[Tlc] T-Samal's denial again

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Forwarded from Al Valentine.
Thanks,
justin



http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Human_Rights/2008/02/28/thailands_dirty_history/2449/

Commentary: Thailand's dirty history
AWZAR THI
Column: Rule of Lords, UPI Asia Online [
http://www.upiasiaonline.com ]
HONG KONG, Feb. 28

HONG KONG, China,  The new prime minister of Thailand has
outraged many by refusing to admit that an infamous massacre
ever occurred. In two separate interviews Samak Sundaravej
claimed that only one person died on Oct. 6, 1976, when police
and paramilitaries stormed Thammasat University, killing at
least 46 and forcing thousands into hiding. He denied that he
provoked the violence along with other rightists, saying that
it is "a dirty history."

He's right about that. But there's a lot more to this dirty
history than a single day of bloodshed or the marginal role
that the prime minister may have played in it. Violence on the
scale of Oct. 6 does not erupt unexpectedly. It is the finale
to a thousand other lesser events. It is the day-to-day writ
large.

In a doctoral thesis submitted to Cornell University last
year, Tyrell Haberkorn follows one of the trails of repeated,
silent incidents that culminated in the mayhem of 1976: the
unsolved murders of dozens of farmers' leaders in the north of
Thailand.

The farmers became targets in part because they were trying to
organize their fellows when their country was a hot spot in
the Cold War. With communist neighbors and ideologues calling
for the downfall of Bangkok, modest demands for rent relief
and land reform were enlarged and distorted.

But that they made demands at all, Haberkorn argues, was
already cause to aggravate landholders who felt that "the
farmers' claims challenged their public, and self, image as
generous individuals who took care of the people who worked
their rice fields." By expressing their needs as rights,
rather than privileges, the farmers crossed the line from
acceptable request into unacceptable protest.

The response was calculated and unforgiving. In mid-1975, 21
leaders of the Farmers' Federation of Thailand were killed,
eight in Chiang Mai alone. Using the same methods as those of
the 2003 war on drugs, the killers came in broad daylight,
unconcerned to hide themselves. And like in 2003 the official
response was to treat the dead not as victims but as persons
who somehow deserved whatever they got, a category of people
to which ordinary rules didn't apply.

The story of Intha Sribunruang, which Haberkorn retells in
detail, is illustrative. Intha was a 45-year-old gardener who
had sold his paddy fields to pay the school fees for his five
children. He had served as a local government official and was
keenly concerned for the welfare of other villagers in Chiang Mai.

After a new land rent control act was passed in 1974 Intha
travelled around the province to inform others of its terms
and how farmers could exercise them. His work angered
sub-district officers and landholders who were doing their
best to prevent people from knowing about the new law and how
to use it.

On the morning of July 30, 1975, Intha was at home alone when
two men on a motorbike stopped outside. One dismounted and
asked to buy some cigarettes from the family's small general
store. As Intha was giving the man his change, he pulled a
pistol and killed Intha instantly.

Again as in 2003, the police in 1975 cited a lack of evidence
and uncooperative witnesses as among the reasons for closing
their inquiries. The provincial commander demanded to see
proof not with which to catch Intha's killers but rather with
which to show that the target was really a farmers' leader.

Of the 1975 killings, only in Intha's case was anyone ever
arrested. But despite admitting to having been paid to do the
job, the accused later reversed his statement in court and
walked free shortly thereafter.

The killings had the desired effect. Support for the farmers'
federation waned. The public was obliged to bear witness to
crimes on which the state declined to act and refused anyone
else the opportunity to do otherwise. The stage was set for
the following October.

Haberkorn's question is not so much about why it was that the
killers could not be found in 1975 but why up to today, over
three decades later, they and the persons behind the murders
still cannot be named, let alone tried.

The answer lies in the nature of dirty history itself.
Acknowledged histories are not dirty. Secret histories are.
Thailand's history is dirty not because stuff happened, but
because even now nobody is able to tell the truth about what
really went on, or name names.

This inability is largely the result of police, prosecutors
and judges altogether failing to do their jobs. Without
criminal procedure, no official records exist from which to
draw a coherent picture of what occurred or why. Without this
much, even a prime minister can cast doubt on established
facts before a global television audience. No one was caught,
so was there anything wrong? And did it really happen anyway?

Thailand's dirty history is an example of what arises when the
rule of law is willfully and consistently undermined. It is an
example of what happens when constitutional order is
shamelessly displaced and parliamentary authority trivialized,
both from without and within. For as long as these practices
continue so too will there be dirty history, not only in the
past, but also into the present.

(Haberkorn's thesis can be downloaded in PDF format from:
http://ratchasima.wordpress.com/files/2008/02/haberkorn-cornell.pdf).
--
(Awzar Thi is the pen name of a member of the Asian Human
Rights Commission with over 15 years of experience as an
advocate of human rights and the rule of law in Thailand and
Burma. His Rule of Lords blog can be read at
http://ratchasima.net.)
http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Human_Rights/2008/02/28/thailands_dirty_history/2449/

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu