Human Rights = Legal Trap | 2.10.06

Last week, while I was shutting myself off completely from news and politics, a reader sent this email titled “The dumbest thing ever said by a Thai academic”:

From the Bangkok Post (“Draft charter loopholes can ‘resurrect Thaksin regime’”, 28 September 2006):

Charoen Khumpeeraparp, deputy rector of Silpakorn University, said the CDR could not prosecute corrupt key figures of the Thaksin regime because the interim charter promised to protect human rights according to commitments made under international treaties.

No other countries let international commitments influence their local laws, he said.

“The CDR has fallen into the legal trap. It cannot clean the Thaksin networks because all of them will cite international commitments to defend themselves,” Mr Charoen said.”

So human rights are a nuisance now, just like freedom of speech, apparently.

I wouldn’t call the statement dumb, however. Dumb is when a former dean of Chulalongkorn’s faculty of political science quips that the reign of King Rama V preceded the founding of the United States, apparently thinking that he is putting the Yankee upstart in its place. Mr. Charoen’s remark was just honest. This is, after all, the guy who said that to allow foreigners to enter Thailand’s service sector would be tantamount to “handing execution tools to foreign capitals to seize Thais’ businesses”.

Hannah Arendt once said “the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.” I say, the most dysfunctional reactionary will become even more reactive the day after the coup d’etat.

20:49 ▪ politics

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