Police chief nomination faces delay
PUBLISHED : 28 Jul 2023 at 05:05
The appointment of a new national police chief to replace Pol Gen Damrongsak Kittiprapas, who is due to retire on Sept 30, will most likely have to wait for the new prime minister, the outgoing police chief said on Thursday.
The PM — who has yet to be selected — is responsible for nominating a suitable candidate under a new regulation of the Royal Thai Police (RTP).
Under the regulation, the incoming prime minister will nominate to the Police Commission the most suitable candidate for the job, said Pol Gen Damrongsak.
In the past, it was the incumbent national police chief who was responsible for making the nomination to the RTP board.
Asked if the caretaker prime minister can perform this task, Pol Gen Damrongsak said it merely stipulates in the new regulation that the “prime minister” is responsible for nominating the candidate.
Incumbent Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who chaired a meeting of the commission on Wednesday, declined to comment on whether the appointment would be made under his watch.
According to an informed source, the appointment — as well as the next promotion and reshuffle of other police generals — is required under the new regulation to be completed by August.
However, if it is impossible to meet the deadline, a formal request for an extension can be submitted, said the source.
There are four deputy national police chiefs who are in line to be nominated for the top job, said the source, namely Pol Gen Roy Ingkapairote, Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn, Pol Gen Kittirat Phanphet and Pol Gen Torsak Sukwimol.
Pol Gen Roy and Pol Gen Torsak are both due to retire next year, Pol Gen Kittirat is due to retire in 2026, and Pol Gen Surachate in 2031, said the source.
As seniority is still treated as an important factor when taking into consideration the selection of a new national police chief as well as the promotion of other high-ranking police officials, a list of officials showing their seniority and de facto pecking order was published yesterday.
Signed by the incumbent police chief, the announced list is required under the same new regulation on the selection of a new national police chief and the promotion of police generals, said the source.
Commentary: Oppenheimer could trigger useful discussion on nuclear weapons for Japan
TOKYO: What can we learn from a country’s choice of when – or whether – to screen World War II drama Oppenheimer? Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic was released in the United States just after the anniversary of the Trinity test, the culmination of the Manhattan Project on Jul 16, 1945, that paved the way for the postwar Pax Americana.
In South Korea, it will hit screens on National Liberation Day, which marks Tokyo’s Aug 15 surrender in World War II – something the atomic bomb is credited with. And in Japan itself, which next month will see 78 years since Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, the movie isn’t scheduled for release at all yet.
That might reflect the country’s complicated views on the war.
In the US, the movie has reopened the debate on the bomb and whether it was a war crime. These revisionist discussions, which are based on what we know now, aren’t especially helpful.
Contrary to some reports, Oppenheimer has absolutely not been banned in Japan – unlike some of its Asian neighbours, the country rarely takes such steps, even for politically insensitive content. But the movie’s distributor has yet to schedule a release date; assuming one comes at all, it will be some time after the Aug 6 and Aug 9 memorials.
JAPAN’S AMBIGUOUS STANCE TOWARD NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Even on those anniversaries, Japan tends to avoid discussion of the rights and wrongs. That’s not to say its citizens have a uniform position – far from it. A 2015 poll by public broadcaster NHK found that 40 per cent of the population agreed with the proposition that the US had no choice but to use the bomb.
Interestingly, in Hiroshima, that number was 44 per cent – higher than the country at large – and topped those who called it “unforgivable”.
Struggling to rebuild their lives after prison, homeless ex-offenders find hope in a halfway house in Geylang
First-time residents, who walk in or are referred by prisons and medical institutions, have to undergo an initial assessment before they can get a spot at the shelter. The shelter sees around 30 to 50 referrals a month, and aims to take in about seven to 10 men each month.
Admission criteria require them to be Singaporean, have been released from prison within the last three years and possess basic English proficiency so they can understand the programme, added Mr Nurdin.
Treatment criteria, on the other hand, cover “how open, willing and authentic they are during the interview and in terms of their recovery progress”.
Despite the stringent criteria, Mr Kalay wasn’t asked to leave even after getting caught drinking and smoking. He realises that he would have been “straight away kicked (out)” at most other places with his transgressions.
“I was very (ashamed). They trust me then I go and do this nonsense. I learnt that people really care for you. But if you don’t care for yourself, (that is a) problem already,” he said.
