I do think you really should write a book about your experiences. Your unique view would and could add much to the usually sickeningly one-sided and polemic Burma debate. For me, your posts here have been most enlightening and educating.
I would strongly agree … adding the the blogging should not only be done in an “academic” language means in most cases the english language but also using the mother tongue of the academic.
I believe he should give something back to the public of his home country which journalists, due to economic contraints or misinformation, and the ordinary citicen normally are not able or not willing (due to missing language skills) to do, i.e. to collect unbiased information from foreign language web-sites.
But may be the academics of most countries are already as much commercialized as the rest of the society is and have more interest in being quoted in scholary works.
Globalization is going to create a new type of discrimination. The one who is not able to read and write the global language English is excluded from a big part of the information on the global market. I.E. on the long hand we create a new, although huge, elite, namely the people reading and writing English. While in the same time a big part of the academics complain about stupid and ignorant citizens.
And may be one time we might see the same on a global scale which we observed in Thailand recently: An elite claiming that the ordinary people are too stupid to elect his government by himself?
Baird and accomplice Shoemaker have a wonderful book about the Xekong river basin hiding out as a banal, white covered, red lettered White Lotus publication. It provides a relatively juicy amount of detail into the resettlement issue from a perspective of supreme experience with great ethnographic snippets but an excruciatingly short section on spirit beliefs (I cannot believe that this is all that Baird has to say about animism). The book is not afraid to expose and critique the extraordinary absence of government planning about livelihoods that has gone into village consolidation policy and other forms of resettlement and to observe the unsettling results of this lack of planning. Its politics are decisive (forced resettlement is unethical and the government policy that promotes it is inhumane and heavily influenced by a desire to clear the hinterlands in the interests of industrial exploitation) but not dishonest. But then, it does not treat either the groups exposed to resettlement or government actors involved in enacting the policy with a close-enough ethnographic empathy to be able to comment effectively on ‘aspirations’. High may have tried to do this but her shiny argument is exposed by a lack of empirical data like buttocks to an arctic wind. Her aim is true though. Resettlement is happening anyway and will continue to happen regardless so we do need to understand the ‘experience’ of it and this experience is always going to be more complex than the general political perspectives that have so far informed both government policy and criticism of it. I get the feeling that the disagreement between Bairde and High is a methodological one rather than an ethical one, which is what the argument seems to have turned into.
I am grateful for the difference of opinion that has led to this swathe of writing on resettlement because it is impossible to understand the lives of rural Lao without understanding its influence on them. That said, I cannot help but feel that there is no argument here. This (non)debate is fuelled by an inability of one or both parties to acknowledge an alternative perspective, which could in turn have enriched their own position and our understanding of the issues.
There is a saying that comes to mind: “nyom die teh bor nyom chum non” which I translate poorly as something like you are willing to die but never to accept surrender”.
And yet, perhaps all this academic fisting is helping to bring their names and their careers to life.
“Popularly elected government” doesn’t even begin to describe Thaksin regime.
From coup makers point of view the man was finished after his televised announcement back in April after the meeting with the King. By June it was clear he was going back on his word. By September he seemed unstoppable.
Coup makers were not going to excuse this treachery by his popular mandate, which he didn’t even formally have at that time.
You just don’t go back on promises like this in Thailand.
Coup makers were fighting Thaksin’s personal lust for power, not the people.
Then more than 200,000 strong Burmese army and the supporting militia were pushed back to the west of Salween and kept there hapless for more than a decade by a small group of head-hunting Wa led by merely a handful of Chinese volunteers? Funny, ha ha ha!
You must be kidding, Moe Aung, aren’t you? Even the Shan Herald News mentioned the thousands of Chinese volunteers now retired but still spoiling for the fight.
Maybe you get your information from that book of Bertil Lintner, Moe Aung. You could not imagine the scale and horror of that conflict unless you were there in the thick of brutal fighting. For your information, bastard Ne Win and his BSPP government didn’t say a thing to the country about that long war, not officially.
