When Being Thai Means Believing Suthep

9 Jul
2010

Deputy PM Suthep Thaugsuban surrounded by reporters (photo credit: Prachatai on Flickr)

When things get tough for you in a debate, accusing your opposite party of being unpatriotic has been a tried and trusted method of ending the conversation – so long as you don’t care how silly that will make you sound.

According to at least three Thai-language sources (see here, here and here), Deputy PM Suthep on Friday had a heated exchange with reporters over the issue of the April-May red-shirt crisis. One particular thorny question was who were responsible for the violence and the deaths. When a reporter asked him what the CRES (the vastly powerful government-military agency set up to oversee the emergency situation) would do about people’s belief that civilians were shot by army troops, Suthep at once pointed to that reporter’s face and angrily asked “Are you Thai?” before quickly disappearing into his office.

As is repeated time and time again, the official version of what transpired during the red-shirt encampment is that all violence was perpetrated by “some” red-shirt protesters and mysterious unaligned paramilitary forces. None of the deaths were caused by the army, who, lest we forget, were authorised to fire live rounds in the protest zone.

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10 Responses to When Being Thai Means Believing Suthep

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Tweets that mention » When Being Thai Means Believing Suthep TumblerBlog.com – A Thai political and current affairs blog -- Topsy.com

July 9th, 2010 at 11:55 pm

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Igor Christodoulou. Igor Christodoulou said: RT @tumbler_p: BLOG: When Being Thai Means Believing Suthep http://bit.ly/9yrY8b [...]

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Ben

July 9th, 2010 at 11:58 pm

“Are you Thai?” I am wondering if it would be better PR to treat international media that way. ;)

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Darren Nelson

July 10th, 2010 at 12:13 am

LOL

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Igor Christodoulou

July 10th, 2010 at 12:18 am

I wonder whether hearing “Are you Thai?” makes those questioned apprehensive, or giddy. Certainly, if I were Thai I would find it hard not to punch khun Suthep in his face for being this arrogant.
But maybe I am just wrong, and the reporters in question just bow their heads in shame for being irreverent, un-Thai and simply wrong when assuming that people might have been shot.

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Charles Frith

July 10th, 2010 at 1:33 am

Ben. Very funny.

On a serious note though I think it was Thailand that pioneered the use of snipers for crowd control in recent months. I can’t think of another country that rounded up its protesters and then started to take them out one by one. In a temple or not.

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Suthep : "Are you Thai ?" - TeakDoor.com - The Thailand Forum

July 10th, 2010 at 3:05 am

[...] : "Are you Thai ?" from the blogworld ………………. When Being Thai Means Believing Suthep 9 Jul 2010 Deputy PM Suthep Thaugsuban surrounded by reporters (photo credit: Prachatai on [...]

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David Brown

July 10th, 2010 at 3:15 am

and Sanserm announced that aemy snipers would be deployed to kill terrorists

perhaps the snipers did not shoot at anyone and told there commanders they could not recognise any terrorists?

Sutheps problem is that he is too scared of the army to ever admit they did anything (no doubt he ran inside to masturbate to relax himself)

the CRES job is to protect the monarchy and the military from any responsibility

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fishmyman

July 10th, 2010 at 3:25 am

Arrogance is always fun.

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The first Men in Black (finally) arrested, but what will this mean? | Asian Correspondent

July 16th, 2010 at 2:52 pm

[...] But wait…may be the justification of government's use of armed military during April and May incidents is not necessary, because the official (government's) version of the story is that "all violence was perpetrated by “some” red-shirt protesters and mysterious unaligned paramilitary forces. None of the deaths were caused by the army, who, lest we forget, were authorised to fire live rounds in the protest zone" (quote from tumblerblog, "When being Thai means believing Suthep"). [...]

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Red guard fugitive Surachai nabbed on terrorism charges - TeakDoor.com - The Thailand Forum

July 16th, 2010 at 6:02 pm

[...] [...]

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