Thaksin did not personally carry
out the 2,500+ extrajudicial killings of his three month "War
On Drugs."Rather, he inspired other people to do the killing for him, employing an array of metaphors and quite colourful language to inspire people to do what, in retrospect, were very evil deeds indeed.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned the immortal lines "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" in her Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).
"How do I kill thee? Let me count the ways" must have have been on the minds of Thaksin and his cronies continually as they cooked up and justified the death lists of 2003.
The creative metaphors they employed to justify mass killing, listed below, attest to this.
The photo above on the right is of a young man kneeling on the ground begging Thaksin to explain why his mother and father were murdered in the mass killing spree of 2003.
1. Beheading was first on the list to inspire killers:
In our war on drugs, the
district chiefs are the knights and provincial governors the
commanders. If the knights see the enemies but do not shoot them, they
can be beheaded by
their commanders. (Bangkok Post, 25-01-03; PB161).
"They [provincial governors] should check out history books about what King Naresuan did to his generals who failed to keep up with him on the battleground during his great fight against the prince of Burma" (Nation, 11-12-03, PB161). [Implication: Naresuan cut off their heads and...Thaksin will be just as brutal to those who do not deliver]
"They [provincial governors] should check out history books about what King Naresuan did to his generals who failed to keep up with him on the battleground during his great fight against the prince of Burma" (Nation, 11-12-03, PB161). [Implication: Naresuan cut off their heads and...Thaksin will be just as brutal to those who do not deliver]
2. Victims were animals not humans, the lyrics of songs to support the mass killing suggested. Murder victims would just be considered ants and then murder would be acceptable:
"One thousand deaths of
bad men is like one
dead ant ... Bad men must not have land to live" (Nation,
15 May 2003; PB166).
A famous Buddhist monk from Isan, Pho Khun Parisuttho, suggested that mosquitoes were a more fruitful analogy that could be used to justify murder:
"The sin from killing a ya ba trader is the
same from killing one
mosquito, Nothing to be afraid of" (MR, 30-09-03, PB166)
It was also reported that Buddhist monks had refused to perform funeral rights for those who had been murdered (Matichon 2003d cited in Connors, 2010, 14)
3. "Death Angel" and a "Shortcut to Hell" were more than mere metaphors in another TRT campaign:
"Our target is to send 1,000 traffickers to hell
this year, to join some 350 before them... We have employed legal
means, political science and even Buddhism, but the [drug] problem
seems to be getting worse. Now it is time to rely on [the] Death Angel. Of
course, it is a legally delicate means, but it is the path we have to
take to bring peace back to society ... This year we expect at least
1,000 traffickers to to travel
to hell." (Nation, 25-07-01; PB163).
4. Human sacrifice provided another inspiring metaphor for killing:
"An offering to the War On
Drugs: 352 corspes (sic)" (Connors, 2010, 14)
5. In the brave new world of Thaksinomics "population control" could also inspire...
"...a plan to shorten the lives of drug dealers...
a normal person lives for 80 years. But a bad person should not live
that long" (Bangkok Post, 25-01-003, PB164)
6. There is also the metaphor, or rather simile given Thaksin's power over life and death, of Thaksin as God:
"It [murder] is not an
unusual fate
for wicked people. The public should not be
alarmed by their deaths" (Nation 27 February 2003; PB164).
7. Although the Lord Buddha was pretty explicit about how grave an affair it is to take the life of any living creature and Thailand is a deeply Buddhist country, Thaksin also invoked the idea of Thainess to inspire killing.When foreign observers and the UN objected to the mass bloodshed, Thaksin lashed out that them:
"The UN is not my
father...We are an independent country. We do not need to give our
independence away to others...do away with the thinking of foreigners"
(Nation 13-0203; Bangkok Post 2702-03; PB164).
More rhetorical flourishes are bound to appear as the archives of the mass killings of 2003 are sifted through for evidence, damning evidence.
As a student of Buddhism and Pali what I find most disturbing about this Thaksin era rhetoric is the way it systematically goes against everything the Lord Buddha taught.
Oxford Pali scholar Richard Gombrich has suggested in the first issue of Thailand's new academic journal devoted to Buddhist studies that the public should study the word of the Lord Buddha as found in the Pali scriptures, much as protestants make a habit of reading their Bible regularly (See announcement of journal).
In the contemporary world, Gombrich argues, public perception of what the Buddha said is derived too much from secondhand interpretations of best-selling spiritual authors.
If people kept the original word of the Lord Buddha intact in their mind, one would hope that the public would not fall so easily into the same state of error that they did during Thaksin's so-called "War On Drugs."
References
Connors, Michael K. (2009) "Ambivalent about rights: 'Accidental' killing machines, democracy and coups d'etat," Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 102, City University of Hong Kong [URL: http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/searc/Data/FileUpload/296/WP102_09_MConnors.pdf]Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (2004) Thaksin: The business of politics in Thailand, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books [Abbreviation: PB]
