Suthep : "Are you Thai ?"

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from the blogworld ...................

When Being Thai Means Believing Suthep
9 Jul 2010

Deputy PM Suthep Thaugsuban surrounded by reporters
(photo credit: Prachatai on Flickr)

When things get tough for you in a debate, accusing your opposite party of being unpatriotic has been a tried and trusted method of ending the conversation – so long as you don’t care how silly that will make you sound.

According to at least three Thai-language sources (see here, here and here), Deputy PM Suthep on Friday had a heated exchange with reporters over the issue of the April-May red-shirt crisis.

One particular thorny question was who were responsible for the violence and the deaths.

When a reporter asked him what the CRES (the vastly powerful government-military agency set up to oversee the emergency situation) would do about people’s belief that civilians were shot by army troops, Suthep at once pointed to that reporter’s face and angrily asked “Are you Thai?” before quickly disappearing into his office.

As is repeated time and time again, the official version of what transpired during the red-shirt encampment is that all violence was perpetrated by “some” red-shirt protesters and mysterious unaligned paramilitary forces.

None of the deaths were caused by the army, who, lest we forget, were authorised to fire live rounds in the protest zone.

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