The content in this page ("Home and Away" by Harrison George) is not produced by Prachatai staff. Prachatai merely provides a platform, and the opinions stated here do not necessarily reflect those of Prachatai.

Home and Away

The Thai government must know how Luis Suárez feels.  Not in the sense of sympathy or feeling sorry for the millionaire delinquent, but on the lines of empathy, suffering in the same way.

First there is the unwillingness to accept reality.  In the footballing half of the equation, this goes all the way back to the schoolboy Suárez who in 2003 didn’t really head butt a referee whose decisions he did not agree with, but merely suffered ‘an accidental loss of balance’.  In this way his head came into contact with the ref’s nose, causing it, most unfortunately, to ‘bleed like a cow’.  And it continues right up to the 2014 World Cup, where again, he didn’t bite the Italian defender, but suffered pain in his teeth after Chiellini viciously shoved his shoulder into them.

Simlarly, we don’t have ‘arbitrary detention’ in Thailand.  We have ‘invitations’ to ‘cooling off periods’.  You name is announced in the mass media.  No reason, no explanation and certainly no formal charge.  But you do have a free choice.  You can turn up and be incarcerated, or you may decide not to turn up, then face an arrest warrant for breaking the law (the law that says you have to turn up) and then be incarcerated.  But there is no coercion in this.

Once you have voluntarily chosen your route to detention, you may be hooded, taken to a secret destination, held incommunicado, and released only if you sign a statement that you have not been mistreated and won’t exercise any political rights.  But this is no restriction of your rights and liberties.  The food is good, there is air-con in the bedrooms and the interrogations are more along the lines of cosy chats. 

Then there is the gross and malevolent misunderstanding by outside forces.  When Suárez tells Patrice Evra in a game that he kicked him ‘because he is negro’ and that he (Suárez) ‘doesn’t talk to negros’, he was in no way being racially abusive.  According to the testimony of other (non-black) Uruguayan footballers, ‘negro’ is really a term of endearment in Uruguay, especially on the football field.

Sadly the Football Association of England chose not understand this and in their ignorance punished Suárez most unjustly with an 8-game ban, something his club, Liverpool, claimed was based on no more than an ‘unsubstantiated allegation’.  So strongly did they feel about this, that they chose not to appeal the verdict. 

Instead, Suárez promised his club to shake Evra’s hand the next time the teams met.  But when the moment came, Suárez refused to shake hands, as of course was his right.  His manager (Dalglish) claimed he never saw the incident but said it would be wrong to blame Suárez for anything at all.  Then the money men stepped in and the club sponsors forced a double apology from both the sadly misunderstood player and the myopic but stalwart manager.

This resembles the decisions of the US, EU, Australia and others in criticizing the military take-over of power (which in their confusion they call a ‘coup’, when any student of Thai politics knows that the word has a totally different meaning in the Thai context).  Their misguided and unjustified sanctions against Thailand have been based on totally biased and maliciously ignorant media reports by every foreign news agency.  The fact that the foreign media are biased is made clear by a comparison between their reporting and the free, uncensored and independent articles from inside Thailand, which regularly include pro-junta articles by apologist farangs as often as they can find them.

In the same way, the Uruguayan media have rounded on international reporting, especially from the UK, which they accuse of becoming a witch hunt against the saintly national hero Suárez.  This naturally reinforces the sense among Uruguayans, from the President down, that there is an international conspiracy against their small and unjustly maligned nation.

And finally, there is the vindictive argument used against Suárez, that because this is the third bite he has inflicted on an opponent (the first two times he eventually confessed), then he should, as a persistent offender, face increasingly severe penalties for his misdeeds.  This is unfair, as his current manager at Liverpool (Rogers) says, since it ‘punishes the player, not the crime.’  Obviously Suárez is a footballer who sincerely believes that chewing lumps out of your opponents is a reasonable, if not exactly legitimate way of winning games, and should be repeated until it works.

In the same way, the Thai government clearly believes that even if past coups have failed to stop corruption, create reconciliation and bring about universal happiness, there is still every reason to believe that another one might just do the trick.

In fact Einstein said as much when he talked about ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’  Both Suárez and the Thai government can take comfort in the fact that their actions have been so well defined by perhaps the 20th century’s greatest thinker.

 


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).

Since 2007, Prachatai English has been covering underreported issues in Thailand, especially about democratization and human rights, despite the risk and pressure from the law and the authorities. However, with only 2 full-time reporters and increasing annual operating costs, keeping our work going is a challenge. Your support will ensure we stay a professional media source and be able to expand our team to meet the challenges and deliver timely and in-depth reporting.

• Simple steps to support Prachatai English

1. Bank transfer to account “โครงการหนังสือพิมพ์อินเทอร์เน็ต ประชาไท” or “Prachatai Online Newspaper” 091-0-21689-4, Krungthai Bank

2. Or, Transfer money via Paypal, to e-mail address: [email protected], please leave a comment on the transaction as “For Prachatai English”