One of my classmates became a major in the army after DSA and his battalion was overrun by a large Chinese unit near Kun-Lone and he was taken prisoner and kept in a special prison built for the captured Burmese officers on Chinese side of the border.
He said to me later that he was still madly firing his .30 carbine at the attacking human waves when he was roughly lifted out of his foxhole by many Chinese hands. They badly wanted to capture an officer alive.
He was released two years later as part of the regular prisoner exchange between the army and Chinese as the army also regularly captured Chinese officers too.
But the Chinese had used truth serum on him too many times and he’d gone mad as the result of both physical and psychological torture in Chinese hands.
He used to visit me in Rangoon in late seventies and shockingly I discovered that he was still mildly mad. Army had kept him in an inactive position for a while but finally discharged him. He killed himself in 1981 by shooting through his mouth.
I have so many sad stories to tell of that conflict, I am busting from inside. I’ve even met a former Chinese Political Commissar from PLA South-Western Army now an exile in Australia and running a Chinese massage parlor here in Sydney, and he is gradually telling me his personal experiences of that conflict.
Maybe I should write a book so that ignorant people like you can be enlightened?
“Any Western Head of State would be justified sanctioning a coup against a PM trying to seize absolute power through a mass-slaughter of peaceful demonstrators. To this extent, I sympathise with PAD !”
Wrong…
“any western head of state” would try to make sure that the perpetrators of these crimes were punished through a credible justice system…
rather than the Thai elite way of using the crimes as an excuse to unseat an elected PM because they are worried he might eventually bring the military and the head of state under control of a popularly elected government
In Burma mutual benefit from trade unfortunately doesn’t follow quite the same path as elsewhere mainly due to a virtual monopoly on economic activity and the arbitrary nature of governance by the junta. And if influence and leverage between state players is what’s hoped for, perhaps China’s pre-eminence is undesirable, since at least we can work on the basis that the West is the lesser of two evils if we are to establish proper comprador capitalism. It doesn’t however follow that Western influence will necessarily neuter either the regime’s intolerance to dissent or its virulence in the repression. It could simply end up watering the proverbial poison plant.
It is almost certainly a balancing act as far as the junta is concerned, quite happy to manipulate both East and West to suit its own agenda in maitaining a grip, by fair means or foul, on the nation it plans to continue to exploit for the benefit of the entrenched military ruling class. So long as it profits someone somewhere, the junta is a good partner they can do business with.
“Kokang Shans (Shans whereas the Wa are Chinese?)”
Notice the question mark and the parenthesis? It’s beacause you seem to think the Kokang Chinese are Shan, and you’ve stated more than once fighting against the Chinese which I’m guessing you mean the Wa led by their Chinese warlords and the CPB including a handful of Chinese volunteers, but ‘misleadingly’ giving the impression it was an invading Chinese army. Strangely Ne Win overlooked to mention such a crucial fact to either the country or the international community at the time or at any other time since, whereas everyone knew about the earlier KMT presence in Burma.
Interjecting here from my observer status: Chris, you are really digging your hole with a sign outside of “knowledge-gap”:
First, Thailand is not part of some Buddhist commonwealth: the king is only king of thailand, not of some far away, sometimes culturally and ethinically unconnected ex-colonies. Using your oblique term, Thailand cannot have a “common monarchy” since it doesn’t share it with anyone else.
And let’s be real, there is no chance of Isarn breaking away, “federalising”, or anything. You are fantasising of you think so.
The only issue at the current time is, can the monarchy maintain its position after succession, or will it lose influence, over the WHOLE of the kingdom, and how? Secession by Isarn? A longtime dream of many, but absolutely no movement or figurehead behind it. A non-starter.
Frank – I completely disagree with you.
Increasing widespread sentiment towards breaking away, means a second front will be opened up against Bangkok’s – especially the PAD’s fascism-posing-as-democracy “Thailand”.
Isaarn is a ticking time-bomb – do you think those red-shirts with legs blasted off, go back to their villages, and preach love of “Thailand” ?
