Maj Gen Dr Rienthong Naenna, creator and leader of yet another anti-lèse majesté movement of outraged citizens, has run into some initial flak in his patriotic endeavours.  And I don’t mean being on the wrong end of a strongly worded editorial from the Bangkok Post.  That just proves you’ve fallen off the lunatic fringe of the anti-government, anti-democracy, anti-anything-remotely-connected-with-Thaksin movement, which was blindingly obvious anyway.

No, Dr Rienthong’s major difficulty stems from the name he dreamed up for his geriatric vigilantes.  This name has been translated by different media as ‘Trash Elimination Organisation’, ‘Rubbish Collection Organisation’ and ‘Organisation to Eradicate the Nation’s Trash’, none of which is completely satisfactory.

In Thai, the name is องค์กรเก็บขยะแผ่นดิน.  A straightforward translation would be ‘Organization to Collect the Rubbish/Trash/Garbage/Waste of the Land/Country’ with this last word being the one that people like to use when they’re being nationalistic.  And imagine Dr Rienthong’s surprise when a lawsuit landed on his desk charging him with illegally appropriating the name of an existing organization and bringing it into disrepute.

Apparently those hard-working women and men who work unsocial hours to sweep the streets and remove the trash that residents have left by the side of the road already have an organization of this same name.  And they object most strongly to being associated with Dr Rienthong’s antics.

To learn more, Prachatai interviewed Somchai Kwadyangyuadyong, a spokesperson of the original organization.

Khun Somchai, why have you filed a case against Dr Rienthong’s organization? 

Thank you to Prachatai for being the only media outlet to allow us to state our case to the public.  In answer to your question, we tried to contact them to arrange an amicable settlement, submitting evidence that we had already registered our organization in 1987 when Maj Gen Chamlong Srimuang was Governor of Bangkok.  We received no reply so we contacted them again.  This time we spotted 3 cars near our office at night.  We believe they contained armed men acting in a suspicious manner, so we thought the correct thing to do was to inform the police.

You didn’t think of forming your own ‘people’s army’ or ‘special task force’ to defend yourselves?

Of course not.  Such a response would clearly be illegal. 

You claim that Dr Rienthong and his followers are bringing your organization into disrepute.  What do you mean by this?

Take, for example, their use of the word ‘trash’.  Our organization believes that trash comprises things that are no longer wanted by the owners and which they want to get rid of.  This does not mean that trash has no value; we can re-use or re-cycle bottles, paper and plastics, for example.  But it does mean that people can never be considered trash, no matter what their beliefs.

And you think that Dr Rienthong’s group think that people with anti-monarchical views are literally trash?

We would be surprised if this was really true.  Dr Rienthong is a medical doctor and should recognize this as part of his Hippocratic Oath.  He and his followers probably also consider themselves educated people and therefore must be aware of Article 16 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 30 of the Constitution of Thailand.

Please remind our readers of what Article 16 and Article 30 say.

The ICCPR says that everyone shall have the right to recognition as a person and the Constitution guarantees everyone equal protection under the law.

So if Dr Rienthong’s group already know this, where’s the problem?

Using the word ‘trash’ to describe people who are different from them resembles practices that historically have led to major abuses of human rights.

Such as?

The classification of Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, Slavic peoples and so on as Untermensch or ‘sub-humans’ by the Nazi movement before and during World War Two was used as justification for the Holocaust.  Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army conducted vivisection and other experimentation on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied China by referring to them as ‘logs’.  Dehumanization of victims or potential victims is a common feature of officially sanctioned atrocities.

So you fear that similar things could happen in Thailand.

Yes, because they already have, such as in 1976 when, for example, Buddhist monk Kittivudho Bhikkhu claimed that Communists were not really persons and so killing them was not a violation of the first precept of Buddhism.

So you want the authorities to arrest Dr Rienthong’s group?

No, that is for the authorities to decide if they have evidence that the law has been broken.  We merely ask that they stop using the name of our organization to say things that bring us into disrepute.

Forgive me for saying this, but some of our readers may not believe that someone who earns a living by collecting trash can have the knowledge to quote human rights documents and historical examples like you have.

Given the prejudices in Thai society, this is understandable.  But which would you rather believe?  That a garbage collector knows about human rights or that a doctor doesn’t?

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).