chownah wrote:What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Thailand?....military junta running the country? Even when a popular democratically elected gov't is in charge this is somewhat of a joke. In thailand if you are in the way and don't get out of the way then you are guilty and proof is sort of a secondary sort of circus act sometimes....not always though.
chownah
Speaking of which, heres a situation that has many parallels to whats going on now.
Heres a quote from book thats banned in Thailand. This is my response to the random accusations that all happened to have come to light during the Dictator's reign. You'll notice a few similarities, just change the people and accusations.
Religion reverted back to a royal-centered activity, reinforcing the idea of the king’s dhammaraja and devaraja godliness. Pin also helped regain full palace control over the sangha, a process that involved one of the most crude and cynical displays of royal power during the period. In spite of gains the Thammayut sect (for background this is part of the super-always right forest tradition) had made just after the war, during the 1950s the rival Mahanikay school, backed by Phibun, retained a number of top sangha administrative positions. These monks blocked the palace’s plan to abrogate Phibun’s democratizing Sangha Act of 1941 and restore King Chulalongkorn’s 1902 code, which allowed the throne direct control over the monkhood. Leading the Mahanikay resistance was Phra Phimontham, the abbot of Wat Mahathat, the foremost Mahanikay temple, located near the Grand Palace. Phimontham’s abilities as a wat manager and leader, his monastic discipline, and his religious scholarship were undeniable. By his high rank, he was one of the monks who oversaw the king’s ordination in 1956. In the 1950s he was a certain candidate for the sanghanayok, or sangha premiership, and after that possibly supreme patriarch. Very politically minded, and with a power base rooted among activist monks in northeastern temples, Phimontham had long fought Thammayut elitism as well as government oppression of peasants. When the government said communists should not be allowed in temples, Phimontham countered that a good monk will accept anyone, communist or not. Phimontham’s obstinacy and political views rendered him, to the palace and government, a serious threat. Beginning in the Sarit period, they took strong steps to repress him. In 1958 the Thammayut supreme patriarch died. The presumed heir was the sangha prime minister Plot Kittisophana, a Mahanikay monk whom palace offcials had found fairly cooperative. But they worried that Plot’s vacated sanghanayok place would fall to Phimontham. Working in the palace’s favor was the fact that Plot himself deeply disliked Phimontham. After the supreme patriarch died, the palace, represented by Pin and Prince Dhani, cut a deal in which Plot would be promoted in exchange for freezing Phimontham’s rise. Plot also agreed to abrogate the 1941 Sangha Act and reinstate the royalist act of 1902. Days after his installation on May 5, 1960, Plot obliged. He named the Thammayut monk Juan Uttayi sangha premier. A few weeks later, after the new sangha cabinet declared a policy of weeding out communist monks, Phimontham was arrested and charged by police, falsely, with homosexual behavior, improper dress, and communist leanings, and was ordered to disrobe. When he refused, in October Sarit and Pin had him dislodged as Wat Mahathat abbot. Two weeks after that he was stripped of all of his clerical titles and reduced to a common monk. The scandal rocked the sangha and the public. Phimontham was released from jail after several weeks for lack of evidence. (this was b4 they passed the law stating monks had to be forcibly disrobed if detained i believe) But he returned to Wat Mahathat as a rank-and file monk. Plot meanwhile created a new sangha act that, based on the 1902 charter, recentralized administration under Thammayut control. The sangha premier and cabinet were eliminated, and replaced with the mahatherasamakhom, or sangha council, made up of the most senior titled monks, which in numbers the Thammayut dominated. This new act had several important effects. Although doctrinal differences between the schools had become less significant, putting Thammayut on top ensured that the sangha remained closely allied with the palace, whoever controlled the religious afairs department of the Education Ministry. The monks would advance the palace agenda. This achieved, on June 20, 1962, Phimontham was declared a threat to national security for supporting communists and rearrested, under Sarit’s order. He was forcibly disrobed in a police station with Sarit and two top Thammayut sangha council members watching, and imprisoned for four years. In prison he wore white robes as a symbol of his rejection of civil and royal authority over the sangha. Phimontham’s neutralization completed the palace’s capture of national culture. In schools and temples, history, worship, and tradition could now be manipulated to ensure unquestioning support for Chakri culture and power, and for the triune of nation, religion, and king. By the mid-1960s the memory of 1932 and the Phibun-Pridi interregnum was almost completely snuffed out, or twisted into something evil"
The King Never Smiles. Pg 152-154
For the safety of ppl in Thailand i will not provide a link, dont want any1 getting arrested. Especially with that Single Gateway thing.