News from Thailand – April 11, 2014

From now on, scrap companies will get it out of their heads to attack a bomb with a cutting torch. Yesterday, about one hundred and twenty owners, local residents and police volunteers received information at the Bang Khen police station about what explosives look like and how they should be handled.

Useful information to prevent another explosion like last week when a World War II bomb exploded, killing eight people and injuring nineteen. And let's hope that the old iron boys have paid attention and take the advice given to heart. At least they now know what all those things look like, as the picture shows.

The most important tip is simple. "Contact the police if you have any doubts about an item," they were told by Kamtorn Quicharoen, chief of Explosive Ordnance Disposal. In his thirty years of service, he has received only six reports that a bomb was at a scrap metal company.

The air force believes that the soil of Bangkok, especially near the Siriraj hospital, still hides numerous bombs that were dropped on the area in 1944.

– If I were a farmer and had been waiting since October for the money for the rice I had handed in, I wouldn't exactly jump for joy at the next news. The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives has announced that all farmers will be paid this year, even if the government fails to borrow money for arrears totaling 100 billion baht.

According to the BAAC president, sales of rice by the Ministry of Commerce [from the gigantic rice stock built up over two years] generate 8 to 10 billion baht per month. That money goes directly to the BAAC, which pre-finances the mortgage system for rice but has had no money to pay the farmers since October. In addition to rice sales, the BAAC treasury is also funded with an amount of 20 billion baht that the government has withdrawn from the budget.

– The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD, red shirts) commemorated the events of April 10, 2010 at the Khok Wua intersection in Lat Phrao (Bangkok) yesterday. Fighting between the red shirts and the army killed 26 people, including five soldiers and a reporter from the Reuters news agency. UDD leaders gave presents to nine monks, wrapped in the well-known pails, and offered them food.

Another red shirt group held a meeting in front of the office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, currently not very popular with the red shirts because the commission is investigating Prime Minister Yingluck. The group members return after Songkran.

The anti-government movement also held a memorial in memory of the soldiers who died at the time. Action leader Suthep Thaugsuban was then director of CRES, the body that supervised the enforcement of the state of emergency. According to Suthep, soldiers on Khok Wua were attacked with weapons of war. As a result, the army was given permission to fire live ammunition when attacked. At the place where the soldiers had died, the anti-government demonstrators laid flowers (photo home page).

– An illegal warehouse with fireworks in central Roi Et exploded on Wednesday evening. It took firefighters two hours to bring the blaze under control. No one was injured. The owner says she has no idea what happened.

– Police have found two burned bodies in a blackened pickup truck parked in Nikhom Phatthana (Rayong). The bodies of an adult and a child lay on top of a 5-kilogram butane canister. The car belongs to a 46-year-old man with a house registration in Chanthaburi.

– Haven't heard about train derailments for a long time, but we have one again. Yesterday morning a diesel locomotive ran off the rails between Pak Chong (Nakhon Ratchasima) and Muak Lek (Saraburi). According to the railways, the derailment was due to a malfunction of the pneumatic system when the locomotive was traveling up a slope. The engineer stopped, placed stones on the rails to prevent the locomotive from rolling back, but it did.

– The American ambassador Kristie Kenney and embassy staff have great success with the video clip on YouTube, in which they sing, dance and work each other with water. Of course dressed in Songkran's uniform, the well-known baggy flower shirts. The clip with an edit of Suk Kan Thou Rao (Let's Be Happy) has already scored 10.000 views.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/v_iXdmaR6fc[/youtube]

– The Capo, the body that monitors compliance with the special emergency law for Bangkok, may have threatened punitive measures, employees of the irrigation office in Pak Kret (Nonthaburi) did not care yesterday when they were visited by anti-government demonstrators. When they saw action leader Suthep, they waved flags and took out their mobile phones for a snapshot.

Suthep later spoke behind closed doors with the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and the head of the Irrigation Office.

Suthep denounces the Capo's threat, which is in response to the protest movement's visits to ministries so far. The Capo believes that officials should not talk to the demonstrators during working hours.

– Thirty Palestinians, who fled from Syria to Thailand last year, handed out white flowers to employees of the UN High Commission for Refugees yesterday. In doing so, they supported their request to speed up the provision of documents with which they can permanently settle in a third country.

According to one of the refugees, 300 Palestinian migrants live in Thailand, most of them in Bangkok. Many are waiting for a refugee certificate. Twenty-five Palestinians are in prison because they do not have a visa.

The spokesman quoted says his group is illegally staying in Thailand. They do not have a passport and their visa has expired. His wife is pregnant, but she does not dare to go to the hospital for fear of being arrested.

– The police have arrested six people suspected of the bombings last weekend in Yala. All six are residents of Bannang Sata (Yala) district. The attacks killed one person and injured 28 people. The clean-up work in and near the Racha furniture store on Siroros Road, one of the targets, will take at least another two weeks.

Furthermore, the police arrested four men early yesterday morning in tambon Tanor Putae (also Bannang Sata) during a raid on a home. They are suspected of the murder of a village chief and two assistants on April 2.

– The explosion in a rented house in Serithai (Bangkok) early yesterday morning has nothing to do with politics, the police say. The explosion killed a 16-year-old boy and injured his girlfriend. The police suspect that the victim brought home a nail bomb himself. He would have put it on his bed, after which he unfortunately rolled over it. The house was rented by the girlfriend's grandmother. Grandma and the pair's seven-month-old child were not injured.

– The director of the Airport Rail Link, who has been in office for less than a year, has been summarily dismissed because it turned out that he had lied during his application. One of the requirements was work experience as a vice president in a company with a turnover of at least one billion baht. However, the company that the man had given up has stated that he was not a vice president. Moreover, its turnover was only 400 million baht. The board of the SRT Electric Train Co, which operates the metro line to Suvarnabhumi, will consider measures in a subsequent meeting. He may have to pay back his monthly salary of 120.000 baht.

– If that doesn't help, nothing will help. Prime Minister Yingluck has put road safety on the national agenda during the Songkran festival. I don't know what that means, but it certainly sounds promising.

Yesterday at the Ministry of Interior, Provincial Administration Department, Yingluck chaired a meeting of the National Committee for the Prevention and Reduction of Traffic Accidents. Yingluck said she wants the 'seven dangerous days' to be 'seven days of happiness' from now on. On average, between 40 and 50 people per day are killed in traffic during New Year and Songkran, compared to 33 per day the rest of the year.

– Clever idea or not? Guest workers from Myanmar who are only allowed to return after three years after working in Thailand for four years, circumvent that rule by changing their name and applying for a new passport. That does mean that they are technically newcomers, so they are not entitled to free medical care for the first three months and seven months at birth.

But actually it is not smart at all, because the migrants do not have to return to their country of birth after four years; they can be allowed an extended stay of 180 days or until a new government is formed.

In a Memorandum of Understanding between Myanmar and Thailand it has already been agreed that the 3-year arrangement will expire: that will be 1 day. But that change cannot be made as long as the government is outgoing.

www.dickvanderlugt.nl – Source: Bangkok Post