The Bangkok Post (15 December 2009: “Abhisit defends ISA use during rallies”) reports on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s speech on “human rights.” PPT had some earlier details here. It is an exercise in dissembling. The report of the speech – presumably accurate – should be embarrassing for any political leader.
Recall, as we begin this account, that Abhisit is talking about human rights on Human Rights Day.
He is reported as wanting ‘[b]etter enforcement of the lese majeste and computer crime laws … to prevent their use to settle scores with political and business rivals…”. Better enforcement? As far as we can tell, and we follow this pretty closely, most of the accusations of lese majeste and the enforcement of the computer crimes law has been by this government or its members.
Of course, Abhisit “promised his government would never misuse its power to get at its opponents.” He must mean this to be a statement for the future, for the Democrat Party and its spokesmen have been consistent in their use of such accusations against opponents, most recently in the case of Thaksin Shinawatra’s interview in the Times.
Thereport states that the ” computer crime act has also been used to back charges against people who have posted political comments on websites on legally sensitive issues.” This law has been almost exclusively used by the current government to prevent criticism of the monarchy.
Abhisit, in claiming that the “lese majeste law has been widely abused” says that “[m]any people widely use this law to back their charges against their opponents, which is an abuse of the spirit of the law…”. He claims that the “government has set up a panel to scrutinise the enforcement of this law so it would apply in both letter and spirit…”.
What has happened it that claims are still made, while the computer crimes act is now more regulalrly used to prevent all criticism of the monarchy. Meanwhile many lese majeste charges are maintained to keep those charged “on the hook” and to warn others.
On the computer crimes act, Abhisit says that his “government has been cautious about it and reviewing things in an effort to bring more balance to its enforcement.” With several recent charges on dubious grounds, if we are to believe this, then we must conclude that Abhisit is preventing a huge crackdown by the extreme rightists in his government.
But,f course, Abhisit added: “we cannot do without laws as they must be enforced to ensure peace and order in the country.” And he suggests that his opponents are exercising their “rights beyond the boundary stated in the constitution.” He added that his “government would not violate their rights to express their political views in public…”.
Anticipating criticism of his government’s political use of the Internal Security Act to limit the rights he claims to acknowledge, Abhisit states that the “government invokes the special act … to protect the rights of the majority. It was also because the government learned a lesson from the April riots that stemmed from the anti-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship’s rally, which spun out of control despite repeated assurances from the rally leaders that they would not allow that to happen.” In other words,he admits a lack of even-handedness. The rights of the majority seems not to matter when yellow shirts rally.
And Abhisit again claimed that no one was killed during the Songkhran Uprising. The investigations into the deaths of red shirt supporters killed and dumped in the river have never been reported.
All politicians put their best spin on their own performances. This effort by the premier is, however, a travesty of lies, spin and fatuous half-truths. Abhisit now has a track record of such statements.
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