The board of censors has finally given its reason for the ban on the "Thailand, we apologise" advert. In its judgement, there are five images of legal and moral impropriety. The board's members are five mortals from four TV channels and one trade association. They can hardly represent us in judging what we can see and can't see, since they have vested interests in their decisions.
The burning of buildings and violent protests are indisputable fact. Soldiers pointing guns is natural in quelling such protests. Pornography is definitely offensive but nudity is natural beauty. Arrested monks and violent protests are factual. Misguided monks are everywhere in our society and violence happens, and both should be made known to everyone for our contempt.
As appropriately put by Walt Whitman: "The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book".
SONGDEJ PRADITSMANONT
BANGKOK
Land for the poor is land for the rich
Re: "Law unfair to poor in land cases: defenders", July 20.
Defenders of the poor lamented how laws - particularly those involving land - more often than not become tools for the government and the rich to suppress them. Suttipong Laithip from the South said there were now more than 1,500 disputes over land plots in the Andaman provinces, and the rich clearly had an advantage. "Rich people can file a legal complaint to have poor people fined or evicted," he said at a seminar.
The manipulation of land by the rich not only affects poor people, but also temples. A blatant case of the manipulation of the law to acquire temple land is on Klong 5 in Pathum Thani province. This land was acquired by the super rich to build a golf course and housing development for the rich. It is presently being used as a meeting area for a political party. Even though the Interior Ministry has been instructed many times to take the land back and return it to the temple, it has done nothing. The land in question is the Alpine golf resort.
TOM
BANGKOK
A stale, outmoded Eurocentric view
Jeremy Browne, the UK foreign minister, on a brief visit to this country, criticised the Thai government for maintaining the state of emergency in some parts of the country, forgetting that the UK also did that in Northern Ireland when it involved arms caches and operatives. He also spoke on freedom of expression, reflecting the stale Eurocentric view of "the rest of the world". In the recent unrest, the numerous community radio stations unleashed incredible hate programmes including, in the end, the incitement to burn down Bangkok. I would like to ask Mr Browne whether such freedom of expression should be allowed to continue. And why not take his Eurocentric view to Singapore, a country with stringent rules on freedom of expression. Or is it because Singapore now has a higher per capita income than in the UK?
Mr Browne has lost a golden opportunity by not building on the unique ties with our British-born PM, who studied with David Cameron. But if his background is deemed undemocratic, the British government has to be prepared to deal with our "shadow" PM, who is known to have obtained his degree in a different way.
SUMET JUMSAI
BANGKOK