Video evidence of Chinese fur farmers skinning animals alive

The video is of excruciating violence. Its painful silences should affect us all deeply. If we don't protect animals from this type of brutality, we become accomplices.

I will explain what the video shows: With a hidden camera, animals were filmed being clubbed and beaten and then skinned alive. They say it's done to get a more perfect cut. Afterwards the animals are tossed onto a pile, still alive, and for up to 10 minutes you can see their hearts still beating, in agony, their eyes still blinking, and the puppies' paws still shaking. There was one pup that lifted its head and gazed at the camera with bloodied eyes.

If you don't care to see the video, please sign and forward the petition (on the website) to your friends. This monstrosity has to be stopped; we have to act.

Thank you.

Phuket Horse Rescue

Phuket

------------

Separatists have achieved their aim through fear

Re: "Cease with the useless advice about the South", Letters, March 17.

Three cheers for Laosuwan for hitting the nail on the head. It is high time that the people of Thailand insisted on their right of protection in all parts of the country. For too long, successive Thai governments have given in to the demands of radicals in the South, only to be rewarded with beheadings of the innocent and burning of schools. The South has become a no-go area not only for tourists but for most Thais. Thais are afraid to move freely in their own country. Thus the separatists have de facto succeeded in their goal of separation by instilling fear, and carving out that part of the country for Islamic rule.

Equally to blame are the media and so-called human rights activists who never miss an opportunity to shower criticism on the Thai Army for handling the situation (poorly). What about the rights of non-Muslims living in the South?

The Thai government, once and for all, should give full authority and power to the Army to put down the insurgency in the South. Laxity in action now will certainly result in untold damage to the nation. It is inevitable that a few mistakes will be made, some innocents will die in the process, but if the Army succeeds in eradicating the insurgency, the ensuing peace will be worth the price.

Citizen

Bangkok

----------------

The world is watching Thailand's treatment of refugees

Re: "Hmong should return to Laos of their own free will", Opinion, March 17.

I applaud Kavi Chongkittavorn and The Nation for what has been a long-awaited account of the situation at Huay Nam Kao by the Thai media. For a while there, I had given up hope that Thailand's free media was capable of honest reporting on the Hmong refugee situation in Phetchabun. And even though this is not exactly reporting, but an editorial piece, it is at least a sign that some in Thailand's media are able to call it as it is, rather than what's politically convenient.

Meanwhile, the Lao PDR continues its propaganda in the wider American Hmong and refugee community around the world that Thailand is a ruthless and abusive country that not only imprisons but tortures and kills refugees and "illegals" inside its borders.

At the same time, as Thailand stands to benefit (both economically and politically) from accommodating every Lao PDR so-called "national security risk", it is doing so at the expense of perpetuating and directly empowering and legitimising one of the most secretive, outdated and obsolete political systems on earth.

The alternative is that Thailand could actually become a beacon of hope and a true leader in the region, something Thailand apparently does not embrace or desire to be.

In time, the policies of the US and those Western countries with an ever-educated, sophisticated and integrated Hmong population will naturally force Thailand to come face to face with how it treats the Hmong, whether they are Thai citizens or refugees. Indeed, history will finally catch up with Thailand, a country that prides itself on the Buddhist precepts, on how it has repeatedly failed to respect the common and universally accepted issues of human rights, dignity and decency.

The world is watching very carefully. The great equalizer, the Internet, has made it possible to influence the average person's image of a people, a nation, a government, even of the press.

Again, thank you for speaking the truth about Ban Huay Nam Kao. Now let's see if the news department can do the same.

Seng Vang

Bangkok