It has been quite an early summer harvest for the regime combines baling up inconvenient voices.
PPTV, the digital outlet founded and funded by Bangkok Airways visionary Prasert Prasarttong-Osoth, lost the excellent news commentator Vanchai Tantivitayapitak. He had the serial nerve to report and present views on items that make the regime look bad.
Pim Shaw Kemasingki, there's a woman needs to respect her betters in the regime. As the right-thinking governor of Chiang Mai, Pavin Chamniprasart noted, making satire of Lanna kings is literally blasphemous because Lanna kings are sacred. Fortunately for the country, there is a Computer Crime Act to care for the CityLife Chiang Mai editor. Another respected personality is soon to disappear from the Spring TV newsroom. And so on.
Vanchai (left) and Pim: Military-backed intimidation works. (File photos)
The Minister of Truth, Lt Gen Sansern Kaewkamnerd is serving up warnings last heard in the August, 2015, campaign for the constitution. You have full freedom of speech about politics and the polls so long as you speak in favour of the junta and general prime minister.
The biggest argument against a free press is that it's really messy. That's bad news for a regime whose single claim to popularity is that it stopped the street battles. So a free press is bad because it makes a mess, Logic 101. But wait.
By shutting down free media, destroying the lives and careers of a few commentators (breakin' eggs, makin' omelettes, right?) intimidating honest patriots, silencing loyal opponents who disagree with the regime or certain of its actions, far more damage occurs to the nation -- dozens of magnitudes more. Editorialists able to write and speak freely do not go behind your back to publish abroad. They don't lose all respect for you. They don't start collecting gangs and mobs and encourage midnight protests.
With free media and free speech, you don't get sedition -- a favourite nonsense-word right now. You get reasonable discourse. Sometimes it's shrill but sticks and stones are what break bones.
Here's why the regime should stop you before they repress again.
The military want, or at least claim to want educated people to institute and run and manage and improve this "Thailand 4.0" we hear about. Without free media, you can't get either. Not the educated nation, not the technological advances.
Today, the regime is about to throw the editor of an internet magazine in prison for printing a computer graphic of three dead kings wearing anti-pollution masks. Not even Thai kings, but Lanna kings. The graphic was made by a schoolboy. (We won't opine that the boy has more useful thought processes than those dedicated to shutting him down. Because it's obvious.)
Message received, Minister of Truth. Students will stop all that ridiculous thinking they're doing! Memorise, damn it! Magazine editors, just a reminder that the Ministry of Truth has got your number. If they don't like what you're doing, if you think you're going to get away with critical thought about the regime, think again. There's always a law to use against you, turn you away from your publication, cost you more baht in lawyers than you have.
The regime is once again descending to that very dark mood of paranoia where it actually believes progress needs thought control, and where speech and writing need government control.
The best things the government can do now, the actions that will actually bring more Good Things than bad over a fairly short time are these.
Stick with the supreme law. The constitution has it right about freedom of speech, freedom of media and academic freedom. If government is going to do good, it has to hear about the bad. And be liberal about interpretation; a nasty editorial about a government programme does not endanger national security.
Order every military and security unit -- army, navy, police, Isoc, the lot of them -- to never again file or even threaten to file criminal defamation charges against citizens. Drop all current cases, starting with the ones against parents of dead soldiers and families of tortured detainees. Criminal defamation is a horrible law and should be wiped. Dropping the cases would earn a fantastic public relations surge, home and abroad.
For the goggle-eyed who can't believe they just read that, there are libel and slander laws in Thailand. Civil law is a great recourse, a keeper of truth -- but without the guns and jails.
Inform all editors, news directors and internet sites they're free to opine, to praise, to criticise, to oppose, within civil defamation laws. Inform them that government won't take action against them because as an election looms, it's vital for citizens to have access to all views.