Let us keep writing about Pai Dao Din until he gets bail. Let us be patient but also passionate. Let us be cool-headed but also resolute. Let us be respectful of the court but also firm in our questioning. Let us be law-abiding citizens but also simple humans with beating hearts. Let us write even though only five people might read it.
This is not, as hecklers say, a case of one lone malcontent asking for exception and undue sympathy. It is not even about politics or colour-coded partialism. It is rather a case of justice being threatened and a young man's life perched on a legal cliff -- he has fallen off, but then he's back on the same cliff again, and again, and again. If it happens to him -- because it has only happened to him even though Pai was arrested and detained for sharing an article that 2,800 people also shared, an article whose writer and publisher never received a single phone call, let alone a visit by officials wearing camouflage -- it can happen to us all.
Tears, head-banging and online uproar followed the news on Wednesday that Jatupat "Pai" Boonpattararaksa was denied bailed for the sixth time by Khon Kaen Provincial Court. He was arrested on Dec 3 last year for allegedly violating the lese majeste law. The next day he was released on bail, and yet on Dec 22 the bail was revoked and he was put in jail for "stirring up sentiments and on social media" that caused damage to the nation. You would've thought he was the mastermind of Sept 11, 2001 attacks or the Aug 17, 2015 Erawan Shrine bombing, or something of the same malevolent proportions -- not just sharing a sensitive Facebook post.
His requests for bail -- a basic right of every accused whose guilt hasn't yet proven should be granted -- have been rejected, repeatedly. The latest one on Wednesday was due to "new evidence" unearthed by the police, namely a CD featuring "content relevant to the case". On that basis the court, in a secret hearing, approved the detention order without consulting Mr Jatupat's legal team or family. Again, you would've thought his alleged crime was so wicked it must be muted from the whole world.
Pai's mother, Prim, banged her head on the wall in the courtroom. Maternal despair, frustration, heartbreak -- such sentiment for our age of "reconciliation", the term of supreme banality that has acquired the perpetual quotation marks. The week has also seen terms such as "reprieves" for political dissenters and "amnesty" through Section 44 (how ironic), but amid the grand architecture of our political future -- the future that may never arrive -- Pai's case burns through the headlines as a human scar, as a face of injustice in the increasingly faceless justice system. It has been said a thousand times and it will be said again: only justice brings reconciliation. Without one how can we babble on about the other?
On Monday, two days before the latest ruling, 361 university scholars and students signed and handed a petition asking the Supreme Court president to consider granting bail to Pai. The persistent bail rejections, they say, reflect a "degradation of the state of law and rights violation". It was to no avail, the same as the call from The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights earlier.
Online -- because Pai's case surprisingly rarely made it to mainstream TV news -- there's a show of sympathy. But also there's a stench of venom as naysayers piled insults on him and his family with such spite. It is about politics after all, and our realisation that the tragedy of being Thai in this age rivals the tragic-comedy of being human will haunt us still. So, the detractors insist that Pai deserves everything because he defied the court, they say this with a conviction as if he was already guilty when, by men and god's law, he hasn't even been tried and thus has a full right to get bail. This staunch animosity towards the man reminds us that Oct 6, 1976 was real: when you hate "the enemy" so much that you can laugh at his corpse being hanged from a tree and smashed by a chair. I mean it allegorically, at least for now.
Sure, Pai's isn't the only case where we raise questions over the system -- the past month has seen, for example, the case of the wrongly jailed teacher in Sakon Nakhon province, again a nightmare that could happen to any of us. But in this time of ideological divide, Pai's case points to an intolerance towards thoughtcrime and how society overrides human feelings with political ego and paranoia -- or just plain indifference. In 10 days Pai will request bail again. His hope, which is the same as ours, rests in the system, but also in the simple, humane quality such as mercy and generosity. We'll keep counting the days.
Kong Rithdee is Life Editor, Bangkok Post.