The third front is the Cambodian border.
A common monarchy is some sort of arrangement like Australia,
Canada, New Zealand have with the British Queen.
Chulalongkorn is still hugely revered in Isaarn – so there’s still a chance a federal solution could work for “Thailand” as Siam.
C.B. — The Domino Theory was only a load of codswallop because it did not come to pass. There’s nothing like hindsight to add clarity to one’s predictions. But if you cast your mind back, you will recall there were a great many astute political thinkers in Australia who envisaged Southeast Asian governments falling one after the other. And they had some reason to believe so. After the taking of Saigon, the Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao quickly toppled governments, The Communist Party of Thailand (Thammasart or no) was active in the mountain forests of the north and northeast, and the Communist Party of Malaya in Thailand’s south. Ne Win’s “way to socialism” was viewed with extreme suspicion. Suharto had only just suppressed Indonesian communists by murdering them, and who in Canberra was clairvoyant enough to see how that would pan out? Lee Kuan Yew was spotting a Communist hiding behind every rubber tree. Philippine communists were daily coming out of forests beheading people. It’s only in retrospect that the Domino Theory seems nonsense. Only five years earlier Australian troops had been fighting reds in Borneo and there was a forward RAAF base at Butterworth. Australia had good reason to bend Duntroon rules (if it did). The communist advance stopped in Thailand. Much of that success was due to rapid economic growth, to be sure, but a large measure can be attributed to the institution of the monarchy and the devotion (personality cult if you like) surrounding Himself.
Ralph – I’ll get back to you on your post. there’s now so much to trawl through on NM. Congratulations to Farrely for organising it.
Ralph – I take your point about the need for independent verification. Indeed – 100% independent verification would be a good way to judge whether 2006’s coup was justified from a Western perspective. Any Western Head of State would be justified sanctioning a coup against a PM trying to seize absolute power through a mass-slaughter of peaceful demonstrators. To this extent, I sympathise with PAD !
Fact is the Post and Nation were reporting on these missing 1,000 rifles – and the Army’s vain attempts to retrieve them and the Rangers resisting this, being BEFORE the 2006 coup !
Terry – what ? Me pull twine ? No – that’s far too sanook, and I’m not Thai !!
Ralph if you served at Duntroon – or indeed served in our military at all – I withdraw me shot back at you on a previous post about you being a “pompous” blatherer. I have nothing but respect for our military – and also for much of the Thai military.
Did you serve ?
The Crown Prince does not have to be Duntroon’s star graduate.
He merely needs to know how the military works, inorder to
perform his Royal duties.
Satti – the “Domino Theory” was a load of codswallop. The struggles in Indochina were primarily nationalist, anti-colonialist, and Thailand’s Communist Party was massively boosted primarily by the Tula Thammasat massacre, rather than “communist” victories in 1975.
Anyone’s memory of nazi victims here feel genuinely offended by Kavi? If not, then it’s a fake moral indignation.
As for general Nation’s readership – I don’t think you can’t find any other country where Nazism is as trivialized as here. Beyond repair, imo.
It’s only a few months since we were treated to giant “Hitler’s alive” billboards, and now people make such a big deal out of mentioning of Goebbels.
I would also argue that the comparison was not silly. From memory, Goebbels dictum was that you have to create a really big lie to make it believable, and Kavi said that Jatuporn constructed an alternative reality from numerous small lies.
I find this idea interesting and would love to hear more details on how red propaganda machine works.
In the mean time, the thought police (“you can’t mention Goebbels because he was a Nazi”) can go and comment on Lese Majeste instead.
Thailand should not have forcibly repatriated the Lao migrants who are deemed to be persons of concerns by the UN. But its well within its right to prevent and discourage future migrants from illegally entering its border. The persons of concern are only a small number in the group of more than 4500 who were repatriated. What about the rest who presumably the UN has not bestowed the same status? Most of them are probably economic migrants motivated not by the fear of persecution by the Lao authorities but probably more by the relative prosperity in Thailand and possibly even resettlement in (developed) third countries. What do you do with them?
