South-East Asia (Page 1,387)

Divers from Thai-US team spot ruptured bow but navy chief denies poor maintenance was a cause

The Thai and US navies on Thursday started the salvage of the corvette HTMS Sukhothai in the Gulf of Thailand off Prachuap Khiri Khan. The navy chief said divers saw a bow rupture but he denied poor maintenance caused it.

Thirty-five Thai naval divers and 14 American naval divers will be diving together to the wreck over the course of a 19-day mission, said Adm Adung Phan-iam Navy, the Royal Thai Navy commander-in-chief.

The United States has deployed the supply ship Ocean Valor, which is also being used in the ongoing Cobra Gold multinational military exercises.

The commander said divers on Thursday would retrieve the nameplate of HTMS Sukhothai and over the next five days would be photographing the whole ship and looking for missing personnel.

Photographs already showed a rupture in the bow of the ship but it did not result from any substandard maintenance, Adm Adung stressed. More information from the mission is needed to support a conclusion on what caused the sinking, he added.

The navy had received a 200-million-baht budget for the salvage operation. The mission with the US will cost 110 million baht and the navy would return 90 million baht to the government, he said.

The corvette was still upright on the seabed and has attracted a lot of marine life, Adm Adung said.

HTMS Sukhothai sank about 35 kilometres off the coast of Prachuap Khiri Khan on Dec 18, 2022, after being caught in a storm. Of the 105 crew aboard the ship, 76 were rescued and 24 died, while five remain missing.

Last month the US warned the Royal Thai Navy about the reported involvement of a Chinese company in a plan to salvage the vessel, which was built in the US in 1987.

Consequently the navy cancelled the awarding of a contract to a local company that had proposed to use equipment from China, and agreed to abide by its agreement with the US.

The US had been pressing the navy for information about the salvage operation, since the Sukhothai came under the US Foreign Military Sales Act, was equipped with advanced weapons systems and subject to end-use monitoring. In such cases, the selection of a salvage contractor is also subject to review by Washington.

When the US became aware of the matter, it had asked the navy to abide by its agreement with Washington. It warned that failure to do so could affect future military sales to Thailand.

Thousands looking to flee as military junta prepares to impose mandatory conscription

More than 7,000 Myanmar nationals have applied for visas with the Thai embassy in Yangon as mandatory conscription looms in the military-ruled country, figures from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs show.

Spokeswoman Kanchana Patarachoke said the embassy had doubled the number of online queue tickets available to 800 a day: 400 issued by the embassy and another 400 by VFS Global, an outsourcing and services company used by diplomatic missions worldwide.

Places are fully booked until March 1, and the number of applications is expected to keep rising, she said on Thursday.

Ms Kanchana said Myanmar citizens could enter Thailand without visas under the Asean agreement, but the maximum stay is just 14 days.

But thousands of Myanmar nationals have been rushing to leave the country since the military junta announced that it planned to call up young people for mandatory service starting in April.

All men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 would be required to serve in the military for at least two years, it said.

When asked whether the rush for visas was prompted by mandatory conscription, Ms Kanchana said there was no clear information that the two developments were linked.

Two people were killed in a crush outside a Myanmar government passport office in Mandalay on Monday, a rescue worker told AFP, as thousands queued to get documents.

Three years after seizing power in a coup, the military is struggling to crush widespread armed opposition to its rule.

Around 13 million people will be eligible to be called up, a junta spokesman said earlier this month, though the military only has capacity to train 50,000 a year.

Thai authorities have been bracing for an influx of people from Myanmar, and Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has warned against illegal entry.

“They are welcome if they enter the country legally. But if they sneak into the country illegally, legal action will be taken against them. I have already discussed the matter with security agencies,” Mr Srettha said.

An opposition MP has called on the government to help Myanmar citizens who are fleeing to Thailand out of humanitarian concern.

Kannavee Suebsang of the FAIR Party said the Myanmar junta had suspended exports of labourers to Thailand via legal channels under the mutual agreement between the two countries.

Previously, 700 to 800 workers from the neighbouring country were crossing the border legally on a daily basis, he said.

“I am not sure whether the suspension of migrant workers has anything to do with the situation in Myanmar,” he said. “But if it does, it will become a major concern if the Thai government sends them back to their country.”

Deputy leader says focus should be on government economic performance instead

The opposition Democrat Party says it won’t mention the treatment of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as an inmate during the next censure debate because it is not directly related to the government’s job performance.

Key economic issues such as the lack of progress in the government’s much-hyped digital wallet programme are of more immediate relevance, Democrat deputy leader Chaichana Detdecho said on Thursday.

“We may not talk about the illness of Thaksin because Thaksin is the affected party,” said the Nakhon Si Thammarat MP. “He returned home and reunited with his family. The issue came to an end. All the rest concerns the justice system.

“Today society has no doubts about Thaksin but wonders if there are double standards. … I would like to ask the director-general of the Department of Corrections to give a clear answer.”

Mr Chaichana said the party expected a censure debate to take place before the end of the current House session in April. The Democrats intend to discuss the digital wallet scheme and the government’s announced policies to raise the minimum daily wage and salaries of graduates. The government has not realised those policies, he said.

Nine months ago Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin told the public that his government would give a 10,000-baht digital money handout to people aged over 16 years, and that it would not seek a loan to fund the 500-billion-baht programme.

Since then, he said, almost no progress has been made on the digital wallet scheme. It is now expected to begin in May at the earliest, and the government has said it would need to borrow the money needed to pay for it.

As well, Mr Chaichana said, the government has not realised its promise to raise the minimum daily wage to 600 baht and increase the minimum salaries of workers with bachelor’s degrees degrees to 25,000 baht.

The Pheu Thai Party in fact promised an increase in the minimum wage to 600 baht a day by the end of its term in 2027. It aimed to raise the wage to 400 baht by the end of 2023 but that sum was deemed unrealistically high by the independent national wage committee.

“I think that in a censure debate, we should criticise the performance of the government,” Mr Chaichana said.

The Senate is planning a general debate without a vote on the government’s work performance from 9am to midnight on March 25, Senate Speaker Pornpetch Wichitcholchai said this week.

Thaksin, 74, was paroled on Sunday after spending six months at Police General Hospital. He never spent a single night behind bars.

When he returned to the country after 15 years of self-imposed exile, he was sentenced to eight years in jail in connection with offences dating back to his time in office prior to 2006. Later the term was reduced to one year due to a royal pardon.

He was eligible for parole this month because he is old, seriously ill and had already served at least half of his term, corrections officials said.

However, public scepticism persists about the nature and extent of Thaksin’s illnesses, and whether he received special treatment.

Move Forward Party leader Chaithawat Tulathon said last week that he was aware of only three cases in which a prisoner was allowed to spend more than 120 days in a hospital outside the prison system. Thaksin was one, and the other two were mentally ill, he said.

No progress has been made on the government’s showcase digital wallet stimulus scheme, says Democrat Party deputy leader Chaichana Detdecho.