Thai PM hits back at national human rights criticism
Thai PM hits back at national human rights criticism
Agencies, Bangkok
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra rebuked the National Human Rights Commission on Thursday for a scathing verdict that his three years in power have spawned a "culture of authoritarianism".
"The Commission should have made constructive comments, not acted like the opposition," Thaksin told reporters. "Such a reprimanding report has been dispatched all over the world. Do they feel that the country isn't already damaged?"
In particular, the 11-member commission laid into Thaksin for his 2003 "war on drugs" in which 2,500 people were killed. Brushing aside past criticism, the government insists most of the deaths were internecine drug gang reprisals.
The Bangkok Post and the Nation splashed the three-year-old parliamentary body's blistering verdict across their front pages.
But elsewhere in the Thai media, the commission's inaugural report -- which also leveled accusations of media interference through "networks of cronies" -- was more noticeable for its absence.
The mass circulation Thai Rath tabloid made no mention of the report, while the ITV news channel, set up in 1990s as a neutral and national information source, touched only briefly on the subject and declined to delve into its conclusions or findings.
Analysts said the report did not contain many new findings or criticisms, but said the coverage it produced reflected the control the former telecoms tycoon has managed to exert over the media since coming to power in 2001.
"The government has been very shrewd in politicizing, co- opting, coercing and weaseling the Thai-language press," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a former Nation journalist and now a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
"There has not been a democratic period in which the media and public space have been so monopolized and manipulated," he said.
Despite an economically damaging bird flu crisis and the eruption of violence in the mainly Muslim south this year, Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) political faction remains wildly popular.
Sucking up politicians from smaller parties, it is virtually assured a thumping majority in elections due early next year on the back of sweeping populist policies which have divided or neutralized any opposition voices, analysts say.
Promises of lavish handouts and soft loans to rural folk -- 60 percent of Thailand's 63 million people live on the farm -- have created a strong Thaksin support base outside the wealthy urban centers.
They have also stymied opposition from non-governmental groups by convincing them Thaksin has the plight of the poor at heart, said Giles Ungphakorn, an associate professor at Chulalongkorn University.
"The social movements are in a state of shock," Ungphakorn said. "They don't know how to come to terms with this government. They don't know how to analyze the populist measures, which go hand in hand with a degree of repression."
Meanwhile, a second volume of Seeing Through Thaksin, an expose on Thai prime minister's three years in power, was launched on Thursday, adding to a growing list of critical books being published about the controversial Thai leader.
Volume two of Ruthan Thaksin, or Seeing Through Thaksin, is a compilation of essays by 16 well-known academics, writers and public figures that sells under the slogan: "Don't Like Thaksin, you must read it. Like Thaksin, must read it even more."
The first volume, launched last April, sold out its initial run of 5,000 copies within weeks and had to reprint 60,000 copies, according to the Bangkok Post newspaper.
Ruthan Thaksin Volume II, published in the Thai language, was launched less than a week after the publication of Thaksin - The Business Of Politics In Thailand, by husband and wife team Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit.