Thai junta uses arms find to justify political repression
By
our reporter
9 December 2017
Five people accused by Thailand’s military junta of hoarding military weapons were charged on Thursday. The charges are a thinly veiled attempt to suppress political opposition and potentially to create a pretext for delaying or calling off elections promised for next year.
A legal official from the military’s National Committee for Peace and Order (NCPO) filed a police report last week with the Crime Suppression Division, the government agency that handles allegations of criminal activity and corruption.
Police General Srivara Ransibrahmanakul alleged that 32 grenades and ammunition had been discovered the previous week in a rice field in Chachoengsao Province near Bangkok. Without providing a shred of evidence, he immediately linked the arms to the political unrest that preceded the 2014 military coup that ousted the elected prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
The five people face charges of conspiring to possess firearms, ammunition, or war-grade explosives. They include Jakrapob Penkair, who served as a minister in the Yingluck government, and retired Major General Manas Paolik, who was Third Army Deputy Chief under Yingluck’s brother Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006.
Both men already have outstanding arrest warrants following the 2014 coup, as part of the military’s crackdown on Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party. Manas Paolik has handed himself over to Thai authorities.
The other three accused are political activists in the so-called “Red Shirt” movement associated with the Shinawatras that was bitterly opposed by the Bangkok elites including the military. The billionaire Thaksin built a social base of support among the rural and urban poor…