Bangkok, 25 October 2009.
By our Special Anonymous Correspondent
The arrest last month of the board of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand on a charge of lèse majesté continues to have repercussions.
The board members were charged by a 57-year-old spinster of organizing the dissemination of DVDs that defame the monarchy and threaten national security, thus constituting lèse majesté. The DVD was a recording of a speech given at the FCCT over 2 years ago by former Minister Jakrapob Penkair which itself became the basis for a lèse majesté charge against Jakrapob, who has since gone into hiding.
Most board members, highly experienced and respected members of the foreign press corps, quietly left the country when an arrest appeared imminent. Only 2 members were in the end apprehended by the police – a Thai national with nowhere to hide and a journalist who had forgotten where he’d last left his passport.
Since the board had sold only a few of the offending DVDs (a transcript and video clip is widely available for free on the internet and hacks are such cheapskates) and because almost all of those sales were made well before there was any accusation that the content was in any way illegal, it had been thought that the charges would be quietly dropped.
However, when the Prime Minister and other members of the government publicly questioned the validity of the charges, they found themselves charged with being accessories after the fact and will be appearing in court as soon as their parliamentary immunity is lifted.
Calls have been made in the right-wing press (the non-right-wing press has been suspended) for the staff of Thai Post who were involved in delivering a few DVD copies that were sent by mail.
Attempts to identify the employees of banks involved in the payments for the DVDs have apparently run into the problem that most transactions were made through ATM machines. 3 ATM machines have so far been confiscated and are sitting in a cell at Lumphini Police Station awaiting interrogation.
The FCCT members who have been relocated out of Thailand, and who no longer need to engage in self-censorship, have since been writing ‘no-holds-barred’ articles about Thailand, none of which have been very favourable to the country. It is feared that this publicity will have a negative impact on tourism and trade.
Tourism is also likely to be affected by new proposals to screen arrivals for anti-royalist sentiments. Special scanners are on order that will detect symptoms of both republicanism and swine flu.
Meanwhile the Foreign Ministry is developing plans for the numerous embassy properties that are now vacant after the withdrawal of the diplomatic staff of many countries. Plans for yet more shopping malls may be stymied by the fact that many countries no longer export to Thailand.
At last count, the embassies of the Union of Myanmar, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Zimbabwe were still functioning in what the Minister of Foreign Affairs calls an ‘Axis of Friendly Dictatorships’.
There are conflicting reports as to why no foreign TV or radio broadcasts can now be received in Thailand and why internet access has been impossible for the last few weeks. While the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology claim success in intercepting all potentially seditious communications, others say that the media blackout is the result of a foreign boycott.
The dwindling number of sympathetic observers believes that the brains inside the heads that currently wear ‘Ku Chart’ headbands will eventually realize that the total collapse of tourism, the suspension of almost all foreign trade and the severing of diplomatic relations with most of the world is not exactly the best way to save the nation.
Others think such a realization will be a long time coming.
About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).
