The Bangkok Post has a revealing headline: “Colonels reap rewards from 2010 crackdown.” Yes, that’s right, the commanders of the troops that used live fire zones, live ammunition, and snipers to kill and maim thousands are being rewarded by the military brass for their loyalty and murderous actions. Of course, it is their political and military bosses who gave the orders for murder in seeking to protect the royalist state.
It is Army boss General Prayuth Chan-ocha who “has signed an order promoting 313 colonels who were commanders of key combat units during the 2010 political violence.” Making the point several times, the Bangkok Post states that the “promotion is seen as a reward for their contributions towards the army’s handling of the unrest.” These men followed orders that they were to kill protesters and all of them, by this promotion, are now set to be the leadership of the Army into the future as an “army source said the list of the promoted 313 colonels is known as the list of ‘deputy generals’ who will be promoted to rank of general in the future.”
Included in this list is “army spokesman Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd, who becomes the deputy commander of the army’s civil affairs school … [and] was the key spokesman who spoke up for the army during the clashes between troops and the red shirts in April and May in 2010…. [H]e will become a major general in the next army reshuffle.”
Sansern did his duty as spokesman for the murderous Thai Army by fabricating and concocting information throughout the life of CRES, and he has continued to do so in recent months. For example, he recently concocted a story that M16s with enhanced scopes were “not sniper rifles.”
As we have long pointed out at PPT, the Army is used almost solely for killing its own citizens. It gobbles up huge amounts of cash as it arms itself for defending the royalist state.
