CENSORS WITHOUT BORDERS
THE BIG ISSUE
>> US President Donald Trump announced last Thursday that the North Korean nuclear threat is over, and that “fake news” is thus the No.1 threat. The men of Asia’s only remaining military regime nodded.
The hugely popular (539,000 followers and counting) and bluntly anti-regime KonthaiUk Facebook page had a Thai tabloid-style graphic that showed one photo of the storied army dirigible and another of first Deputy Prime Minister Prawit “Watchman” Wongsuwon with a satellite floating in space behind him.
The second-coming sized headline, in four lines of psychedelic shades of yellow, red and blue, said this:
“You bought the dirigible to repair it. “Now you want to buy the satellite for 91,200 million baht to eat again! “Will we accept it?”
We’re not printing this graphic in full because while the English translation gets the point across fine, in the original Thai the “eat again” part is not a word you’d expect anyone to utter except in a locker room. Or of course its equivalent, a rabidly political Facebook site.
We’ll cut to the chase because the editor is signalling “word limit, dammit!” Here’s the point.
The government was butthurt by the rude satire. Sources have claimed to the media that Gen (Ret) Prayut was so upset with the graphic that he wouldn’t mind if someone wanted to try to make life for the page operator Watana Ebbage (if that is her real name) as hellish as she had made him feel. Ditto the Watchman, who featured in the graphic.
Hilarity ensued. The nation’s highest-profile policeman took the case. Deputy Tourist Police chief Surachate “Big Joke” Hakparn smiled only occasionally about the seriousness of this fake news. It could spread panic (although it didn’t). It might mislead people (although it hasn’t). And so KonthaiUk’s Facebook page must be burned to the ground and salted. Okay, that last part is satire.
But what happened next is a joke, no pun intended. Pol Maj Gen Surachate summoned two groups of five and seven people identified by the government’s crack surveillance team as computer criminals who had “liked” the post or recommended it to others.
He then thoroughly beclowned the project at hand, not just by seriously asking the country to believe the graphic was fake news. He claimed he intends to order Interpol to issue red notices to locate Ms Watana of Solihull, England (if that is her real name and location) and 28 others accused of clicking or tapping to like.
Let’s be serious. Compared with the claim by Ms Watana (if that is her real name) of future corruption in a satellite deal, the claim of Interpol intervention in this case is, as they say these days, OTT. Pretend you can only choose one as fake news. Which is the real fake?
Of the hundreds of comments on the satirical post, we only read a few dozen and couldn’t find a negative one. None seemed panicky.
Pol Maj Gen Surachate either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that (as of press time) out of 539,000 KonthaiUk fans, the graphic had 8,200 likes, 10,000 shares and 1,662 comments. (The general prime minister’s prime Facebook page, HotlinePM, has 17,250 followers. Last week’s most popular post, including several photos of Gen (Ret) Prayut standing on the very edge of a rice field, had 219 likes, 21 shares and 28 comments. Compare, contrast and discuss.)
If Big Joke is intentionally singling 28 likes from many thousands, why? Until he explains, he will seem more shlimazel than law enforcement. Otherwise, why not 19,862 warrants for those liking and sharing the post?
This is not the first time KonthaiUk (Ms Watana, if that is her real name) has hit peak viral on Thai-language social media. Just last January, for example, the “Thai Person of the UK” got into a hilarious — for watchers, not for her — flame war with a rival, red supporter. It was about who was running the most real, authentic, credible and heartfelt red-shirt Facebook page.
This was highlighted by duelling accusations of which one had stooped low enough to take money from Lord Voldemort na Dubai, with both denying this degrading allegation in strong, not to mention frequently impolite terms. Entertaining, but not elucidating.
A wise old man ... well, actually dead for 30 years now, wrote a book in 1973 called Time Enough for Love. He had this to say about the military regime’s pursuit of badthink people: “A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”