September 23, 2006

  • Call a Spade a Spade, Please

    News reports from Bangkok keep saying that this coup is going to help “resolve the Muslim insurgency in the Thailand’s restive south.”  (Restive?  Restive means restless.  Why don’t they just say ‘scared‘?)

    But no news reports have explained what exactly this current regime started by General Sondhi will do besides ‘negotiate.’  (What a scary and vague term — and put in context, the news is then saying that he is ‘negotiating’ with people who are trying to blow other people up.)

    For those who think that Buddhists can get along with everyone, the fact is that Southern Thailand has always been segregated in terms of Muslim and Buddhist relations.
    But, they tolerated each other for the most part — having separate neighborhoods, and separate schools.

    But, what is scary to me is that no one in Thailand is investigating to find out if foreign
    (Middle Eastern, Saudi Arabian, Indonesian?) Islamofacist influences are
    encouraging the Muslim youths to do this.  Will General Sondhi look into this, as he seems to claim?

    This group of Muslims who are terrorizing the
    south are like Neo-Nazi’s in Germany after the wall fell. Just as the
    Neo-Nazi’s didn’t represent all Germans, the Islamofacist youths don’t
    represent all Muslims in the South. But they sure as hell aren’t making it
    easier for ANYONE in the South — Buddhists or Muslims.

    I don’t understand why news reports from Bangkok (because I never see news
    reporters who are actually FROM the South. . . and I wonder why that is so. . . .) always
    say that Thaksin didn’t think that these Muslims are funded from out of the
    country. If General Sondhi finds out if they are, then he will be doing both the
    Buddhists and the Muslims in this area a big favor. Thailand doesn’t need
    outside influences. They have enough going on inside the country to take care
    of, thank you very much!

    But will General Sondhi’s new government do the looking required to find out who is killing Southerners?

    Somehow, I don’t think so.  I noticed that he closed the northern borders to Burma. . . but he kept the southern borders open.  Why?  I can’t think of any good reason to keep those borders open, except that it might let more terrorists in.

    ‘Blood
    Siam’     – November 1,
    2004
    Last week we mentioned right wing
    politics in Thai     and today Wisarut describes
    a nationalistic site: Blood
    Siam     is a site where some Thais released
    their frustration over the Tak Bai tragedy. They
    are have fed up with the media that shows sympathy
    toward Muslims while never showing any sympathy
    toward officers, students and judges who have been
    murdered by PULO and BRN.      They contend senators,
    NGOs, and media like Matichon, the Nation Group,
    Naew Na and Thai Post have betrayed their motherland
    to such extend that sooner or later they will follow
    those dead Muslims to the crematoriums and graveyards.
    (It is a GeoCities site that is already making the
    rounds by email so it is often down when the bandwidth
    is exceeded.)

    Hidden in Thai: Nationalistic
    comments     – October 28, 2004
    Judging only from what is printed in English, the view about the
    Tak Bai deaths is one of outrage and solemn condemnation mixed
    with feelings that ‘Thaksin is in trouble now.’
    However, there is a long-standing nationalistic, rightist strain
    that goes through Thai political thought that is usually self-censored
    in English. The prevalence of this strain of thought would probably
    surprise foreigners who think all Thais are at heart, gentle leftists,
    and that hard right-wing leanings are confined to military men.
    The troubles in the South have brought out hard-line feelings
    and it would be a mistake to think (as some English-language publications
    contend) that P.M. Thaksin stands alone in pushing a tough attitude
    toward Muslim ‘troublemakers.’
    Wisarut adds: Some people’s response to the headlines printed
    in local newspapers (here,
    here,
    and here)
    are much harsher than responses to foreign corespondents since
    such opinions would offend human right activists. You can see
    such responses at Manager Online as well as pantip.com and mthai.com.
    Nobody would dare to translate local Thai’s reactions which will
    would offend the human right activists as well as those NGOs
    [making Thailand look bad]. Some even say, “we should
    never pay taxes to feed those ingrate Senators who become a bunch
    of traitors by acting like human right activists!”

    While the government is known to have people
    mass post on opinion boards to sway public opinion, this tough
    talk in defense of national pride and the desire to harshly stamp
    out that which threatens the nation is likely a genuine sentiment.

    Also: Interesting thread touching on this subject: “Jai
    Dee     is for us only.”