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Thursday, February 8, 2007

Queen Speaks Up about Violence in the South

SOUTH VIOLENCE

Queen: Speak up against killings


HM mourns slain teachers; urges people to voice their feelings

Her Majesty the Queen yesterday urged the entire Kingdom to condemn the violence and brutality in the restive south and act against it.


"We cannot sit still anymore. It is not right [to allow the violence]. We should condemn it to show our dissatisfaction at such actions," she said.


HM the Queen was addressing a group of people who had been granted a royal audience to establish a charity fund for the Queen Sirikit Foundation at the Grand Palace.


"I think Thai people all over the country should express their views and opinions that it is absolutely wrong to kill other people, notably the elderly and women who cannot protect themselves," she said.


HM the Queen urged people, especially in Bangkok, to take action against the violence which has killed around 2,000 people since the beginning of 2004. It was Her Majesty's first plea this year amid no signs of an end to the violence.


"We should do something, like the gathering of people with me today. We should express our views via radio, television or letters to tell the militants to stop, otherwise they could turn our country into an uncivilised society in which they can kill anybody, anytime," she said. "We have to stop the violence now, it's enough," she said.


HM the Queen expressed her sympathies over the death of many teachers who have been victims of the violence, including Kobkul Runsaewa, the director of Ban Tua Ko School in Narathiwat's Chanae district, who was gunned down, and Juling Pongkanmoon, who was beaten into coma, and died last month.


"Teacher Juling was only 27 years old," the Queen said. "She was beaten brutally into a coma. She loved the country and went down there to help people. She never sat still even at the age of only 27. Or look at teacher Prasarn Nakchu, he was shot dead while teaching," she said.


"I know there are many bad people everywhere but it is our duty not to allow them to do such bad things. They can kill people and officials cannot bring them down? That's not the right thing and not honourable for our nation," she said.



I feel the same sort of outrage.


The police and military have totally failed. They are the ones responsible for protecting civilians. Maybe they should be doing their duty instead of ripping off the country and playing politics.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let her speak about the killings - I'll speak about the torture of Thai citizens, the chaining of people to dogs, the injustices done by the Bangkok regime on the southern people in the name of the King.

Fonzi said...

It is all a huge fucking mess in every way, because the police and military are incompetent, and part of the incompetency is the torture that just continues to escalate the violence. The beheading, the killing of monks and teachers, and other terrorism is worse, but it is not effective to torture innocent people, especially if that doesn't bring the murderers to justice.

Anonymous said...

2 points. Firstly the Q (bless 'er) appears to be saying that killing old and poor people is wronger then killing other people.

Secondly, Fonzi makes a good point. If you consider the problems of Thailand, I believe that fully 90% of them boil down to the fact that the police do not do their jobs. In UK, th coppers went to see Blair. Can you imagine that here?

What happens all too often is that the police get paid by the public to do a job, and then they are either too lazy to do it or they accept someone elses money not to do it.

If the police were (for example) to retain their existing salaries and were allowed to keep half of all proper fines they made for people breaking the law, they would get better paid and the crime rate at all levels of severity would halve.

But, carrot and stick. If they accepted bribes they would have to be jailed and never work for the public again.

I believe it would work. Also, the standard of driving would improve here and that would be no bad thing.