The country has received a lot of knee-jerk liberal criticism for its handling of the Hmong migrants (most of whom are not refugees) when it should be praised for its overall acceptance of refugees. Where do North Koreans in fear of real persecution go when they want freedom? And ethnic Uighurs who want protection for their basic human rights? Not Cambodia. Not any of Thailand’s neighbors. Not even Singapore. They go to Thailand for a reason.
People who criticize Thailand in this moment should recognize the country’s history and continued support of refugees in the region. You can talk politics all you want but you should recognize the facts. The Thai military may have a strict stance against migrants but are they to blame to take such a position? They’ve got to deal with over a million displaced Burmese within their border. Not to mention the Khmers, Hmongs, and who knows who else who seek refuge and a livelihood within Thailand’s border. That’s a lot to be asking of a country who have to deal with its own internal strife.
Maybe the criticism should be placed on those groups that encourage people who are unhappy with their lives in their home countries to leave for greener pastures elsewhere, whatever the cost. The Hmong migrants themselves may not see it but most people outside the camps would agree a lifetime in a refugee camp cannot be better than life in your home village. You’re deluding yourself if you think these folks are better off in a camp. And has there been any signs since the forced repatriation that these folks have been badly treated? Until then, hold your tongue and keep your political agenda to yourself. These folks deserve better than to be pawns in some NGO/international organization’s idea of an ideal world.
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China and the Wa
“Hla Oo”:
I do think you really should write a book about your experiences. Your unique view would and could add much to the usually sickeningly one-sided and polemic Burma debate. For me, your posts here have been most enlightening and educating.
On academic blogging
I would strongly agree … adding the the blogging should not only be done in an “academic” language means in most cases the english language but also using the mother tongue of the academic.
I believe he should give something back to the public of his home country which journalists, due to economic contraints or misinformation, and the ordinary citicen normally are not able or not willing (due to missing language skills) to do, i.e. to collect unbiased information from foreign language web-sites.
But may be the academics of most countries are already as much commercialized as the rest of the society is and have more interest in being quoted in scholary works.
Globalization is going to create a new type of discrimination. The one who is not able to read and write the global language English is excluded from a big part of the information on the global market. I.E. on the long hand we create a new, although huge, elite, namely the people reading and writing English. While in the same time a big part of the academics complain about stupid and ignorant citizens.
And may be one time we might see the same on a global scale which we observed in Thailand recently: An elite claiming that the ordinary people are too stupid to elect his government by himself?
High vs. Baird, et al.
Baird and accomplice Shoemaker have a wonderful book about the Xekong river basin hiding out as a banal, white covered, red lettered White Lotus publication. It provides a relatively juicy amount of detail into the resettlement issue from a perspective of supreme experience with great ethnographic snippets but an excruciatingly short section on spirit beliefs (I cannot believe that this is all that Baird has to say about animism). The book is not afraid to expose and critique the extraordinary absence of government planning about livelihoods that has gone into village consolidation policy and other forms of resettlement and to observe the unsettling results of this lack of planning. Its politics are decisive (forced resettlement is unethical and the government policy that promotes it is inhumane and heavily influenced by a desire to clear the hinterlands in the interests of industrial exploitation) but not dishonest. But then, it does not treat either the groups exposed to resettlement or government actors involved in enacting the policy with a close-enough ethnographic empathy to be able to comment effectively on ‘aspirations’. High may have tried to do this but her shiny argument is exposed by a lack of empirical data like buttocks to an arctic wind. Her aim is true though. Resettlement is happening anyway and will continue to happen regardless so we do need to understand the ‘experience’ of it and this experience is always going to be more complex than the general political perspectives that have so far informed both government policy and criticism of it. I get the feeling that the disagreement between Bairde and High is a methodological one rather than an ethical one, which is what the argument seems to have turned into.
