Trouble in paradise

..with my mobile and Marlboros held aloft. One afternoon last week, having completed my early morning 25-metre swim, Temporarily Thairish was emerging exhaustedly from the sea when Mr. and Mrs. Pong began shouting frantically from the wooden deck of the Double Duke.
“Olaf! Your country! Come quickly! Iceland is on de telly!” (Despite my many attempts to correct their pronunciation, the Emerald Isle will always be Iceland to their Thai tongues. “Ire-land!” I say. “Yeah, Ice-land,” they always reply. “Dat de name of your country, yeah”).
I didn’t exactly rush to see. One of the Asian satellite channels has been broadcasting old episodes of Ballykissangel recently and the Pongs are always calling me when it’s on. I keep telling them that I know what Ice-land looks like, but to no avail. The Thais are an extremely proud and patriotic people – the main reason why theirs is the only country in southeast-Asia never to have been colonised – and expect all other nationalities to be the same.
It turned out not to be the green fields of Wicklow on the small screen, but the rubble-strewn streets of Belfast (“Oh, velly...velly. .em,” said Mrs. Pong, nervously). I immediately recognised it as all too familiar, old news footage. One of the news channels was doing a short feature on the IRA decommissioning, and running a montage of all the horrific lowlights of the North’s long and bloody conflict.
The montage ended with the latest, hopefully historic, Republican and Unionist statements. There was Adams, serious and stately, announcing full decommissioning. I have hugely mixed feelings about the man, but he’s undeniably done more good than harm in recent years.
Then, the picture cut to Paisley, looking as mean-minded and suspicious as ever (“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy” – H.L. Mencken). I flicked the channel over to Discovery, which was doing a special on dinosaurs.
“You have war in Iceland?” Mr. Pong asked.
“There was war in the North for the best part of 35 years,” I explained. “But they never really called it that.”
“Was dere war where you live?”
“No, not really. I grew up on the west coast. But it was never all that far away.”
“And de war is over?”
“Hopefully. Only time will tell.”
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While there’s great hope for Northern Ireland, sadly the same can’t be said of the turbulent political situation in Thailand’s troubled deep south. Despite their relative proximity, the latest Bali bombings didn’t really have much impact over here (except amongst farang travellers) as the violence continues to escalate much closer to home.
There are bombs going off all the time in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, although, thankfully, there’s yet to be a really big one.
Even so, Malaysian tourists have sensibly stopped coming, and many western countries have now issued strong warnings against visiting the affected regions on their embassy websites.
Relations between Bangkok and KL have been seriously strained ever since 131 Thai-Muslims from Sungai Padi district fled across the border to Malaysia, claiming to be in fear of their lives. The refugees fled on August 30th and are still refusing to return. The KL authorities are refusing to hand them back over, and it’s now become a hot issue amongst the main Malaysian political parties – all of whom want to show they can offer the best protection for fellow Muslims.
Pressure groups in Malaysia have now started a selective boycott of Thai products –including chicken sold under the brand name Pertiwi (the Thai PM owns the company). They’ve apparently also boycotted Colgate toothpaste, in the hope that the multinational company will put some pressure on.
Although the situation has now come to international attention, the Thai Rak Thai government has assured all Thai citizens that there’s “no loss of face for Thailand” – claiming that the whole thing is a Muslim publicity stunt and that the people who fled across the border were in no real danger. If that sounds like total bullshit, it’s probably because it is.
Despite the refugee situation and the daily shootings and bombings, the tensions between deep south Muslims and Buddhists aren’t yet at the primal levels of hatred experienced between the religious communities in Northern Ireland, but there are several groups working on it.
Their acronyms are starting to become familiar. There’s the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) Coordinate. There’s the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO). And bringing up the rear, the Geragan Mujahideen Islam Pattani (GMIP).
On October 6th, Prime Minister Thaksin paid another well-publicised visit to the troubled regions and, to mark the occasion, one of these illegal separatist groups exploded bombs in two karaoke bars in the town of Sungai Kolok – maiming nine people. Earlier that day, Bolorheng Sahor, the 41-year-old chairman of the Tambon Kawae administrative organisation in Pattani’s Mayo district, was shot-dead in a drive-by shooting in Lawor village.
Two days before that, five rangers were shot dead and one seriously wounded in an attack by 10 armed men in a pick-up on their checkpoint in Narathiwat’s Cho Airong district. The raiders made off with seven assault rifles, an M-79 grenade launcher, and a 11mm pistol. Army chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin subsequently warned all security officers to be extra vigilant and to “trust nobody”.
While he was in the region, PM Thaksin (who was surrounded by 100 soldiers and policemen) paid a rather unusual house-call – visiting a Muslim woman called Mariya Useng. Mariya is the wife of Masae Useng, the suspected head of the BRN, and Thaksin reportedly urged her to tell her husband to give himself up. Masae is the chief suspect in a raid on an army HQ in January of last year, in which four soldiers were killed and over 400 firearms stolen. He has a three million baht bounty on his head. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Mariya told the PM that he hasn’t been home recently.
Thaksin and his entourage later visited other Cho Airong locals in the villages of Bukit and Yaning. When a group of young children refused to accompany the PM as he left one of the villages en route to Wat Cho Airong Thammaram (the temple where he spent the night), he changed their minds with a gift of 100baht each.
As a somewhat cynical writer pointed out in the letters page of one of the newspapers a couple of days later, it was quite a small price to pay for a human shield.
