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Published on November 29, 2007

It's sad to hear that a fellow Khmer woman miscarried in a Pattaya Police Station detention room after she was arrested along with 21 other Cambodians.

This might be seen as a tragedy in the civilised world. But such a sad thing is just one of a million miseries found in the resource-rich but impoverished nation of Cambodia. Decades of civil war, genocide, foreign occupation, land grabbing by rich and powerful people, rampant corruption and mismanagement of the country's resources have left the poorest Cambodians with few options and means to survive.

Like their Burmese brothers and sisters, many Cambodians have decided to leave the country for Thailand in the hope that they can make some money as a labourer or even a beggar.

The arrest of the pregnant woman and the other illegal Cambodian immigrants plunges them into double misery. They are not the only people who suffer, but their sick parents and hungry children back home may also die waiting for the little bit of money that will never come.

We hope that the Thai authorities will allow poor Cambodians to survive in Thailand until their country knows better how to care for their suffering and share its resources with its own people.

Chhean Nariddh Moeun

Bangkok

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Anyone know how to drive a submarine?

What, one wonders, does Thailand need submarines for? Taxpayers are being told, rather simplistically, by the Navy that little Johnny down the street has one, so they must have one as well to keep up. No doubt that was the story peddled for the acquisition of the white elephant the "Chakri Narubet", which is supposedly an anti-submarine carrier, currently languishing unused.

In what role will these submarines be employed? Sinking the capital ships of an aggressor in a full-blown attack on Thailand? U-boat-style attacks on the merchant shipping of an aggressor? Coastal protection from potential invasion? With 3,219 km of coastline to protect, it seems a rather tall order.  Perhaps they will be used in an integrated operation within a battle fleet. Moreover, who will train the personnel for these boats? Who will train the officers in submarine warfare? How much will it cost to keep them operationally ready? Really the questions are endless.

As others have observed in these columns, just who are the potential aggressors? This is just boys wanting some new toys to show off. They cannot be realistically used to defend Thailand from any credible threat. 

But with the military now in the ascendancy and "face" being so important, there is little doubt the new toys will be sanctioned by the current military-run government before it leaves office.

Jeremy Jenkins

Bangkok

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Yet another sad and  preventable 'accident'

Re: "American dies as bus crushes car", News, November 22.

It would be helpful if your reporters could give greater detail on the events leading up to vehicle crashes, since such information, when correctly analysed, would help your readers and drivers better understand the risks they face in traffic and perhaps prepare them to counter such risks.

It appears from the report that of the vehicles - three cars, three pick-up trucks, a van, a bus and a motorcycle - the bus was in some way the proximate cause. First of all, it seems unlikely that a bus could carry 260 schoolchildren, and if it was actually carrying that number it would be grossly overloaded. (It is totally amazing and fortuitous that none of these 260 children was injured in any way!)

Once the police apprehend the bus driver; he will probably say the cause was due to faulty brakes and that will be the end of the investigation. But we certainly owe it to the dead foreigner and the five injured Thais to determine the real cause of this tragedy. The police should investigate if the driver was able to see and why he might have been travelling so fast with a load of kids with an intersection nearby. The driver will necessarily try to shift the blame. The responsibility will probably fall on the bus owner or operator, who is responsible for the condition of the vehicle and the driver.

The bus operator should be required to produce evidence the driver was trained how to drive a bus responsibly and that the driver's vision or other physical abilities were not impaired in any way. The bus operator should be able to prove the bus had passed a proper vehicle inspection of its safety systems and that there were no stickers, adverts, curtains, or stuff hanging on mirrors blocking the driver's vision. (Actual photographs of buses used to transport schoolchildren on field trips show the entire windshield covered in advertising for football clubs. With all these stickers the driver would be unable to see vehicles stopped for a red light.) The bus operator should be made to prove that they have a written policy regarding such things as speed, route choice, maintenance, driving ethics and driver attitude.

It is terribly sad to see humans die and injured needlessly due to the negligence of transport operators. The crash of an overloaded bus into nine vehicles at a lighted intersection cannot be considered an accident; it is a disaster resulting from the mistakes or omissions of several people who must bear responsibility.

Richard Stampfle

Bangkok

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Let's hear it for

the boys in brown

Re: "Police uniforms cut a dash; leave them be", Letters, November 28.

Tee hee! Let's have a field day on that. A referendum, even. Ms Chobley-Dixon is right. Our policemen are part of Thailand's natural phenomena. We have a right to air our views and exercise our rights.

Sunida

Bangkok

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Flag warning needed ahead of traffic

Re: "Patriotism cannot be forced on an unwilling population", Letters, November 27. Over the past few days I have been reading with growing disbelief people's comments on A Preacher's Piffling Proclamation of Petrifying Patriotism. Yesterday evening at 6 o'clock sharp, I saw a middle-aged lady stuck to the spot on a Sukhumvit Road crossing, looking nervously around, for the source of a rousing sensation.

I watched stupefied as she promptly stopped, turned clockwise at 30 degrees, raised her right hand to her head and corrected her stoop to an upright posture.

The car behind, its driver also peering kerbside, skidded to a halt just a few feet in front of her, his left hand perilously swerving his vehicle. His sudden braking left a trail of burning rubber behind him.

A third vehicle, looking suspiciously ministerial, whose driver had presumably forgotten his watch, his radio apparently broken and with his windows shut, crashed into the back of the car in front of him, pushing the vehicle into the lady on the crossing. She was no longer upright but still.

It is understood that around the country there were 26,351 similar incidents, with 573 victims rushed to casualty wards. Doctors complained of being overwhelmed.

Another stunningly transcendental expression of this octogenarian government? Only last week all were cringing at Samak's folly. What hope for Asean cooperation and integration with men such as this?

James Groveway

Bangkok