In our Oscar worthy Blah Blah Land
The bonbon labelled La La Land is likely to rule the Oscars come Monday morning. While in our Blah Blah Land the drama is bitter, the song muted and the sky inclement. There’s no song and dance (except at Wat Phra Phra Dhammakaya, a lot of dance), no Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. There’s only, to quote another film, the reboot of 1984 and the prevalence of mind-crime: First, Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, aka Pai Dao Din, was denied bailed for the seventh time and will now remain in Khon Kaen prison until the trial of the lese majeste case on March 21 — a trial that’s not likely to end like The Shawshank Redemption. Then on Thursday, the Supreme Court reduced the sentence of Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, a lese majeste convict, to six years, a small consolation in a case that went all the way to the highest court because, unlike most other Section 112 prisoners, the 56-year-old man refused the gift of a false redemption — a confession — and kept on fighting to the end.
In both cases, there’s a similarity. Pai was charged for sharing a BBC article while the source of that article remains untouched; for Somyot, he was charged in his capacity as a magazine editor who published a controversial article whose real author stays afloat. Writing and thinking should never be a crime, never, but the lopsided, arbitrary application of the law in both cases is just depressing.
Anyway, it’s Blah Blah Land. Why? Because we’ll live happily ever after only when we bleat and bray blah blah blah, only when we sing and dance on the fresh graves of our own digging and not say anything too serious. I’m not being melodramatic: That we’ve grown accustomed to everything amid the hollow reconciliation talk, that the junta rule and its profligate use of Section 44 has been normalised, that we’re unable to cry foul over the purchase of expensive, possibly redundant submarines or when members of the coup-appointed National Legislative Assembly pick up fat cheques every month without attending a meeting, all of this at a time of a wobbly economy (at least we could cry foul when the ricepledging scheme went full-scale bonkers!), all of this bodes ill for the future of this increasingly Gaga Land.
In this climate critical voices are muffled. Amnesty International on Wednesday confirmed what we already knew: “Thai human rights deteriorate”, read the headline. The actual report is rather damning. “The Head of the National Council of Peace and Order continued to use extraordinary powers under Article 44 of the interim Constitution to issue orders, some of which arbitrarily restricted the exercise of human rights, including peaceful political activities.” And specifically about the deep South: “Members of the military continued to torture individuals suspected of links to insurgents in the South and political and security detainees elsewhere.”
Naturally, the Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman brushed aside the buzzing gadfly. The report, he said, failed to address the development in human rights and the roadmap to peace the government is hard at work to achieve. In short, it’s something not to be taken seriously, or at all.
Blah Blah Land…
The denial of the report sounds like a broken record. So consider this: On Tuesday the state moved the prosecution of three human rights activists, Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, Anchana Heemmina and Somchai Homla-or, for publishing a report on the ill-treatment of civilians in the deep South by security forces. The report came out last February and detailed 54 cases of alleged torture of detainees by military personnel; in June the Internal Security Operations Command Region 4 filed complaints, citing the need to protect the image of the military (seriously!). Now the prosecutors have moved the ball, and the three activists could face jail terms.
Yesterday Ms Pornpen and her colleagues submitted a petition to the Office of the Attorney-General asking that the defamatory lawsuit be dropped. The report, she said, is in the public interest — and not a crime. It’s painful that we have to keep reminding that to the people who should have known best.
An alternate title of our own Oscarworthy Blah Blah Land is, as the joke has made rounds, Kala Land — kala meaning coconut shell, a proverbial reference to blinkered, shut-in mentality that gives people the comfort of ignorance. Living under a coconut shell, in Kala Land, means you mistake your little, insignificant world for something far larger — an insular world that ignores logic and opts instead for the slapdash rule of a parallel universe, with delusions of grandeur mixed in. In short, something worthy of an Oscar for Best Tragicomedy.