Beggars belief

By their nature, military dictators have few constraints on their behavior and utterances. Hence, much of the stuff that emanates from The Dictator is revealing of him and his reign. This is certainly true of General Prayuth Chan-ocha’s recent lies to the media over the abduction-cum-arrest of Nattathida Meewangpla.

Readers will know that Nattathida was grabbed by men at her home and spirited away. Her family believed these men to be from the military. The Dictator’s spokesman said this was untrue. The miltiary thugs then produced her and claimed she was a part of a “plot” and “network” that was involved in “terrorism” via a bombing campaign.

That she was a witness to the military’s murder of civilian protesters in 2010 was not, the military declared, why they were acting against her.

Military junta boss Prayuth has insisted that soldiers “merely ‘invited’ Nattathida to ‘talk’.”

That is the language of a fascist. It gets worse. He says:

“We didn’t arrest her at all. We simply invited her at her home for a talk, and she came…. If we had announced it, there would have been a panic…. We only invite people and release them. She understood and cooperated with us. It’s only a discussion. We didn’t arrest her. If we arrested her, she would have been in jail.”

This is a public and bald-faced lie. Fascist dictators can lie in public because no one dares challenge them. Why? Because they too can be spirited off.

Because he is dictatorial, Prayuth went further: “Let me stress that we never harmed her…. We are even less likely to harm her because she’s a woman. Can soldiers be that cruel? If so, we wouldn’t have lasted til this day.”

Of course, Thailand’s soldiers are cruel. They are murderous, they engage in torture, forced disappearance and a litany of other human rights abuses. They have impunity before the “law.” That is why they have “lasted” so long.

More than this, in uttering such lies, Prayuth declares his disdain for all Thais. He believes that Thais are so stupid and so submissive that he can sprout all kinds of nonsense with impunity.