the(new)mediaslut

Back on the planet Tatooine (Thailand), Jabba the Hutt (Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej) has continued his criticism of the media, this time accusing media and various human rights agencies of being too concerned about the fate of drug traffickers.

“Why are you [media] so concerned about the fate of drug traffickers?” he asked the press last week, before saying that the best way not to die in the next phase of the controversial “War on Drugs” that his government is about to revive is not to get involved with drugs in the first place.

Further painting himself into a corner (as he usually does), Jabba reiterated his stand on his weekly TV show and this time blamed Media and human rights groups and other NGOs of misleading people and trying to make people misunderstand him and his government’s good policy on drugs.

Today, former senator and long time human rights activist Kraisak Choonhavan returned to the limelight to hit back at these irresponsible, if somewhat predictable (by now) remarks with some hard facts on a television talkshow, Roo Tan Pratate Thai (Thailand Watchdog) on ASTV.

The total number of people killed in the War on Drugs stands at 2,819.

An independent panel back in 2005 set up by the Senate and National Human Rights Commission to look into the War on Drugs policy that began in 2003 under the Thaksin Shinawatra (a.k.a. Senator Palpatine) found that in 837 cases involving 878 deaths, the victims had no evidence of drug dealing or involvement in drugs at all. This number includes extra-judicial killings and where it is deemed that drug dealers kill their agents to prevent a case from going to court. Extra-judicial here is generally defined as when police have to fire back when fired upon.

571 people on the blacklist were killed for “unexplained reasons”.

Kraisak noted the the committee was comprised of the Permanent Secretary and Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice and the former Chief Public Prosecutor.

“He’s (Jabba) talking about the new war on drugs and another three to four thousand more deaths as if he doesn’t care about the value of life,” Kraisak said.

The former senator reminded us that along with the 108 dead in the massacre and the Krue Se mosque and 85 dead at Tak Bai, the previous Thaksin government has a pretty appalling human rights record.

Sunai Pasuk, Thailand adviser to Human Rights Watch joined Kraisak to explain how the blacklist was compiled in only two weeks. Each provincial governor was given two weeks to compile the list and they did so by cobbling together names of those with drug related backgrounds. However, when the Office of the Narcotics Control Board later examined the list, they said that it was not compiled properly with due procedure.

The government then gave each provincial governor a target of three months by which the 5, 25 and 50 percent of the names on each list had to be taken off the list. There were only three ways to be taken off that list: being arrested, being the subject of an extra-judicial killing or dying for an unknown cause.

“Dying for unknown reasons should not be a reason to call an anti-drug drug policy a success,” he said.

Sunai said that it was the Thaksin government, the Surayud Chulanont Government and also today’s Jabba government that has to be responsible to resolve each and every one of those murder cases.

He also alluded that the War on Drugs was probably the reason that Thailand did not sign up to be a founding member the International Criminal Court as if it did, then the TRT government could have been tried at that court. As things stand, joining the court at a later date does not give the court retroactive jurisdiction.

Kraisak noted that Thailand is now the third largest exporter of drugs after Afghanistan and Myanmar. He said that the Thaksin government had a number of Ministers who could not enter the US as they were on a drugs blacklist and that the economic policy at the time was very amicable to the military regime there.

“Today, why are drugs back? It means that the War on Drugs did not do anything to solve the root cause, the producers, and today Thailand is addicted to drugs,” he said.

Smartbrain is of the opinion that if anything, the media are guilty; guilty of not highlighting these atrocities enough and making people understand the big picture beyond the headline of “over 2,000 killed”.

Yes, we do care, and we should care, if half the people killed in the last War on Drugs were not really involved in drug trafficking. So should the people of Thailand. People should not be killed as part of what boils down to just a propaganda campaign.

Thailand’s new Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej (often referred to lovingly as Jabba the Hutt) has almost from day one of his new job found himself embroiled in his role in events surrounding the 6 October 1976 student massacre.

A few weeks ago, days after taking office, he repeatedly told CNN and Al-Jazeera that only one person had died in the event and that he had nothing to do with it.

However, at the time he was not only Deputy Interior Minister but also had a radio show which fired up anti-communist sentiment.

After the massacre of “communists” (a.k.a. pro-democracy, anti-military student protesters), that saw hundreds missing, an official count of 41 or 46 dead (depending on who you ask) and of which Jabba said that only one had died. he was promoted to Interior Minister by the military government that subsequently took power.

Now, all that would have been long forgotten if it were not for the CNN interview. But more recently, on Friday, 22 Feb, Jabba, when confronted with pictures of him and the Military junta, changed his story.

“I was responding to the foreign journalist. It is within my rights, my freedom of speech, to say what I want to foreigners,” he told the press that have turned virtually every press conference into an inquisition on the October massacre since.

The question, Smartbrain asks, is that is it alright to blatantly lie to foreign journalists? That seems to be Jabba’s defense right now as the stability of the government is haunted by ghosts from the past.

This reminds Smartbrain of his first interview with Thailand’s former ICT Minister, Professor Sitthichai Pokaiudom, lovingly referred to as Dr Death as, quite apart from his collection of guns, carries with him a mask and canister of carbon monoxide so that he can commit suicide if he is ever terminally ill.

In that press conference, Dr Death spoke of the on again, off again privatisation of the two state owned telecom companies, CAT and TOT.

“As we are all Thais in this room, I will tell you that they will never be privatised,” he said. “However, a few days ago I was talking to the Farang (meaning Ang Moh or Western) journalists and I told them that privatisation would happen when the time is right.”

It begs the question then, what role foreign media has in a country’s internal affairs? Are the foreigners the unbiased, neutral observers that can objective call shots as they are? Or are they hopelessly biased, up to their nostrils in Western thinking and not seeing the reality on the ground for all their gung-ho views on elections being the be-all and end-all to everything?

Singapore has similarly announced that it is a privilege and not a right for foreign media to circulate in the island/city/state/dot.

Sadly, today successions of Thai politicians now feel it fair game to say whatever they want to foreign media and generally get away with it with little sanction, at least in the case of Dr Death, though Jabba’s fate remains to be seen.