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Taksin, Pua Thai and the UDD write military atrocities out of history
Red Thai Socialist - May 27, 2012
Earlier we saw Yingluk ingratiate herself with General Prayut, one of the murderers of Red Shirts in 2010. Then we saw her grovelling to General Prem. Now Yingluk has bought some land to give to the King in the name of her family. Taksin has been saying for a while that no one will be prosecuted for gunning down pro-democracy demonstrators as part of the "deal" on reconciliation. Taksin also said that the relatives and friends of those killed should be prepared to make sacrifices. It is a forgone conclusion that the lhse majeste political prisoners, like Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, Surachai Darnwatanatrakoon and Da Torpedo will be left to rot in jail.
Now we see the disgusting sight of coup leader Gen Sonti proposing a "reconciliation bill" in parliament in order to white-wash all the wrong doings of officials like himself and his new friend Taksin.
Important to this reconciliation over the dead bodies of Red Shirts, is the air-brushing out of history of the military atrocities. For months now the Pua Thai government and the leadership of the UDD have been only talking about former Prime Minister Abhisit and his side-kick Sutep as being the ones responsible for the Red Shirt deaths. Taksin has been trying to re-write history to say that the Thai crisis and coup were just about a "parliamentary dispute" between him along with his followers and the Democrat Party and their followers. The military have "slipped" from history and the Red shirts, according to Taksin, were merely his underlings.
Abhisit is a weak but vicious politician who only became Prime Minister because the army put him there. He has now become Taksin and Pua Thai's play thing to be kicked around and blamed for the blood bath. But the attacks on Abhisit are just for show. The elites all know that no one will be prosecuted.
Taksin himself has much to lose if the killers of 2010 are brought to court. He might find himself facing charges for his role in murdering scores of Muslim Malays in the south at Takbai in 2004.
Part of the elaborate play about reconciliation is the hiring of the lawyer Robert Amsterdam to investigate the Red Shirt deaths. Amsterdam has done a good job and uncovered much evidence about how the military and the Democrat Party murdered pro-democracy demonstrators. But his hands are tied like all lawyers. He isn't a political activist but he is sincere as a lawyer. Amsterdam can do nothing about prosecuting the generals or Sutep because the government has refused to pass a cabinet resolution inviting the International Criminal Court to investigate them inside Thailand. So all he can do is to try to prosecute Abhisit outside Thailand because Abhisit also holds British citizenship. This is very convenient for the ignoring of military atrocities by Taksin, Pua Thai and the UDD.
The UDD leadership is helping Taksin and Pua Thai, not only by ignoring the military atrocities, but also by ignoring the problem of lese majeste and talking in an abstract fashion about re-writing the constitution. But their main role is to demobilise the Red Shirt movement and allow the Thai elites to get back to business as usual.
Many try to excuse the Pua Thai government by saying that it faces intense pressure from the military. A military that shot down nearly 90 people to avoid democracy will not lie down easily. But Pua Thai won a landslide election victory and had the backing of the biggest social movement in Thai history. Instead of using these assets to their advantage in order to sack the military top brass, free all political prisoners, prosecute those who ordered the killings and re-write the Constitution, they have chosen to do a deal with their former enemies. Pua Thai is now the "party of the military", just like the Democrats used to be.
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