I am grateful for the difference of opinion that has led to this swathe of writing on resettlement because it is impossible to understand the lives of rural Lao without understanding its influence on them. That said, I cannot help but feel that there is no argument here. This (non)debate is fuelled by an inability of one or both parties to acknowledge an alternative perspective, which could in turn have enriched their own position and our understanding of the issues.
There is a saying that comes to mind: “nyom die teh bor nyom chum non” which I translate poorly as something like you are willing to die but never to accept surrender”.
And yet, perhaps all this academic fisting is helping to bring their names and their careers to life.
Thaksin on Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
“Popularly elected government” doesn’t even begin to describe Thaksin regime.
From coup makers point of view the man was finished after his televised announcement back in April after the meeting with the King. By June it was clear he was going back on his word. By September he seemed unstoppable.
Coup makers were not going to excuse this treachery by his popular mandate, which he didn’t even formally have at that time.
You just don’t go back on promises like this in Thailand.
Coup makers were fighting Thaksin’s personal lust for power, not the people.
From the Book Review Editor
[…] […]
China and the Wa
The Taliban are going to be in real trouble when all that jungle they’re hiding in gets cut down.
China and the Wa
Handful of Chinese volunteers?
Then more than 200,000 strong Burmese army and the supporting militia were pushed back to the west of Salween and kept there hapless for more than a decade by a small group of head-hunting Wa led by merely a handful of Chinese volunteers? Funny, ha ha ha!
You must be kidding, Moe Aung, aren’t you? Even the Shan Herald News mentioned the thousands of Chinese volunteers now retired but still spoiling for the fight.
http://tiny.cc/CPBvets
Maybe you get your information from that book of Bertil Lintner, Moe Aung. You could not imagine the scale and horror of that conflict unless you were there in the thick of brutal fighting. For your information, bastard Ne Win and his BSPP government didn’t say a thing to the country about that long war, not officially.
One of my classmates became a major in the army after DSA and his battalion was overrun by a large Chinese unit near Kun-Lone and he was taken prisoner and kept in a special prison built for the captured Burmese officers on Chinese side of the border.
He said to me later that he was still madly firing his .30 carbine at the attacking human waves when he was roughly lifted out of his foxhole by many Chinese hands. They badly wanted to capture an officer alive.
He was released two years later as part of the regular prisoner exchange between the army and Chinese as the army also regularly captured Chinese officers too.
But the Chinese had used truth serum on him too many times and he’d gone mad as the result of both physical and psychological torture in Chinese hands.
He used to visit me in Rangoon in late seventies and shockingly I discovered that he was still mildly mad. Army had kept him in an inactive position for a while but finally discharged him. He killed himself in 1981 by shooting through his mouth.
I have so many sad stories to tell of that conflict, I am busting from inside. I’ve even met a former Chinese Political Commissar from PLA South-Western Army now an exile in Australia and running a Chinese massage parlor here in Sydney, and he is gradually telling me his personal experiences of that conflict.
Maybe I should write a book so that ignorant people like you can be enlightened?
Thaksin on Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
Chris…
“Any Western Head of State would be justified sanctioning a coup against a PM trying to seize absolute power through a mass-slaughter of peaceful demonstrators. To this extent, I sympathise with PAD !”
Wrong…
“any western head of state” would try to make sure that the perpetrators of these crimes were punished through a credible justice system…
rather than the Thai elite way of using the crimes as an excuse to unseat an elected PM because they are worried he might eventually bring the military and the head of state under control of a popularly elected government
Politics and the Burmese radios
In Burma mutual benefit from trade unfortunately doesn’t follow quite the same path as elsewhere mainly due to a virtual monopoly on economic activity and the arbitrary nature of governance by the junta. And if influence and leverage between state players is what’s hoped for, perhaps China’s pre-eminence is undesirable, since at least we can work on the basis that the West is the lesser of two evils if we are to establish proper comprador capitalism. It doesn’t however follow that Western influence will necessarily neuter either the regime’s intolerance to dissent or its virulence in the repression. It could simply end up watering the proverbial poison plant.