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Of course, as was the case in Northern Ireland for many years, most of what’s really happening in the deep-south probably isn’t being written about. The emergency decree allows the authorities to censor all potentially damaging reports and, although it’s undoubtedly freer than that of all the other southeast-Asian countries, the press over here isn’t exactly 100% reliable anyway. If there was ever a royal scandal – Buddha forbid! – you’d certainly never read about it in a Thai newspaper.
The journalists can’t really be blamed for this. The libel laws are severe over here, and Thailand’s business and political elite seem to launch defamation lawsuits at the drop of a hint. As recently as October, PM Thaksin filed a civil libel suit against the Manager, a daily newspaper, demanding 500 million baht in damages. The paper had published the text of a revered monk’s sermon, which accused the PM of being power-hungry and of trying to move Thai politics towards a presidential system.
A week earlier, Thaksin had filed separate criminal and civil defamation suits against the paper's founder, Sondhi Limthongkul, for allegedly accusing the PM of being disloyal to the monarchy.
This month, at an emergency meeting of the country’s most influential newspaper editors, executives and publishers, it was decided that an aid fund would be created to help media outlets facing excessive defamation lawsuits.
During the meeting, Charnchai Sanguanwong, editor of Khao Hoon (Stock News), announced that his publication currently faced a dozen defamation lawsuits demanding one billion baht in compensation. The paper had reported on stock price manipulation. He wasn’t alone. Almost every media organisation represented in the room (23 in all) was facing lawsuits of some form or other.
Press freedom isn’t just in jeopardy because of the libel laws, though. There was uproar last month when Paiboon Damrongchaitam, an entertainment tycoon with strong political connections, launched a hostile newspaper takeover bid and attempted to buy 100% of Matichon Plc and 23.6% of the Post Publishing Company. Had be been successful, he would’ve controlled every English language newspaper in Thailand (most notably the Bangkok Post), as well as almost all of the main Thai tabloids. Given that most foreign diplomats and business people don’t read Thai, and rely on the English-language press for their information, this would make him an extremely powerful figure indeed.
Anyway, amidst much controversy and outrage, the media takeover bid was thwarted. Or at least it seems to have dropped out of the news.
Actually, come to think of it...
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Temporarily Thairish doesn’t like to think of himself as a cowardly type, but late the another night I found myself standing on Hat Salad beach literally frozen with fear and unable to move. A few hours earlier, as I’d set off on my evening out, Mrs. Pong had tried to press a flashlight onto me. It’s been really hot and wet recently and, for some reason, this has been causing the snakes to come out of the jungle and onto the beach. It’s not a regular thing, but it does happen.
“Velly dangerous on de beach tonight,” she warned. “Betta you take flash-lice. Maybe cobras on de beach.”
“Ha - snakes!” I snorted. “Mrs. Pong – I used to work in the Dublin media. I’m well used to dealing with all kinds of fork-tongued reptiles!”
Obviously she didn’t get this joke, but it gave me a little smile. Later that night, though, I was profoundly regretting not having taken the torch. It was around 2am and I was walking carefully down the beach, returning home in a somewhat, em, enhanced mood. There was no moon out, the inky-black tide was high, and the beach was strewn with innumerable pieces of wood, rope and other washed-in debris.
As I nervously picked my way through the darkness, a cobra suddenly railed up and snapped at my hand. My cigarette exploded in a burst of glowing embers and I felt a sting on my wrist. Fuck! I’d been bitten!
It took a few moments for me to work out that I hadn’t actually been bitten. I had kicked some sand up with the back of my flip-flops, and the sand had hit my cigarette. The sting was caused by a flying piece of burning tobacco. Still, I could’ve been bitten by a snake, and there was another 150 metres of dark beach to go. Suddenly I was very, very nervous.
Don’t think about snakes, don’t think about snakes...
Too late! I’ve seen quite a few snakes in my time in Thailand, though the ones that usually tend to be on the beach are the harmless green coconut or grass snakes. There are many cobras in the jungle but, once you take the precaution of stomping heavily through, they tend to stay out of your way and so you rarely spot them (though you sometimes see them early in the mornings, soaking up the heat from the warm concrete roads). An Irish visitor was somewhat shocked several months ago to find a snake crawling up the wall beside him as he sat on the Double Duke’s toilet. It wasn’t poisonous – though it did brief damage to his dignity as he screamed for help and hurriedly hobbled out with his trousers around his ankles.
Most venomous snake bites aren’t fatal, provided you can get medical assistance on time. They will, however, make you extremely ill and will most probably cause the affected area to swell to seriously unsexy proportions. Essentially, they’re best avoided.
While I was thinking about all of this, I still hadn’t moved any further down the beach. I simply didn’t dare. Every time I looked at the driftwood-flecked sand ahead, it seemed to come alive before my very eyes. Snakes slithered around the branches and across the rocks. There was a constant hissing sound, and although I soon realised that it was just the tide, it was seriously freaking me out. I asked myself what Indiana Jones would do in this situation. “I hate snakes!” I snarled in a gruff American accent. Unfortunately, that’s about as much of what he would do as I could think of. I tried it again. “Snakes! I really hate snakes!” No, no use.
Ultimately, after many long and terrifying minutes, I found a solution to my dilemma. This column opened with Temporarily Thairish emerging from the sea and now, with a respectful nod to Finnegans Wake, it shall close with your Thailand correspondent realising that cobras can’t swim and re-entering the water. I swam the remaining distance home fully clothed...b