: “The 224 will fade away easily in the river of conflicts in Thailand.” Now it is true; no one talks about the 224 in the Thai media. It is important to note that most in the Thai media are not acquainted with the 224 names. Even the famous Noam Chomsky–the Transformationalist linguist turned to international affairs–may not be known among them. Although they are open and can be asked about personal, Thais will resist others’ involvement in their very personal affairs. Then the 224 easily faded away in the river of conflicts.
Burma and the debates to come
Andrew Walker: “Try these, for starters”
Thanks. Looking forward to the article on the rice price support scheme 🙂
Pushing Nitirat to the edge
“Andrew Spooner”:
I belong to the ones who fear violence – actually, i am quite terrified of it. And i think that i have ample reasons to be so, given all that occurred in the past years (quite often in front of my camera).
While you are right in the point that we have to be careful when drawing comparisons with ’76, the present conflict is in direct relation to past (unsolved or barely patched up) conflicts within Thai society. Many players of that era are still players today.
As to violent groups – we may not have “Red Gaur” (yet former members of this and other groups are still somewhat active today on both (!) sides), but there are on both sides several violent groups with different levels of organizational capability, and also politicians, military and police officers with sufficient “look nong” to have formidable militias in case of future violent developments.
Another unknown factor here is that the stakes in this game are very high – never before has the legitimacy of the monarchy been questioned so directly and on such a large scale especially in the common sectors of Thai society, and we have no precedent in Thai society how royalist sectors of Thai society may react once they have reached their consensus on how to counter this perceived threat to what they define as the Thai state. What we do know though is that throughout modern Thai history violent reactions against perceived threats to the state more often than not followed after periods of inactivity. We can only hope that this time things will be different.
The PAD is not (!) a main player anymore, presently. It has been replaced with another alliance with possibly far more potential (it remains to be seen though if this alliance will be able to stay together).
I would not though judge from the number of protesters of any group their potential – many of these groups are like icebergs: what you see in the open is just the tip of what lurks below. Influential figures can muster quickly quite large numbers of underlings depending on need.
Yes, there is a looming crisis. And exactly that makes things so volatile. How far will those (on both sides) with guns go? I guess 2010 has shown us that they may go quite far (and in 2010 both sides held back).
Especially when increasingly the most sensitive issue is at stake.
“john francis lee”, “Sam Deedes”:
I think it is wishful thinking to expect the police force to fulfill their “constitutional” role in this conflict as it would in a modern society. As we all know, Thailand is not exactly a modern society, and it has a police force that exactly reflects the position and inner conflicts of its society including all the increasingly conflicting loyalties of a somewhat collapsing paternalistic patronage system.
“Khon Ngai Ngai”:
I am convinced that the developments we see now, and especially the demands of Nitirat, are a logical development of first the history of the past decades, and secondly the emergence of the Red/Yellow conflict. It was inevitable. Change/progress/conflict is a historical force – social stability is a pipe dream.
I also believe that the compromises offered by Nitirat and moderate counterparts of the royalist sectors will be rejected due to pressures of the more radical sectors of their respective sides, and that we may see further radicalization and quite possibly more violence.
Academia and reasonable discussion/debate is only one aspect, but we should not/cannot underestimate the force of both the street and non-academic elites – there the game is played according to different and quite unpleasant rules.
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
I think the people he will look back upon in sadness will be those reactionary right-wingers who have refused for seven years now to heed his request to them on the occasion of his birthday in 2005.
Despite HM plea to be allowed to be human, the reactionary right-wing have polished his image, like a fetish, and used him as a blunt instrument with which to thrash their adversaries.
It is the most belittling, insulting thing I can imagine for them to have done, and gives the lie to their claim to ‘love their father’. Recalcitrant children in need of strict discipline is what they are.
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
http://www.bangkokpost.com/search/news-and-article/joss%20stick
Pushing Nitirat to the edge
112 protects the royal family from verbal insults by removing basic human rights protections from 65 million people.
You’d think the PAD (and friends) would be against ‘a law designed to benefit just one person’ . . .
BangkokPost has an informative new article up: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/278053/nitirat-ban-splits-student-body
The claim is that Nitirat was banned to prevent violence. So why only ban one side – the side that wasn’t threatening the violence?
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
This article states:
“Abhinya Sawatvarakorn, nicknamed Kantoop, or “Joss Stick”, a 19-year-old student at Thammasat University, will be charged with lèse-majesté over comments she made on Facebook two years ago”
But according to this recent Bangkok Post interview she herself is quoted as saying:
“What I wrote on my Facebook page isn’t what the police are charging me with. They are basing their case on the forwarded emails of the people who accused me. Those people took screen captures of my Facebook page and added messages that I did not write and forwarded them around. The entire thing is based on forwarded emails.”
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
> “Kantoop was accused of committing lèse-majesté in April 2009 while she was still in high school”
Was she? Or was she accused of not being respectful enough to the monarchy? There’s a difference.
> “some professors reportedly called her a traitor”
What exactly did they say?
> “Her own family rejected her and stopped financing her study.”
Not according to the interview in Bangkok Post last weekend.
> “She had a shoe thrown at her by a monarchist”
She had a shoe thrown at her by one of a group of students at Thammasat.
> “… Bang Kane police station after receiving a police’s call”
Better known as Bang Khen. The police contacted her months ago.
> “From Bang Kane police state to Suvarnabhumi Aiport …”
I’ll quit reading this dross now.
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
I wrote this piece back in August 2011 about Kantoop and the hate campaigns she has endured – http://bit.ly/p439lh.
The point of that piece was to put forward the argument that freedom of expression needs to be protected by laws as much as it is protected by the absence of laws (i.e. 112).
I still think the hate campaigns that the likes of Kantoop and others have suffered are as much a threat to freedom of expression as the lese majeste law. And, ultimately, this is going to have to be something Thai liberals and progressives are going to have to deal with.
And before someone pitches in with an “equivalency” argument – I don’t see anyone from the anti-112 movement threatening, intimidating or stalking anyone.
Kantoop and lèse-majesté
The world is on fire in the land of smiles. For the Lao, I always found it regrettable in what we did to our monarch. In his last dying days, Rama IX will probably look at his people in complete sadness, and only when he’s gone will the Thai people regret their actions in his last remaining years.
A catalogue of threats against the Khana Nitirat
I spoke to my former Thai colleague who was a member of the CDA for the 2007 constitution on his own campaign against Nitirat. I asked him whether he really felt, as a long time member of the Thai media, that what Nitirat was doing was really unconstitutional.
His response – “The law has a lot of loopholes.”
Thais who support the loyalism mantra will never admit that inherent in the Thai constitution, in Thai laws or Thai culture is the right to voice offensive opinions. That is, unless they are offensive to Nitirat. This is a bit of a stretch but reflects the strength and dept of feelings.