The military cannot be trusted III

The Bangkok Post recently had an editorial that again demonstrates that the military cannot be trusted and that its spokespersons are officially liars. In fact, that is their job: to lie to and mislead the people.

It begins: “The army insisted in court that the information operations (IO) orders against dissenters were fake. The court decided they were real.” Of course, that  same court decided in favor of the liars by deciding, as the Post has it, “the army has faced no legal consequences.” In other words, despite clear evidence that the court accepted, impunity has been maintained, even if the domestic spying and lies have been exposed.

Clipped from Popular Mechanics

In the case, the Post is really very slow in getting to this story as various organizations have definitively shown over several years that the military spies on its own people, most usually on those it defines as “enemies,” be they critics of the military, the regime, or the monarchy.

The court may well have had to agree that the evidence is overwhelming, and it may say that the “military must never run cyber campaigns against its own citizens, as the people are not enemies of the nation…”, but is it maintains the impunity of the surveillance regime, acknowledges that the military can lie to the courts and to the people, and does nothing to prevent ongoing military spying.

The Post is right to observe:

Using taxpayers’ money to spread falsehoods against critics, it added, is an abuse of power that violates human dignity, undermines free expression, and breaches both the constitution and international principles.

And it is also right when it says: “When the military engages in IO, it crosses the line from national defence into political manipulation.”

But that doesn’t stop the military doing what it is trained to do: keep the lid on domestic dissent against the military-monarchy alliance. Spying is one aspect of this, and includes elected politicians the military finds irritating. But the digital sphere is not isolated. Another role the military willingly takes on is the murder of civilians when simpler means of political repression don’t work well enough.

Effectively, the monarchy-preserving military is above the law. It does what it wants to maintain the ruling class, or as the Post puts it: “Thailand still has no effective checks on the military, which remains a state within a state.”

The editorial’s conclusion is apt: “Without military reform, Thailand’s democracy will remain under siege, not from enemies abroad, but from those who claim to protect it.” Well, it isn’t a democracy, but the point is a good one.