It is almost certainly a balancing act as far as the junta is concerned, quite happy to manipulate both East and West to suit its own agenda in maitaining a grip, by fair means or foul, on the nation it plans to continue to exploit for the benefit of the entrenched military ruling class. So long as it profits someone somewhere, the junta is a good partner they can do business with.
Review of Populism in Asia
Great review. I am looking forward to the future reviews by New Mandala and TLC. Congratulations on this initiative!
What would you like to ask General Prem?
Question 1: Is it appropriate for the military to oust a democratically elected leader?
Question 2: Which will last longer – Thailand’s most recent constitution (2007) or the hype surrounding James Cameron’s movie “Avatar”?
China and the Wa
Hla Oo,
“Kokang Shans (Shans whereas the Wa are Chinese?)”
Notice the question mark and the parenthesis? It’s beacause you seem to think the Kokang Chinese are Shan, and you’ve stated more than once fighting against the Chinese which I’m guessing you mean the Wa led by their Chinese warlords and the CPB including a handful of Chinese volunteers, but ‘misleadingly’ giving the impression it was an invading Chinese army. Strangely Ne Win overlooked to mention such a crucial fact to either the country or the international community at the time or at any other time since, whereas everyone knew about the earlier KMT presence in Burma.
Thailand’s crown prince
Interjecting here from my observer status: Chris, you are really digging your hole with a sign outside of “knowledge-gap”:
First, Thailand is not part of some Buddhist commonwealth: the king is only king of thailand, not of some far away, sometimes culturally and ethinically unconnected ex-colonies. Using your oblique term, Thailand cannot have a “common monarchy” since it doesn’t share it with anyone else.
And let’s be real, there is no chance of Isarn breaking away, “federalising”, or anything. You are fantasising of you think so.
The only issue at the current time is, can the monarchy maintain its position after succession, or will it lose influence, over the WHOLE of the kingdom, and how? Secession by Isarn? A longtime dream of many, but absolutely no movement or figurehead behind it. A non-starter.
Thailand’s crown prince
Frank – I completely disagree with you.
Increasing widespread sentiment towards breaking away, means a second front will be opened up against Bangkok’s – especially the PAD’s fascism-posing-as-democracy “Thailand”.
Isaarn is a ticking time-bomb – do you think those red-shirts with legs blasted off, go back to their villages, and preach love of “Thailand” ?
The third front is the Cambodian border.
A common monarchy is some sort of arrangement like Australia,
Canada, New Zealand have with the British Queen.
Chulalongkorn is still hugely revered in Isaarn – so there’s still a chance a federal solution could work for “Thailand” as Siam.
Bangkok Post on the crown prince
C.B. — The Domino Theory was only a load of codswallop because it did not come to pass. There’s nothing like hindsight to add clarity to one’s predictions. But if you cast your mind back, you will recall there were a great many astute political thinkers in Australia who envisaged Southeast Asian governments falling one after the other. And they had some reason to believe so. After the taking of Saigon, the Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao quickly toppled governments, The Communist Party of Thailand (Thammasart or no) was active in the mountain forests of the north and northeast, and the Communist Party of Malaya in Thailand’s south. Ne Win’s “way to socialism” was viewed with extreme suspicion. Suharto had only just suppressed Indonesian communists by murdering them, and who in Canberra was clairvoyant enough to see how that would pan out? Lee Kuan Yew was spotting a Communist hiding behind every rubber tree. Philippine communists were daily coming out of forests beheading people. It’s only in retrospect that the Domino Theory seems nonsense. Only five years earlier Australian troops had been fighting reds in Borneo and there was a forward RAAF base at Butterworth. Australia had good reason to bend Duntroon rules (if it did). The communist advance stopped in Thailand. Much of that success was due to rapid economic growth, to be sure, but a large measure can be attributed to the institution of the monarchy and the devotion (personality cult if you like) surrounding Himself.
Thaksin on Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
Ralph – you really should read the Bangkok Post more thoroughly.
It was reported last year that Surayudh’s father was
CPT.
