robinlea

Somyos behind bars ... for good?

Somyot’s defense starts 1st May

April 30, 2012

On the 1st May, labour day, Somyot will begin his defence. From 9am Somyot will give his testimony at the Criminal Court. There will follow four days of defense witness hearings with the last day of the trial on the 4th May. Somyot has been held on remand for one year and one day and has been denied bail nine times.

Show your support by going online to submit your letter of protest through the Labourstart ACT NOW campaign here.

Here’s the news of Somyos’ arrest and imprisonment, one year ago.

Here’s an English rendition of the ‘charges’ (pdf) … for some reason thought to be an excuse sufficient to imprison Somyos.

This is a classic railroad job, as obvious, though more dastardly than the railroad job on Chiranuch.

Somyos’ has blue-collar help. The ‘elite’ pride themselves on smiting the folks in blue-collars. A little white-collar help can’t hurt … try a letter direct to HE Ms Yingluk. Try to appeal to her ‘elite’ sensibility when you write her.

3 May

‘I have the duty to speak the truth, but if after speaking the truth they punish me, that’s OK. I consider that I have fulfilled the duty of my life, so be it.’

Chiranuch behind bars ... for good?

Prachatai court verdict out today

1. The trial, which ended in February after a serious of adjournments, concerns whether webmasters can be held responsible for comments posted on their websites.
2. She made the unusual decision to deny the charges _ many accused in lese majeste trials opt to plead guilty in the hope of receiving a royal pardon.
3. Ms Chiranuch was charged for her failure to erase postings on her Prachatai website in a timely fashion.
4. She is accused of being complicit or consenting to have the opinions posted on the Prachatai webboard and has been charged on 10 counts stemming from 10 board topics, Sinfah Tunsarawuth, Media Defence _ South East Asia’s legal officer, said.

Let’s take it from the top …

1. 1,151 days after being charged … This has already been cruel and unusual punishment.

   The fact that the ‘authorities’ had the IP addresses of the actual posters but chose instead to prosecute (persecute) Chiranuch tells the whole story : this is a transparent attempt by the ‘authorities’ to shut down any media they cannot control.

   This also explains why the Bangkok Post is sympathetic to the ‘authorities’ : a medium outside of the control of the ‘authorities’, Prachatai, shows up the Bangkok Post itself as the controlled medium it is.

2. You have to read this crazy statement several times in order to savor the full absurdity of Royal Thai Justice.

   It is unusual to deny charges. It is usual to rollover and die once the full panoply of coercive power of the Hyper-Royalist Thai ‘elite’ has been brought to bear.

   The implication clearly is that the charge is equivalent to the conviction, that resistance is futile, that the fix is in.

   The Bangkok Post dutifully accepts this. Baldly states the obvious.

   Pleading guilty is the ‘true Thai’ thing to do. Rather, it’s the ‘only correct response’ for a non-true Thai, for anyone charged with lese majeste is by definition guilty – see above – and thus not a ‘true Thai’ to begin with.

   The only way to ameliorate one’s situation is to admit one’s essential defect, to crawl in the dirt, to grovel, to beg forgiveness … then to be sentenced to a single decade in prison rather than two.

   Demonstrating in court that the ‘authorities’ have no case whatsoever against yourself is conclusive proof of non-true Thainess.

   Ah Gong, after demonstrating the bankruptcy of the ‘authorities’ case against him, is now serving the longest of the long sentences for lese majeste because he was subsequently unable to ‘prove’ his innocence to the ‘authorities’ – a wholly illegal requirement – and thus his case is the definitive demonstration of the truth of the proposition : Royal Thai Justice is injustice institutionalized.

3. A ‘timely fashion’ is a phrase unsupported by law.

   In fact, the postings in question were made in an old, inactive thread of discussion – a tactic often employed by automated spammers, working in others’ employ – and leads any thinking person to wonder if they were not in fact posted on order of the ‘authorities’ themselves, who knew they would go unnoticed, unread, and hence unremoved in a ‘timely fashion’ … before they notified Chiranuch of their existence.

   When notified Chiranuch removed them immediately. But the ‘authorities’ had sprung their lame ‘trap’ – a ‘trap’ that would have been thrown out by any real court, 1,151 days ago.

4. This seems a new charge. Delivered not even by the ‘authorities’ but by some third party. Cited by the Bangkok Post in order to cover-up the bald non-existence of the ‘authorities’ case against Chiranuch?

   There has been no discussion of complicity or consent throughout the trial … but the Bangkok Post hasn’t paid any attention to The Trial.

   They know how ‘justice’ works in Thailand.

The focus is on the pawns

Puea Thai failing red shirts II

[W]e see a desire by Thaksin’s side and the royalist elite for a “normalization” of Thai politics.

As we have long pointed out, the elite is most fundamentally threatened when there is a politicization and mobilization of the unruly masses.

While the royalist elite co-operated with the People’s Alliance for Democracy against Thaksin and the red shirts, the relationship was neither natural nor normal. The same may be said for the relationship between those congregating around Thaksin. He co-operated with the red shirts, but this is not a natural political relationship.

For the elite, both the yellow shirts and the red shirts are really very scary.

It seems that reconciliation is fundamentally about reconciling elite factions and demobilizing the scary masses.

PPT wonders if the red shirts can be easily demobilized or whether they can develop further as a political force.

If the red shirts can’t develop further, then the royalist elite has a victory that a few short months ago would have seemed unlikely without substantial bloodshed.

In essence, Puea Thai and Thaksin will have delivered victory to the royalists if they can depoliticize the red shirts.

That’s about it, from the ‘elite’ perspective. The people are only ever pawns in their game.

It’s up to the Phrai themselves, the pawns, to change the game. No one else will, ever.

The ‘elite’ – UDD|Phuea Thai||Democrats|PAD – like things just the way they are.

6 May

Prosecutions continue under Thailand’s anti-democratic lese majeste laws

More fundamentally, however, Yingluck, her brother Thaksin and their ruling Puea Thai party are just as fearful of widening popular opposition to the monarchy and the state apparatus as their rivals in the political establishment. In the midst of the 2010 protests, the “red shirt” movement of the urban and rural poor went beyond Puea Thai’s demand for early elections and began to voice concerns about social inequality and the political dominance of the country’s traditional elites.