OPINION

Heritage focus is blurred

Re: "300 protest over historic site ruling", (BP, March 3).

The Fine Arts Department seems more interested in prestige than preservation. While they work to get Phimai declared a World Heritage Site, other Khmer sites in Nakhon Ratchasima remain neglected and unpreserved.

The Khmer Prang (tower) at Wat Prang Thong, one of the few still standing in the area, was recently spoiled with an ugly steel support structure that partially obscures the beautiful Banteay Srei-style lintel that depicts Indra riding his three-headed elephant, Erawan (Airaavatha).

Further west, a small village wat (to remain unnamed) contains dozens of ancient Khmer artefacts that seem to have been completely ignored by both scholars and the Fine Arts Department. Those artefacts include several small Buddha images identified by the British Museum (from photographs) as being early Khmer friezes of the sort used to "embellish and add to the sanctity of buildings". Those stone images have now been mortared to the top of a newly built concrete altar.

The site also has several very large sandstone building blocks. One of those is a partial lintel which depicts the swallowing monster Kala (Kirtimukha), a common theme in Khmer architectural art. This lintel along with the other sandstone blocks, has been incorporated into the wall of a structure built by the wat to "protect" the remains of an old wooden ubosot. I could go on, but what's the point?

Re: "300 protest over historic site ruling", (BP, March 3).

It is too bad that long ago urban development was allowed to flourish all around the Phimai historical park. I've been to the Angkor area, and to Phimai. Most of the temples in the Siem Reap area are free of the urban mess. A good look at the Phimai area via Google Earth shows many Khmer era earthen structures, and I bet a lot of other significant material has been lost.

Phimai should have been preserved in such a manner as Sukhothai.

Re: "Youth start clock ticking on old guard", (Opinion, March 3).

The world of cynical adults certainly requires a dose of youthful idealism. It even needs for those cynical adults to step aside and give space to a younger generation who may be better at handling problems that are related to themselves and their descendants. However, not all youths are idealists, and not all adults are cynical, and let's not forget that the whistleblower incident happened during the "no free speech" dictatorship, as Kong Rithdee likes to describe this present government.

How would a "democratically elected" government handle whistleblowers in the future? All we know is that in former democratically elected government's whistleblowers were slapped with multi-million-baht defamation court cases.

It seems Rayong provincial authorities are experimenting with a novel form of waste disposal. It is called Mae Ramphueng Beach.There is currently a solid wall of garbage lining the whole 7km of this beach. It comprises various plastics and polystyrenes, bottles, cans, tins, fishing nets and ropes, and other flotsam and jetsam.

As I walked my dogs along the beach this morning, tip-toeing around the rubbish, I talked to a woman who owns a small restaurant on the beach. She was lamenting the fact that although she tries to keep her area of the beach clean for tourists, it is all covered with rubbish again the next morning.

If you see a yellow garbage truck driving along the beach's service road, you would be forgiven for thinking it was making a delivery.

I have have never seen anything as bad as the current state of Mae Ramphueng Beach. Thailand may like to classify itself as a developing country, but as long as it allows pollution like this, it remains firmly cemented in the Third World.

Korat Chris claims (PostBag, March 3) that gun deaths in the United States are only a tenth of road traffic deaths in Thailand. This seemed unlikely, so I checked.

About 26,000 people die on Thailand's roads every year. About 33,000 people die from gunshots in the USA every year. Of those, about 11,000, or a third, are homicides.

Re: "West not so smart", (PostBag, March 3).

I'd like to remind Prasan Stianrapappngs that China is not so smart either.

I've known Westerners who were swindled in Friendship stores, seen homeless lining the houtongs, seen whole streets and neighbourhoods bulldozed to make way for shopping malls, putting thousands out on to the streets without relocation (except to the countryside). I've seen plenty of filthy, polluted rivers, streams and streets, seen plenty of poverty. I've witnessed police corruption first-hand.

I've visited Chinese elementary schools that had pop-up shooting galleries for kids to fire plastic guns at foreign flags, at non-Chinese figures. I've been to homes of extremely wealthy Chinese, the opulence identical to the wealthy homes in Thailand, the US and elsewhere, with two to three cars in the driveways, and much more.

I've seen convicts taken to public execution sites on flatbed trucks with a loudspeaker inviting the public to come and watch. Don't toot your horn too loudly, Khun Prasan.

China is like any other country, including the United States. The only difference is in the name.

While the West might not be so smart, Mr Prasan, could you criticise China's leadership and communist party the same way as one is free to criticise President Trump in the United States?

The West may not be so smart, Mr Prasan, but internet is not blocked, limited or monitored, as it is in China.

The West may not be so smart, Mr Prasan, but American newspapers are not censored, nor writers gagged or arrested, as they are in China.

No, Mr Prasan, the West may not be as smart as you claim, but more Chinese want to migrate to Western countries, especially the US, than Westerners elsewhere want to migrate to China.

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