And, of course, if a TRT candidate does not win, you can be sure that the removal and demotion of the governors and police officials in the provinces are guaranteed if TRT comes back to power. To prevent election fraud, we are supposed to have the National Election Commission, the present chairman of which is well known to be very close to Thaksin. This commission spent almost a year to investigate more than 1,000 cases of voting fraud, some with clear eye witnesses and evidence to back up the allegations, yet came up with less than findings of fraud.

Shall the Thai public continue to put faith in the present commission to deliver a just and fair election on April 2? Shall the Thai public continue to allow state power to interfere with the voting? Democracy simply does not work if the state abuses its power and election fraud is the name of the game.

The only way out is the massive protest in downtown Bangkok to tell Thaksin who he really is and to really remind him that his tricks abusing democracy for his personal gain will not work any longer.

Charan Singh

Bangkok

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Let Thais show their strength of will at the voting booth

The objective is to clear away the crooked from Thai politics for good. This will be very difficult if the voters are irresponsible. Let us come out in great numbers and show clearly in force that we really deserve leader(s) with honesty and integrity.

Chumphol Sirinavin

Bangkok

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Would PM Chaturon really be any better?

Re: "PM's departure must usher in reform or it will mean nothing", News, February 23

This is puzzling. Khun Tulsathit writes: "An ideal scenario would be for Thaksin to bow out and give way to a respectable figure - like Chaturon Chaisang - from his own party".

But what would stop a retiring Khun Thaksin from lording over the government as if it were, say, a family business?

Are you really ready to support the opportunistic Khun Chaturon as an impartial steward of the Thai constitutional process?

Lee & Scot

Santa Monica, California

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Suchinda has one more lesson for Thaksin

Re: "Dissolve the House and let the voters decide, Suchinda says", News, February 23.

General Suchinda's unsolicited advice to PM Thaksin was to dissolve Parliament.

Actually the lesson PM Thaksin should learn from General Suchinda is how to continue living in Thailand. Leaving the premiership in disgrace is one thing, but living in exile is altogether unbearable, billions of baht or dollars notwithstanding.

Veharachan

Bangkok

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World should oppose China's Web censorship

The Internet espouses a spirit of border-free communication and freedom, but China and a small number of countries insist on setting authoritarian boundaries. For example, Li Changqing, a journalist with the Fuzhou Daily in China, was convicted on January 24 of "spreading false and alarmist information" and sentenced to three years in prison.

The charges against Li are simply that he published [on the Internet] an expose about an outbreak of dengue fever, a frequent cause of hospitalisation and death among children, as a warning, before the Chinese authorities officially announced it. This case, which has been protested against by the World Association of Newspapers and World Editors Forum, exposed the Chinese government's disregard for freedom of the press and its attempts to hide the outbreak of an infectious disease. It also showed how China undermines international efforts to control similar outbreaks. In addition, according to recent reports, Google has openly expressed its willingness to cooperate with Chinese authorities, and Google staff have secretly connived with Chinese officials to ensure that certain search terms, which the Chinese government deems objectionable, will not yield any results.

Moreover, Internet giant Yahoo has been forced to provide users' private information, which has helped the Chinese government sentence "dissidents" Shi Tao and Li Zhi to lengthy prison terms. Microsoft also needed to shut down a popular Chinese-language blog that had published content unacceptable to the Chinese authorities.

China needs to rethink its sinister policy of turning these Internet firms into police auxiliaries, because in doing so it is opposed by all the free world. For the fundamental values of freedom and human rights, every free person should express opposition to the Chinese government's blockade of free access to information and every nation should express repugnance at China's violation of human rights and call for the fall of China's "cyber curtain".

Frank JK Chen

Director

Information Division

Taipei Economic and Cultural

Office in Thailand

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Free speech is limited by social responsibility

Re: "An open society is marked by freedom of expression", Opinion, February 22.

Pravit Rojanaphruk's opinion piece reflects the present misinterpretation and confusion about the right to freedom of speech.

Such a right has never been unlimited and unrestricted, but instead has always been regulated by speakers' and writers' social responsibility to express well-founded honest opinion and true facts.

Speeches and articles based on gratuitous lies, factoids or biased partisan views are an abuse of such a right, as they lead to psychological violence first and then to physical violence against the targeted groups and individuals. To put together Samak Sundaravej's case and the strong-arming, curbing and silencing of the media that is legitimately critical of the present government is incorrect.

Samak's political attack was directed at an individual, a respected statesman above politics, and not at what we understand as a political speech or stance.

Hence, Samak's case is a clear abuse of freedom of speech. The endeavour to control the media by the present government is a distinct violation of such a right.

Samak is known as the biggest, loudest and fastest mouth in the Kingdom. His tongue often seems to run its course before he even starts to think about what he has just said. Hence, the logic of most of his speeches has often escaped his listeners, as did his last exploit.

Samak should be censored not only for what he said about General Prem Tinsulanonda, but also for what his remarks implied about the present government and fellow politicians; that all of them are, and should be, unethical, amoral and dishonest - which is, of course, not true.

Krabong Kuverakorn

Bangkok

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Denying the Holocaust is absurd but not criminal

Re: "Court jails Holocaust denier", News, February 22.

The prosecution/persecution of British historian David Irving for "denying" or questioning 17 years ago the sacrosanct holocaust is yet another egregious example of Western hypocrisy about freedom of thought and expression. As Iran's foreign minister so trenchantly observed, the West supports free speech but practices the exact opposite.

Denying the holocaust is a serious crime in Austria. In Germany, it is a crime to even compare the holocaust with other holocausts in Cambodia, Armenia and Tibet. During Adolf Hitler's regime, it was a crime to be pro-Semitic. Now it is a crime to be anti-Semitic. Nothing much has changed. The holocaust has been exhaustively documented as a historical fact. What Irving and other dissenters say is totally irrelevant. They can never alter the damning truth.

Freedom of speech cannot be protected or enhanced by muzzling or criminalising it. Tolerance for intolerance is the sine qua non of a truly free and civilised society. The inalienable individual freedom of speech can never be made contingent on its content, no matter how offensive, hateful, racist or mendacious it may be.

There can be no reasonable limits on free speech. All such limitations must, by their very arbitrary nature, be unreasonable. Controlled, regulated, restricted speech, yes, but never free speech.

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that government can or ought to separate truth from error. Error, protected by freedom of speech, may outlive truth. But freedom dies when error is repressed by laws, and error multiplies when freedom dies.

OG Pamp

Prachuap Khiri Khan

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Why does the NTC monitor 'letters to the editor'?

I wonder if it is commonly known that the National Telecommunications Commission maintains an archive of all items that appear in the "letters to the editor" columns in all of the Kingdom's newspapers (www.ntc.or.th). One wonders what possible purpose such an immense and redundant compilation might serve.

Cha-am Jamal

Phetchaburi

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