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It’s Thaksin’s Fault!
23 Jan2010
PM’s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongteay (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
This government really has become too predictable.
Following a disparaging report by Human Rights Watch, in which the lobby group lambastes the human rights situation in Thailand (see the PPT blog for more information), the government’s chief spin doctor Sathit Wongnongtoey decided to take the matter upon himself and issued an all-too-familiar line of response.
Bangkok Post reports:
PM’s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey yesterday slammed Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) annual report as a distortion, and questioned its sources of information.
[...]
Mr Sathit called into question HRW’s sources of information, and suggested that the pro-Thaksin United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) may have been the source.
[...]
“My observation is that its statement uses similar wording [to the UDD's]. I’m not saying the agency lacks independence but it needs to have sources of information and it may stick to one source,” he said.
Need I say more?
12 Responses to It’s Thaksin’s Fault!
John Francis Lee
January 24th, 2010 at 3:57 am
At The Nation, reactionary comic rag supreme, Thaworn doesn’t waste time on innuendo :
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/30120975/Thaworn-says-Human-Rights-Watch-may-be-biased
‘ “Objective of some NGOs is to criticise the government. They can be lobbied or hired,” Thaworn said. ‘
Thaksin bought ‘em. Par for The Nation’s drunken course.
Tweets that mention » It’s Thaksin’s Fault! TumblerBlog.com – A Thai political and current affairs blog -- Topsy.com
January 24th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Incognito, Saksith Saiyasombut and tri kanchanadul, Panuwat. Panuwat said: BLOG: It's Thaksin's Fault! http://bit.ly/7Mo3DA [...]
StanG
January 25th, 2010 at 3:31 am
On the other hand, from the excerpts I’ve seen, HRW turned govt handling of Songkran riots into a human rights disaster while for everybody else but red shirts it was a huge success.
They also parrot a red line about double standards in prosecuting reds for Songkran and yellows for airports – there’s no progress in both cases, equally.
Then they go after Abhisit for failure to bring 2003 drug war culprits to justice and mention discredited numbers. They pin Krue Sue and Tak Bai on Abhisit, too.
There are also familiar lines about repatriation of Hmog that was a successful solution to a lingering problem despite HRW concerns, the fact not acknowledged at all.
Altogether, it’s HRW’s job to present a credible report that could be acted upon by the government in order to improve the situation. If they just want to criticize and get dismissed, what’s the point of writing it in the first place? Next time they might have a legitimate concern but no one in power is going to listen to them as they have lost their credibility.
Albert Varnie
January 25th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Dear me StanG, you must be reading the HRW report while imbibing PAD cool-aid. Seriously, HRW’s chapter on Thailand is about as even-handed as you can get these days. As a presumably self-appointed protector of the current government you have little credibility when you promote abuses of human rights as government successes. That the Abhisit government has fallen down on human rights, despite its rhetoric should be cause for concern, not for McCarthyism.
John Francis Lee
January 25th, 2010 at 10:31 am
No need rely on excerpts :
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/wr2010.pdf
The section on Thailand is just 5 pages long. Surely even one who already “knows what the report says” from “reliable” sources can actually read the five pages in question.
StanG
January 26th, 2010 at 6:12 am
Thanks for the direct link, JFL.
What I read was HWR own news release under a damning headline Thailand: Serious Backsliding on Human Rights.
The report itself only says that pledges “have been largely unfulfilled” and gives the government credit for several things, too.
The part about Songkran was different in the news release and the report itself:
” In response to the UDD’s violent protests in Pattaya and Bangkok, the government declared a state of emergency on April 11 and 12. Soldiers used tear gas to clear protesters and fired on protesters with live ammunition. At least 123 people were injured and two killed in Bangkok on April 13 in clashes between armed UDD protesters, soldiers, and various neighborhood watch groups.”
Vs.
“Street battles erupted in Bangkok on April 13 when UDD protesters, who had been
blocking main intersections in Din Daeng district with buses and taxis, attacked
approaching soldiers with guns, petrol bombs, and other improvised weapons.
UDD protesters also threatened to blow up trucks with liquefied petroleum gas
near residential areas and hospitals. Soldiers used teargas and live ammunition
to disperse the protesters and clear the blockades; while most gunfire was into
the air, some soldiers fired assault rifles directly at the protesters. Clashes spilled
across Bangkok through the next day, when two members of neighborhood watch
groups were shot dead in a clash with UDD protesters. At least 123 people were
injured, including four soldiers wounded by gunshots.”
Though emphasis is mine, it creates a different image than the one projected in the news release.
On the South, the report starts with stating that there were fewer abuses while the news release calls it “a failure to curb abuses by security forces”.
PTT blog mentioned in the original entry here was based on the news release, not the report itself, and so was Prachatai blog entry, citing the same news release published by Reuters.
HRW report vs HRW News Release « Thai politics
January 27th, 2010 at 4:02 am
[...] being influenced by Thaksin, and that, in turn, was picked up by all the bloggers, too. It was on Tumblers that I finally saw the direct link to the report itself (Thailand on page 355), and that’s [...]
Francois
January 28th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Please, we all need to listen carefully to the much maligned StanG. He obviously knows something the rest of us are unaware of……
albert varnie
January 28th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
StanG; Blame HRW for your own biases. There’s no substantive difference. See here:
thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/new-response-on-hrw-report/. It is just that you read these things expecting bias. HRW’s point on backsliding is excellent.
StanG
January 31st, 2010 at 3:47 am
You might agree with “backsliding” but it’s not in the original report, it appears only in the news release.
I suspect government’s response was to the news release, had they read the original report first the reaction would have been different.
Thai political prisoners blog presents both versions but doesn’t consider the possibility that Satit had only seen the news release, after all it was the news release and not the original chapter on Thailand that was posted on TPP itself and elsewhere, including Reuters.
If you read only the news release excerpt (I posted it earlier here) it’s easy to see how the govt got the impression it was blamed for the deaths and injuries.
albert varnie
February 5th, 2010 at 12:36 am
StanG is as dull as Sathit. Should govt ministers make stupid comments on a report they haven’t seen? Yes, it seems because they follow StanG’s own approach – yell and scream and then look silly.
StanG seriously misrepresents PPT. Nowhere in their original post do they use the term “backsliding.” Rather, they say this: “Now Human Rights Watch (20 January 2010) has made similar points in its World Report 2010. The press release begins: ‘The government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva largely failed to fulfill its pledges to make human rights a priority…’.” So PPT does mention the World Report.
Compare with the Thailand chapter: “Public pledges of the army-backed government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva … to give priority to human rights and the restoration of democracy have largely been unfulfilled.”
That’s the point, not your troll-like rejection of what is essentially a synonym.
StanG
February 5th, 2010 at 5:34 am
“Thailand: Serious Backsliding on Human Rights”
Yes, Satit should have read the original report linked on that same page and made a point of demonstrating the differences, but he could have read the news release elsewhere, like Reuters, where there were no links provided.
Normally people assume that press release by the same organization doesn’t deviate from the original material it’s based on. In case of HRW it does, and that is a problem for HRW’s credibility, not Thai government to solve.
If they deny there’s a problem, well, they should expect to be ignored. The only purpose of reports like this is to make governments to listen. Mission failed.