Free TVs, football telecasts for tea shops may worsen gambling: locals

Local residents of the restive South yesterday criticised the government’s plan to install free cable televisions in local tea shops and use English Premier League football matches to lure potential insurgents from taking up arms against the state.

Worse, the initiative could end up promoting gambling on football matches, a nationwide phenomenon that generates billions of baht and has forced countless people into severe debt.

Interior Minister ACM Kongsak Wantana – the fourth person in the post in less than two years – earlier this week tried to push through a plan to give away 500-1,000 cable televisions in tea and coffee shops in the three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces.

Kongsak said he believed that showing English Premiership football would help attract young men away from insurgency and put them in front of the television screen.

“Most children love watching sports on TV, but they can’t afford them at home. So we are giving them what they love, hoping it can solve the problem.”

Former academic Ahmed Som-boon Bualuang, a member of the National Reconciliation Commis-sion, said he did not understand the logic behind such thinking.

“It’s child-like and a bit insulting,” Ahmed said.

“People here are more concerned with the daily killings, which the government has been unable to solve, not about the lack of entertainment or football on television,” said the resident of Pattani.

Rawseedee Lertariyapongkul, an adviser to the Young Muslim Association of Thailand, said the initiative did not address the root cause of the problem. Instead, it could end up creating more problems, such as gambling and other forms of vice.

He said officials had more important tasks at hand, such as resolving the ongoing problem of missing persons and preventing more killings and bomb attacks.

Kongsak dismissed suggestions about the possible rise of gambling, saying most of the young men in the region, the targeted audience, are from poor families.

He added that sports could liven up the deserted atmosphere in southern villages.

But Kongsak’s initiative appeared to hit a hurdle yesterday when Deputy Prime Minister Chidchai Vanasatidya distanced himself from the proposal, saying other committees looking after the restive region should also examine the idea.

Arphannee Haji Che Leh, president of Yala’s Yaha District Football Club, said that while youths in the South are very interested in soccer, measures to control gambling must be put into place as well.

“It is important to monitor gambling that might come with watching football matches,” he said.

Democrat Party spokesman Ong-art Klamphaiboon criticised the initiative as “missing the point”, saying violence in the region was much more complicated than young men not having enough football to watch on TV.

Money would be better spent if the government were to create more football fields and provide equipment for the local community, he said.

His deputy, Sathit Pithuthecha, said a survey of the region showed that almost every household already had a TV set.

He also suspected whether the aim of this initiative was for the well-being of the local residents or the benefit for a “certain private cable company”. UBC is Thailand’s sole cable television provider.

Like other regions in the country, football has long been a popular sport for the residents of the Malay-speaking region.

But the tragic events of April 28 last year suggest that militant Muslims will not necessarily choose sport over insurgency.

An entire football club of 18 players from Songkhla’s Saba Yoi district was gunned down by security forces, along with dozens of others, after they staged a coordinated armed uprising against security forces in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.

All the players were reportedly members of the same cell within one of the Islamic insurgent groups behind the spate of violence in the region. The cell had reportedly used the football field as their training ground for insurgent activities.

Yala