Published on September 11, 2005

A welcome sign that cooler heads may prevail despite today’s hot political climate

Re: “United for a better world”, Opinion, September 8. These words from former foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan are commendable. They were like a small breath of fresh air in a room full of stale cigar smoke.

Sadly these words will roll off the backs of the oh-so noble within the UN and multicultural agencies.

The UN needs badly to reassess its mission and it must reform before anything measurable can be done. Surin has an admirable character and the experience to serve as UN secretary-general. He has stature and can be a team player and coalition builder.

Richard Grenier

US

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Decision on nationality of villagers is the right one

Re: “Villagers rejoice as court reinstates their citizenship”, News, September 9.

This is good news for a change. Congratulations to all of them.

Surasak Piputtana

Bangkok

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Trickle of migrants leaving Thailand may become a flood

The recent events in the South deserve to be well understood. The issuing of the emergency decree gives immunity to the military and the police without any accountability on their conduct, and has led them to use more force. Villages have been raided. Endless searches have been conducted in several hundreds of private houses, mostly in the late evening hours.

The communities in the three southernmost provinces are beyond frightened. This is quite understandable when hundreds and hundreds of homes have been searched, village entrances barricaded and closely monitored, and the normal peaceful way of life disrupted.

PM Thaksin refers to the 131 Thai Muslims who fled to Malaysia as part of the effort to internationalise the southern problem. Obviously, the PM’s attitudes have not changed. He seems unable to come up with a plan for preventing the escalation of the problem, other than blaming the problem on others.

There could be more Thai Muslims headed for Malaysia. They claim that they left Thailand because they feared their lives were in danger. Unless the government lays out a clear policy for restoring peace and traditional ways in the rural villages of the Muslim South, and until villagers’ privacy, property, and religion are respected, we will most likely witness more Thai Muslims fleeing to Malaysia.

CS

Bangkok

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Better opportunities for education will further peace

Re: “PM mulls jobs for Muslim graduates”, News, September 8.

I fully agree with the employment opportunity for the religious school graduates in the South. As early as last year, after the Tak Bai and Krue Se incidents, even graduates from Bangkok universities were rejected in their attempts to get employment in Bangkok, simply for the reason that they are southerners. If this is true, how can they get rid of the thoughts that they are second-class citizens? More employment opportunities need to be created in the South as well. The South is very suitable for setting up halal food industries. I hope the Thai government will seriously look at this without delay. The market for halal food among the Muslims countries worldwide is huge and can be a decisive contributor to Thailand’s GDP and export income.

A contented and productive population will ensure prosperity for the country.

Southern mice

Bangkok

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Not fair to blame the US president for slow response

Re: “Bumbling at city and state levels to blame”, Letters, September 9.

I would like to thank “US Vet in Chon Buri” wholeheartedly for enlightening us and for setting the record straight. It was time that someone stands up against the left-leaning international media and tells the real story and gives us true facts.

Marc Bruenjes

Bangkok

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No excuse for slow rescue and recovery efforts

I must take serious issue with the view of “US Vet in Chon Buri”. The magnitude of the disaster warrants the immediate inclusion of the federal government to come to the affected areas as well as the state and local departments. The local and state government is certainly to blame for not having people evacuate when they knew that a category 4 or 5 hurricane was at their back door. They had a few days’ notice. It is also known that the levees in New Orleans were only capable of handling a hurricane of category 3.

It is painfully obvious that the government, both state and federal, had not organised a plan in case of a hurricane of this magnitude, despite warnings from many sources. This is a disaster of a magnitude the US hasn’t seen before and all forces that could help should help. This includes local, state and federal organisations. If red tape keeps the US government from being flexible enough to act properly in times of a national emergency, then the US Constitution or whatever needs to be amended.

Passing the buck doesn’t help. This is just an excuse to not act responsibly in the case of a national disaster. Bureaucracy should have been superseded by the federal government when it became obvious that the local and state governments were incapable of handling the evacuation and stopping the criminal acts that started happening after the storm. The National Guard should have been in New Orleans just as soon as the storm passed.

The Thai government responded better to the tsunami victims than the US did to their victims. In Thai villages affected by our natural disaster, mountains of drinking water bottle were everywhere. Food was donated by everyone. Shelters were erected immediately. If Thailand could do this, why couldn’t the richest nation in the world?

BC

Phuket

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Happy with life in Thailand just as it is

Re: “Chronically cantankerous farang can find a new home” and “Stronger leadership needed in an America tested by crises”, Letters, September 8.

I wholeheartedly agree with these letter writers. I retired to Thailand six months ago and have had Thai friends for years. No one should change Thailand, its people, its culture or its way of life. As a matter of fact, Thai values could stand to be exported. The present administration in the US could never head off anything at the pass, but is good at forming a posse and giving chase to things after the fact. Bush has failed miserably in responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I just hope they don’t fix things in my hometown of New Orleans like they have in Baghdad.

FW Brunet

Udon Thani

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Adapting foreign ways is a part of cultural evolution

Re: “Constructive criticism from outsiders can further reform”, September 9.

Frank Anderson is right on the mark when he stresses that constructive criticism has nothing to do with colonisation. All such change produces what anthropologists call hybridity, a mixture of local and input from elsewhere. Badly needed reforms need fertiliser from wherever available. What grows will be very Thai, and of course hybrid, a dynamic creative blend of culture in motion. Post-traditional society everywhere is full of hybrid forms that inventively integrate new practices and new angles. Thai country music is distinctively Thai, Thai commercial cinema is distinctively Thai, no matter how much their creators have learned from elsewhere. Ditto for Thai Buddhism.

Learning anything from anyone means taking in what is outside and making it a part of what is inside.

Bill Templer

Trang

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Simplified English might make diplomacy less difficult

Re: “Learning a language does not need to be so difficult”, Letters, September 2.

I want to thank Bill Templer for giving us information on Basic English. During my research at Western Michigan University last July I happened to read a book on Basic English that explains the ins and outs of the language, including how to teach it. There are many real-life examples in the appendix rewritten in Basic English such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and certain parts of the Bible.

It is also noted that two prominent politicians of the past also endorsed this idea. In 1943, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, addressed the Committee of Ministers, hoping to receive their recommendations. He said: “Basic English is not intended for use among English speaking people, but to enable a much larger body of people who do not have the good fortune to know the English language.” In 1944, US President Franklin D Roosevelt wrote a memorandum to the secretary of state on the virtue of Basic English: “The reason is that for practical purposes it is relatively easy for non-English speaking peoples to pick up sufficient vocabulary to carry on a conversation. If you and Molotov and Eden had had Basic English and if Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek and I had had Basic English, our conferences would have been infinitely easier and far less tiring than having everything go through interpreters.”

With the widespread use of Basic English, FDR expected it would replace the place of French as the so-called “language of diplomacy”.

Surapon Vatanavigkit

Bangkok

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