OPINION

An ominous analogy

Re: "China's Uighur lesson", (Postbag, Nov 30).

Whilst Prasan Stianrapapong makes relevant points about the challenges of Western foreign policy towards Muslim countries, I think it is highly dangerous for mankind if we give the Chinese approach to Muslim suppression even a shred of credence.

Judging the Chinese government's actions by their end goal success overlooks their genocidal and repressive methods.

And the letter itself makes an outrageous statement: "the Chinese way of taming Muslims has been very effective". Let us look back at 1930s Germany to recognise ominous analogies of a state "taming" a people/race. Yes, the West has its problems, but putting over a million people in camps due to their religion is not one of them.

Prasan Stianrapapong justified China's horrible persecution of Muslims by noting that a tiny percentage of Muslims engage in terrorism. Look at America's history of genocide against Native Americans, black Americans, Vietnamese and so on. American genocide could make the worst Muslim terrorist look like Gandhi.

There are good and bad people of every race, religion and nationality. Only the cruellest bigots would fail to make a distinction between the good and bad and say, "Let's persecute all of them, including innocent women and children."

I find it highly ironic that the police -- who as a group, especially its traffic officers, will be or are already seriously affected by global warming -- broke up a protest in Bangkok last week that was intended to bring awareness to this problem.

Logically, the police should have been leading or at least participating in this protest of government inaction on global warming which is going to make their lives and jobs increasingly miserable as time goes on.

Re: "London Bridge attacker was 'terror parolee'", (Online, Nov 30).

"Terror parolee" huh? Well, I'd say those words pretty much sum up the entire problem here.

The deaths of two innocent members of the British public on the London Bridge are deeply tragic, but what is much more tragic is that the British legal system really thought it could rehabilitate a known terrorist with a tepid six-year sentence and a referral to some feel-good university programme that masquerades as prisoner rehabilitation.

The entire episode makes one ask just when will the lesson finally be learned? How many more incidents like this will it really take for progressive politicians and liberal judges to finally figure out that certain kinds of offenders are simply past redemption?

Re: "Insurance nightmare", (PostBag, Nov 28).

I was surprised to read that Phillip Lamear had been informed by the US Embassy that he would need medical insurance to renew his long-stay visa at the end of January.

A few days ago I renewed my retirement visa at Chaeng Wattana, and medical insurance was not one of the requirements. I had heard rumours that it might be a new regulation, which was worrying for me as I only have inpatient cover. Since the British Embassy will no longer supply a letter to retirees confirming their income, I needed to produce a letter from my Thai bank confirming that I deposit sufficient money every month into my bank account here. This is probably about my ninth long-stay visa.