Thaksin on Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
Ralph – I’ll get back to you on your post. there’s now so much to trawl through on NM. Congratulations to Farrely for organising it.
Ralph – I take your point about the need for independent verification. Indeed – 100% independent verification would be a good way to judge whether 2006’s coup was justified from a Western perspective. Any Western Head of State would be justified sanctioning a coup against a PM trying to seize absolute power through a mass-slaughter of peaceful demonstrators. To this extent, I sympathise with PAD !
Fact is the Post and Nation were reporting on these missing 1,000 rifles – and the Army’s vain attempts to retrieve them and the Rangers resisting this, being BEFORE the 2006 coup !
Bangkok Post on the crown prince
Terry – what ? Me pull twine ? No – that’s far too sanook, and I’m not Thai !!
Ralph if you served at Duntroon – or indeed served in our military at all – I withdraw me shot back at you on a previous post about you being a “pompous” blatherer. I have nothing but respect for our military – and also for much of the Thai military.
Did you serve ?
The Crown Prince does not have to be Duntroon’s star graduate.
He merely needs to know how the military works, inorder to
perform his Royal duties.
Satti – the “Domino Theory” was a load of codswallop. The struggles in Indochina were primarily nationalist, anti-colonialist, and Thailand’s Communist Party was massively boosted primarily by the Tula Thammasat massacre, rather than “communist” victories in 1975.
The sum of all fears
Anyone’s memory of nazi victims here feel genuinely offended by Kavi? If not, then it’s a fake moral indignation.
As for general Nation’s readership – I don’t think you can’t find any other country where Nazism is as trivialized as here. Beyond repair, imo.
It’s only a few months since we were treated to giant “Hitler’s alive” billboards, and now people make such a big deal out of mentioning of Goebbels.
I would also argue that the comparison was not silly. From memory, Goebbels dictum was that you have to create a really big lie to make it believable, and Kavi said that Jatuporn constructed an alternative reality from numerous small lies.
I find this idea interesting and would love to hear more details on how red propaganda machine works.
In the mean time, the thought police (“you can’t mention Goebbels because he was a Nazi”) can go and comment on Lese Majeste instead.
Abhisit’s definition of voluntary
Thailand should not have forcibly repatriated the Lao migrants who are deemed to be persons of concerns by the UN. But its well within its right to prevent and discourage future migrants from illegally entering its border. The persons of concern are only a small number in the group of more than 4500 who were repatriated. What about the rest who presumably the UN has not bestowed the same status? Most of them are probably economic migrants motivated not by the fear of persecution by the Lao authorities but probably more by the relative prosperity in Thailand and possibly even resettlement in (developed) third countries. What do you do with them?
The country has received a lot of knee-jerk liberal criticism for its handling of the Hmong migrants (most of whom are not refugees) when it should be praised for its overall acceptance of refugees. Where do North Koreans in fear of real persecution go when they want freedom? And ethnic Uighurs who want protection for their basic human rights? Not Cambodia. Not any of Thailand’s neighbors. Not even Singapore. They go to Thailand for a reason.
People who criticize Thailand in this moment should recognize the country’s history and continued support of refugees in the region. You can talk politics all you want but you should recognize the facts. The Thai military may have a strict stance against migrants but are they to blame to take such a position? They’ve got to deal with over a million displaced Burmese within their border. Not to mention the Khmers, Hmongs, and who knows who else who seek refuge and a livelihood within Thailand’s border. That’s a lot to be asking of a country who have to deal with its own internal strife.
Maybe the criticism should be placed on those groups that encourage people who are unhappy with their lives in their home countries to leave for greener pastures elsewhere, whatever the cost. The Hmong migrants themselves may not see it but most people outside the camps would agree a lifetime in a refugee camp cannot be better than life in your home village. You’re deluding yourself if you think these folks are better off in a camp. And has there been any signs since the forced repatriation that these folks have been badly treated? Until then, hold your tongue and keep your political agenda to yourself. These folks deserve better than to be pawns in some NGO/international organization’s idea of an ideal world.