The appearance of Somkiat Onwimon, said to be “a senior media expert,” on the anti-democrat stage recently caused quite a stir amongst the dwindling ranks of protesters.
Plate
Somkiat, and old anti-Thaksin Shinawatra activists from People’s Alliance for Democracy days, criticized Thaksin Shinawatra and “told the crowd that he intended to read to them his translation of a book called Conversations With Thaksin, which was written by an American author, Tom Plate.”
Somkiat claimed that the book contained “many issues that Mr. Thaksin has spoken that damage [or destroy] himself”. He went on to:
allege that the book is not available in Thailand, because Matichon Publishing holds the publishing rights of the book yet refuses to translate and print the books for Thai audience, implying that Matichon has conspired with Mr. Thaksin to hide the damaging parts in the interviews.
This claim is concocted. As Khaosod and Matichon have demonstrated, the book was translated and published: “Matichon Ltd and Matichon Publish would like to stress that [Mr. Somkiat′s] speech is completely false…”.
A quick search of PPT would have produced the announcement of the book being available and a picture of its cover. It would have also revealed that royalists tried to stop its distribution.
Somkiat played fast and loose with the truth.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 
[…] the repressive law and the throne. He’s not the first, though, for another anti-democrat, Somkiat Onwimon, babbled about this book on the anti-democrat stage in January 2014. At the time, Somkiat seemed to mistakenly think the […]