By Max Constant
BANGKOK
One year since tanks rolled out onto the streets of Thailand's major cities, a mother whose daughter was shot dead by soldiers and the wife of an imprisoned journalist have slammed the country's military leaders.
The junta must stop suppressing different views and accept responsibility for its past, Phayao Akahad and Sukanya Prueksakasemsuk told Anadolu Agency this week.
“You cannot order reconciliation,” Akahad – whose 24-year-old daughter was shot by the military during a 2010 crackdown on protesters - stated.
“If you bring justice, there will be reconciliation automatically. The military, they have to recognize their faults first."
Both women have directly experienced the impact of the May 22 coup against the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra, who herself has since been impeached and banned from politics for five years for abuse of power.
On May 19, 2010, Kamolkate Akahad, an assistant nurse, was shot dead during the military crackdown on Red Shirts -- supporters of the Shinawatra family political clan and opponents of the conservative establishment.
She was helping people inside a medical tent stationed at a Thai temple in central Bangkok - where thousands of protesters had sought refuge after their leaders surrendered to the authorities - when a group of people in what appeared to be soldiers' uniforms fired at them from an elevated Sky train platform.
Four years after - in the hours following the May putsch - Akahad's son, Nattapat, was violently taken away by soldiers who kept him in a military camp for six days.
“I told them ‘you already killed my daughter, now you want to take my son’,” she said.
Since then, she says she has had several rough encounters with junta personnel, in particular for campaigning for the truth about her daughter's death.
General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the junta chief who became prime minister after the coup, has said the “military were not the defendants” in the case of her daughter’s killing.
She says that a complete “distortion of facts.”
“What we ask from the military is that they recognize their faults,” she stressed to Anadolu Agency.
“They and the government at the time have to apologize for what they have done. They have to take responsibility.”
Prueksakasemsuk says that the military are doing little more than trying to brainwash the population.
“What the military wants is that we all think the same thing,” she says.
“They want the people to believe everything is quiet, even if it is not true. They just want to suppress opinions that are different from theirs.”
Prueksakasemsuk's husband - the editor of a magazine popular with Red Shirts - was sentenced to 11 years in prison for lese-majeste in 2013 for publishing an article about a fictional kingdom that judges deemed insulting to the Thai monarchy.
Thailand has one of the tightest lese-majeste laws in the world, with punishments ranging from three to 15 years.
Three days after the putsch, she says that soldiers charged into Prueksakasemsuk’s house, confiscating all her electronic equipment and taking her, her son, 23, and daughter, 19, into custody.
They were interrogated for six hours before being released.
“My daughter was traumatized, because the soldiers bullied her,” Prueksakasemsuk told Anadolu Agency, but admits that she has not been exposed to such direct pressure from the military since.
“I can participate in some public activities, but there is a limitation,” she said. “And I guess they are following me.”
Both women say that one of the harshest tools that the military have at their disposal is the lese-majeste law
Since the Junta forced its way into power, over 47 people have been arrested and charged with insulting the monarchy nationwide.
Among them are two young theatre actors who were in February to 2-1/2 years in jail for acting in the Wolf Bride, a drama staged in 2013 at a university and deemed defamatory against the monarchy.
In March, a 67 year-old man received a jail term of 18 months for writing graffiti critical of the royal family in a department store toilet, and last April, a second-hand book seller was sentenced to two years in jail for having sold a copy of an investigative book about the mysterious death of King Ananda in 1946, brother and predecessor of current King Bhumibol Aduyadej.
Prueksakasemsuk highlighted the case of 58-year-old Theinsutham Suthijittaseranee, who she says was sentenced to a ridiculous 25 years in jail last March for “having disseminated on Facebook information deemed insulting against the monarchy.”
She claimed that the military believes that a group of people are trying to change the monarchical regime.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej is old and frail -- a source of anxiety among Thais. For years, Bhumibol has been revered as a demi-god figure by Thai people and acted as a factor of unity in a country marked by deep social and economic divisions.
Deeply unpopular Prince Vajiralongkorn is next in line, however the well-liked princess Sirindhorn also enjoys the title of crown princess and is seen as a more suited successor by a majority of the population.
“They want to be able to control the situation during the transition,” she claims.
The junta’s other goal, according to her, is to neutralize the Red Shirts movement – an aim the junta seems to have attained.
Hundreds of Red Shirts activists or sympathizers were summoned by the junta in the aftermath of the coup and kept for several days in military camps for what the regime called “attitude adjustment.”
Elswhere, demonstrations against the military, however small, were swiftly repressed and even simple acts of defiance such as a public reading of George Orwell’s 1984 led to arrests. In the last ten months, protests have practically ground to a halt for fear of arrest and intimidation.
Prueksakasemsuk told Anadolu Agency that 99 percent of Red Shirts are “simple followers,” the movement lying dormant until a new leader comes along.
She said it is more leadership based - "typical of political movements in Thailand" - rather than the more collective approach such as that enjoyed in countries like South America “where everyone has the ownership of the movement.”
Egalitarianism is a major aspect of her objection to military rule.
“This [new] constitution does not open any opportunity for political participation,” she mourns. “Ordinary people like me cannot have any involvement in the control of the country anymore.”
The draft charter, currently under review by a military-appointed drafting committee, allows a non-elected politician to become prime minister and sets up a Senate that is partially indirectly elected and partially selected.
It also strictly restricts the powers of elected parliamentarians by leaving them open to monitoring by a national ethics assembly -- whose composition remains mysterious.
It's “just a tool for the military to maintain their power,” she states.
Akahad agrees, saying she was invited as a civil society representative to sit with politicians and constitution drafters in April to discuss the content of the charter.
“They just asked the politicians their views about the constitution,” she said.
"I sat listening for four hours. They had no interest whatsoever in the views of the people."
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