Bangkok Post: Opinion

Friday, November 23, 2012

Honour your maid, fight for women's rights

By Sanitsuda Ekachai

Charity begins at home. So do women's rights and gender equality. That's why who is doing the dishes at home is for me not a petty personal issue, but a political one. But whenever I raise this topic _ that a couple's equal share of household chores is an an indicator of gender equality in ...

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• 18 July 2012

  This very fishy business

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  What do you do when big trawlers violate the law, annihilate the seabed with their destructive fishing gear, and wipe out marine life from our coastal seas? What do you do when they fake the licences of their trawlers to carry out illegal deep-sea fishing in other countries' waters? What do you do ...

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• 25 May 2012

  Foreign land grab threat not just an illusion

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  Remember the news three years ago about some Saudi sheikhs trying to buy up paddy fields in central Thailand to ensure a steady rice supply for their oil-rich but food-scarce countries? Back then, the authorities could not deliver any evidence of the buy-ups, and blamed foreign men with Thai ...

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• 11 May 2012

  Forest dweller's fight for justice

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  People kept staring at No-ae Mimee when he turned up at the Civil Court. And you cannot really blame them. No-ae's long hair was tied in a bun covered by a red turban. His lips were reddened and teeth blackened from betel nut chewing. His cotton shirt looked commonplace, but definitely not the ...

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• 13 March 2012

  Women's plight in men's war

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  Having lost her husband in the southern violence and forced to struggle for her son's freedom from detention in the Tak Bai crackdown, Yaena Salaemae has only one wish for International Women's Day. "It is peace," says the widow. "I just want peace back." Women suffer when their ...

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• 24 January 2012

  The unlikely tale of the two dead elephants

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  Things keep getting fishier and fishier at the Kaeng Krachan National Park, following the slaughter of two wild elephants, one burned to cinders and the other left rotting in a field, minus their tusks and sexual organs. Scandalous? Let's look at the news chronologically. Shortly after New Year, two ...

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• 23 December 2011

  Patients ailing without justice for malpractice

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  The quest for justice is never easy. It is also very expensive. Bang-on Sangchote knows that painful fact first hand. But she has chosen to give up her kidney rather than her fight for justice. An ordinary housewife, Bang-on fought like a tigress when her husband Sanoh became nearly blind and ...

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• 04 November 2011

  Drowning in prejudice

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  External threats usually unite a quarrelling country. That is the rule of thumb, isn’t it? Joint efforts to help ease the suffering of victims in times of natural disaster also usually trigger the best in ourselves, doesn’t it? I used to believe this was the case. I am not so sure any more. If ...

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• 04 October 2011

  Nazism in our brainwashed upbringing

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  Who is not shocked to see teenage girl students happily dressing up in full Nazi regalia, outfitting themselves as Adolf Hitler and SS Guards to celebrate their Sports Day -- totally unaware that they were also celebrating the world's murderers who killed six million Jews in a state-sponsored ...

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• 13 September 2011

  A different war in the deep South

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  There is another kind of war raging in Pattani. It is not the fight for power in the restive South. Nor is it for the locals' right to an ethnic identity. It is the struggle of ordinary fisherfolk to be able to make a living from their seas.Not a tall order, is it? What the Pattani fisherfolk want ...

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• 31 August 2011

  Transparency call for new women's fund

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  Women's rights groups are watching closely the one-province-100-million-baht fund for women's development. And they should. In her policy address, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra kept the women's fund promise she made to the National Council of Women of Thailand, where her elder sister and a ...

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• 24 August 2011

  When monks still have the answers

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  Fed up with rogue monks? Losing hope in ability of the lax and closed clergy to lead the way? Meet Luang Por Ang, Luang Por Chair, and Phra Kru Somsri. All Isan monks. All dedicated to lift the livelihood and spirituality of their villagers. All are living examples of why monks still matter. ...

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• 15 August 2011

  Scapegoats in helicopter crashes

  By Sanitsuda Ekachai

  When three army helicopters crashed in the space of nine days, killing altogether 17 people in the heart of the Kaeng Krachan jungle along the Thai-Burmese border, a stunned country struggled to understand why.One crash is already a big enough tragedy. But three in a row? On the same mission, in the ...

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