According to a report at Prachatai, which could easily be in Not The Nation if it was a spoof rather than real, a very dangerous woman has been arrested for red-shirt activity in Ayudhya. She was selling slippers (flip-flops?) with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s face on them.
Sure, that is a pretty strong insult in Thailand, but the state’s bully boy police and security agencies are now into the realms of high farce.
It seems that on 3 October, “police arrested Amornwan Charoenkij, 42, for an offence under Section 9(3) of the Emergency Decree which prohibits ‘press releases and distribution or dissemination of letters, publications or any means of communication containing texts which may instigate fear amongst the people or is intended to distort information which leads to a misunderstanding of the emergency situation to the extent of affecting the security of the state or public order or the good morals of the people either in the area or locality where an emergency situation has been declared or the entire Kingdom’.”
There you have it. This is what the Thai state’s repressive apparatus under the royalist regime ghas become. Presumably the search is on for the “terrorists” who manufactured the shoes.
In fact, Ayudhya is not under the emergency decree, so presumably this is another example of either Keystone Cops or, more likely, a result of the state’s continued repression of red shirts.
Amornwan was bailed by a Puea Thai Party parliamentarian and “expected that the remaining 40 pairs of slippers, out of 60 she had brought to sell, would be confiscated by the police. The slippers were printed with a message, ‘People died at Ratchaprasong,’ and photos of Abhisit and Suthep Thaugsuban.” She added: “When asked by the police, I answered frankly that people did die there. What else could I say? I had no problems selling these elsewhere. This is too much. These are not weapons.”
No doubt Abhisit feels better and sleeps well at night knowing that he’s had a poor woman, scraping together an income, jailed as a warning to all other poor market vendors who are drawn to the red shirt message.
PPT is sure that the same women will recognize that this arrest is an outrage and reflective of double standards and injustice under the royalist government.
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