LOSERS
The beautifully quiet game
The government tried to take the middle path on football. The Nov 15 World Cup 2018 qualifying match between Thailand and Australia is allowed take place at Rajamangala National Stadium (all other professional sports are banned) but spectators may not cheer. Also, no noisemaker drums and no partisan displays such as banners. “Fans must not show which team they support”, said Thailand’s official FAT man, Pol Gen Somyot Poompunmuang. To be fair, the chances of the War Elephants aren’t much to cheer for anyhow. But asking 60,000 Thais and Australians to sit still and refrain from fidgeting for 105 minutes is a tall order. Because of that, Special Forces have announced they will put 115 trained snipers on the stadium roof, although only rubber bullets will be employed. All of the above report is true except for the previous sentence.
Muslim crackdown
When police claimed they had detained 14 men but then released nine in their investigation of a suspected terrorist bomb in Bangkok, they weren’t half right. In fact, their economy with the truth was rather stunning. The detentions weren’t by police, but by the military. There weren’t 14 men initially held — there were many dozens, caught in a threenight midnight sweep of Ramkhamhaeng Road dormitories near the University. All of those held were Muslim students from the three southernmost provinces. And the five key suspects weren’t “detained” in any legal sense. They were sent to the interrogators at the unfortunately wellknown Ingkayut Borihan Military Camp — and all of this on the eve of the Oct 25, 2004, Tak Bai “incident”, mass deaths never to be forgotten in the deep South.
Laota Saenlee
As horrible and actually murderous as drug trafficking is, it also has spawned criminals who only can be described as “colourful” and entertaining. Pablo Escobar and Lo Hsing Han and Khun Sa were no joking matter in real life but spawned legends, movies and documentaries. And Laota Saenlee of Chiang Mai’s Mae Ai district may be the last of the breed. Heroin and ya ba kingpin, although at a local level, he has won (English translation: bribed) support from local people, and he complains unceasingly of victimhood. The leftover World War II Kuomintang remnant, now 79, was arrested for possibly the last time on Oct 11, with 20kg of crystal meth. Good news for those who glorify drug traffickers: his sons Wichan and Kasem are following in their dad’s footsteps.
Health
“Zika virus,” asked The Lancet Infectious Diseases, “Who’s next?” The answer, say the experts in two syllables: Thailand. It’s all done by really obsessed medical experts and computer modellers at the University of Amsterdam. They input stuff like “monthly flows of airline travellers from endemic areas in the Americas, climatic models of Africa and the AsiaPacific region, population size estimates, and estimated health care expenditure per capita”. But from South America, Zika virus’ next big outbreak is Southeast Asia centred on Thailand — who then will send it on to Africa. As for how huge and dangerous the outbreak will be, the experts can’t say. That’s because of a lack of seroprevalence studies; or to put it in simpler terms: there’s no data on local immunity.