A murderous agency I

Longtime readers of this blog will know that PPT has long been critical of the Internal Security Operations Command or ISOC.

ISOC came out of the counterinsurgency period and has long been the military’s most important political agency. For years it has engaged in political destabilization, surveillance, repression and murder for various military regimes and for the military itself.

Since its inception, one of the main tasks of ISOC has been disrupting political movements. It has done this by establishing its own “movements” of murderous rightists, and paramilitaries and not just in the past. It has also infiltrated genuine movements and groups to disrupt them. Yet another tactic has been to act as agents provocateurs, disrupting and often provoking violence. In addition to its bloody and often murderous role in political repression, ISOC has been used to manage elections, especially in rural areas.

For more background on ISOC and especially on the ways that post-coup, military governments made it critical to political manipulation: “ISOC has been dangerously empowered and increasingly employed by the military regimes to dictate the country’s political direction,” see an ISEAS paper by Puangthong Pawakapan.

All of this is background to what the Bangkok Post calls a “Blood-curdling message from Isoc alarms public.”

Lt Gen Narathip Phoynork, Commander of the 4th Army Region and also the director of the ISOC Region 4, made audible off-microphone comments during a briefing on Monday on the 20 March assassination attempt on Kamonsak Leewamoh, a Prachachat Party MP for Narathiwat.

That attack riddled the MP’s vehicle outside his home, leaving two aides seriously wounded but the MP unhurt but shaken up. The attack has prompted questions as the initial cover-up was inept and it became clear that the assailants were serving and retired military and they used an ISOC vehicle.

It is no coincidence that the targeted “MP is a human rights activist and frequent critic of the armed forces’ actions in the deep South.”

Lt Gen Narathip’s remarks were heard by reporters at a press briefing on the attack. The dopey general had just finished denying that the military would never, ever behave as assassins “against dissenters…”. He then turned off the microphone and said: “I’m speaking personally. If it were me, I wouldn’t let him survive. If I were the one doing it.”

The report states that many “who heard the remark were shocked…”.  We doubt that as ISOC has a murderous reputation, often conducted in the name of the monarchy. It usually operates with impunity, and this is why offers like this dunce Narathip feel they can speak the way he did.

Most people in the south understand and fear the power ISOC wields. Political activists throughout the country fear ISOC for its IO operations and its use of Article 112 and its sponsorship of royalist vigilantes.

The dopes leading the army have said that their general’s “remark and the attack should be viewed separately from its policy.” Sure. The army’s spokespersons have been notorious purveyors of untruths for decades.