Almost two years after ordering a massacre of his own citizens, former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva remains the leader of the Democrat Party. General Prayuth Chan-ocha, whose troops carried out the killings, is still the Commander in Chief of the Thai army, while many of the officers who assisted in the crackdown’s planning and execution were rewarded with promotions. Even the retired General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who staged a military coup in 2006 against a government elected three times, is now a member of parliament; improbably, he was given the chairmanship of a parliamentary committee on “national reconciliation.”
These men did not just escape legal accountability for their actions, which is the historical norm in Thailand, but got to keep their positions and titles. Few in the domestic and international press have seriously questioned their fitness to serve.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra remains in self-imposed exile. Mr. Thaksin refuses to serve a two-year prison sentence, slapped on him for the “crime” of signing a consent form, as required by law, endorsing his wife’s registration of a plot of public land she purchased in a competitive auction READ MORE
