Andrew Spooner, Aug 28, 2012
Thailand’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, who was also the man directly in charge of CRES, the infamous Committee for the Resolution of Emergency Situation (the body which ordered snipers and soldiers on to the streets of Bangkok in 2010), has recently given 13 hours of testimony to Thailand’s Department of Special Investigations (DSI). The testimony was part of the DSI’s ongoing investigations into the deaths of 90+ civilians and 6 soldiers during Red Shirt protests in April and May 2010.
According to recent reports in Thai national daily Matichon Suthep stated that he had “never seen” the video footage of the Thai Army shooting at Red Shirt protesters in the afternoon of April 1o, 2010 at Kok Wua.
This is an astonishing claim by Suthep – video clips of heavily armed Thai soldiers attacking unarmed Red Shirts on the afternoon of April 1oth have been widely circulated for the last two years, including video of heavily armed, Thai Army tracked Armoured Personnel Carriers being driven directly towards obviously unarmed pro-democracy protesters. Given that Suthep has a legal responsibility to act lawfully the simple fact that it has taken him this long to ascertain the facts of what happened on the ground is astonishing. Or maybe CRES, the Army and the Democrat Party had a plan to disperse the Red Shirts using lethal force already in place?
Of course there has been a sophisticated campaign conducted by, amongst others, the US Embassy-aligned human rights group, Human Rights Watch, to patly blame the deaths of the 90+ unarmed civilians on the Red Shirts themselves who, they claimed in their report into the violence in 2010, were allied with armed militias whom HRW call the Men in Black. However, HRW’s own citations show that these claims were based almost entirely on the dubious testimony of CRES and government officials, one or two foreign journalists, and on that of the Thai Army’s own PR machine, none of whom have ever been cross-examined (the WikiLeaks cables revealed that Human Rights Watch staffers in Bangkok had been secretively supportive of the Thai Army-led coup in 2006). No other substantiating evidence has ever been produced by HRW relating to these armed militants (were HRW interfering in any subsequent investigation by producing such a badly substantiated document and claiming it as a “factual account”?). At least one prominent Thai journalist, the Bangkok Post’s well-connected Defence Correspondent, Wassana Nanuam has since stated that, in fact, the Men in Black were more likely a rogue element in the Thai Army. Furthermore, a report recently released by a group of Thai academics also suggests that “armed” attacks on the Thai Army were more likely “green” on “green” and a product of army in-fighting than anything to do with HRW’s fantasies of mysterious Men In Black. Of the 90+ civilians who died in 2010 not one has proven to have been “armed”, never mind been proven to be the member of the kind of organised “terrorist” cell that might necessitate the kind of vicious military crackdown perpetuated by Suthep’s government in 2010.
As if to cement the Democrat Party’s position on military accountability, their leader and the former unelected/army appointed PM, Abhisit Vejjajiva, today made statements attacking the present democratically elected PM, Yingluck Shinawatra, for attempting to bring the Army under democratic control.
What part of democracy and accountability does Abhisit fail to understand?
Yet Abhisit seemingly went further than just criticism. Thai national daily Thai Rath has quoted Abhisit making comments about Yingluck “ending up like Thaksin in 2006″ if she attempts to bring the Army under more democratic control.
Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin, was removed by an illegal military coup in 2006.
If Abhisit actually believed in democracy he’d do better putting together policies that might be attractive to Thai voters rather than making childish threats to an elected government.
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