The graffiti showing a black leopard with a silence sign on a wall near Sukhumvit soi 58 was erased soon after it went on display. A swift and convenient end to the "trouble'' for whoever had it whitewashed? You have your spray paints, I have mine. You can create street art, I can kill it.
It certainly does not work that way. The reality is the same image has popped up everywhere on social media after the original work was covered up.
The street artist Headache Stencil, who created the graffiti, gave away the soft copy for people to use after the original work was removed. He also made T-shirts bearing the image for sale with some of the profits going to wildlife conservation organisations.
Atiya Achakulwisut is a columnist, Bangkok Post.
The removal of the image has prompted other artists to come up with more images calling for legal action against the alleged poacher of a rare species in one of Thailand's most biologically diversified wildlife sanctuaries. They are widely distributed online, along with photos of the stretched-out black skin of the leopard involved in the poaching episode which many netizens have taken to using as their profile picture.
For white-washers, that is the problem with social media. It's almost impossible to censor thanks to its vast networks, free nature and easy access. Or is it the problem with injustice? The alleged poaching of the leopard in Thung Yai Naresuan wildlife sanctuary has been closely watched from the start because one of the suspects is Premchai Karnasuta, president of Italian-Thai Development Plc (ITD), which is one of the largest construction companies in the country.
A billionaire versus a black leopard? Both may be rare species but one does not need to be very cynical to suspect that as one is dead, the other could walk free. Past experience has shown that money can give people the highest protected status or put them in a safe sanctuary. Distrust, especially against police handling the case, runs so deep that a photo showing deputy police chief Pol Gen Srivara Ransibrahmanakul returning a wai to the tycoon when they met last week for questioning caused an uproar online.
Most people accused the deputy police chief -- probably unfairly as it later turned out -- of being too respectful to the suspect when they saw a photo showing him bowing deeply while putting his hands together in a wai gesture. It's only a video clip of the event, which showed Mr Premchai paid respect to the officer first and the officer was only returning the gesture.
Suspicions that the leopard will not receive justice in this case have remained, however. The doubts deepened after an animal cruelty charge originally filed against Mr Premchai was dropped while a police captain who accepted the charge was reprimanded.
The leopard-was-killed-in-silence graffiti was made to remind people not to forget the case whose one month anniversary lapsed yesterday. That it was the only piece of graffiti erased when there are many other pieces at the site only added to the rage. A double standard was at work even in the whitewashing.
While it's true that online and social media have become powerful tools for people to fight for their rights and justice in many cases, and they are resistant to the simple trick of whitewashing which authorities may have resorted to carrying out in the past, people, especially the powers-that-be, should not forget that it's eventually a sense of injustice that drives any strong social movement.
One black leopard graffiti might have been deleted but who knows when another, or a hundred others, will pop up and where? As long as people feel strongly enough that certain things are not fair, they will go out and paint. They will create works that send a message to the public. They will click "like" and share whatever they feel represents the sense of injustice in their hearts.
The same is true with the luxury watches scandal involving Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon or illegal markets near Rama IX that led to the bashing of a pickup truck. Or take the latest request by the National Council for Peace and Order not to mock Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, who keeps postponing the election, as Pinocchio. When it comes to perceived injustice, the best way to fight it is to ensure that justice is seen to be done. Whitewashing, as the leopard graffiti has shown, only fuels the rage.