Mr Kalay is determined to keep on the straight and narrow this time. Admitting that he used to throw around the word “change” loosely, he now knows “who I am (and) why I’m here” and what he needs to change about himself before he leaves the shelter.
Some things have already changed. For one, he now enjoys running, participating in a 5km run in June which made him “very happy”.
He even planned to take part in HCSA’s fundraising challenge “Everesting for Second Chances” – open to the public until the end of July – in support of ex-offenders before work got in the way.
Commentary: India’s rice export ban will damage its claim to lead the Global South
Indian bureaucrats like to claim – including at the World Trade Organization – that their restrictive trade policies are meant to protect our millions of subsistence farmers.
In practice, however, farmers are the last thing on policymakers’ minds. If agricultural income was the government’s number-one priority, it would not shut down exports just as prices are rising and farmers have an opportunity to make a rare profit.
DECISIONS HAVE GLOBAL RAMIFICATIONS
If India is to take on a leading role in the world, it must understand that its decisions have global ramifications. Even in richer countries such as the US, consumers – many from the Indian diaspora – have stampeded supermarkets in attempts to hoard various Indian varieties of rice.
Indian policymakers have their defence ready against such complaints. They will point out that the ban doesn’t extend to the most popular Indian variant, basmati. This will be little consolation to Indians abroad, particularly those from South India, who prefer shorter-grain varieties.
They could also, with perfect truth, point out that in spite of the ban on exports announced last year, India actually shipped out almost twice as much wheat during the summer of 2022 as it had the previous year. This wasn’t because of leakages in the system. Partly, it was because contracts signed before the ban were still fulfilled.
But it was also because other governments could lobby Indian officials to make exceptions for specific wheat shipments. A similar system will be put into place for rice.
Commentary: Tech solutions and loss sharing wonât be enough without vigilance against scams
Work on this framework has been ongoing since early 2022 but announcement of more concrete details has been repeatedly postponed. This is because the inclusion of third parties as an undefined and ever-expanding class beyond banks and telcos (as the CPF incidents illustrate) is always going to be tricky.
Should it also cover other similar institutions such as the Central Depository, mobile phone technology and social media platforms, dating sites, postal and courier services, or other parties whose shortcomings contribute to the leak of credentials?
Or when it comes to CPF funds and savings accounts, predominantly meant as retirement savings and possibly the last safety net for a segment of society, should there be a case for special treatment?
On Jul 4, the Ministry of Manpower said that insurance schemes were not part of the shared responsibility framework, hours after the Manpower Minister Tan See Leng suggested the government was considering insurance to protect CPF members.
One should note that the framework is expected to promote shared responsibility to avoid the moral hazard of users simply washing their hands off responsibility for their own actions. Internationally, this area is very much a work in progress.
In the United Kingdom, the Contingent Reimbursement Model has operated in the last four years as a voluntary code adopted mainly by the big banks to reimburse scam victims. Historically, it has paid about 50 per cent of the reported losses.
The United States is also studying this model while Australia is believed to be studying one similar to Singapore’s.
CYBER CRIMINALS DON’T STAND STILL
In the meantime, it is clear that cyber criminals are not standing still. They will continue to evolve, looking for new human weaknesses and technological vulnerabilities.
In some reported cases, cyber scams have been linked to human trafficking by deceiving victims to travel to foreign locations; others have deployed deep fake voice and video technology to fool victims.
Where scammers will strike tomorrow is anyone’s guess. Therefore, no single measure can be the panacea for this scourge.
3 provinces join Asean smart cities
PUBLISHED : 28 Jul 2023 at 05:00
The Digital Economy and Society Ministry (DES) on Thursday announced three more Thai provinces have become members of the Asean Smart Cities Network (ASCN).
DES Minister Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn said Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen and Rayong have joined three earlier ASCN city members from Thailand — Bangkok, Chon Buri and Phuket.
Mr Chaiwut said the announcement was made at the sixth annual Asean Smart Cities Network meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
The number of ASCN members has increased from 26 to 29 cities, he said.
ASCN is a platform where member cities collaborate with the private sector to apply technology across public infrastructures, focusing on innovative technologies and urban planning and management.
It is also a platform for cities in Asean to cooperate with allied countries such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, Mr Chaiwut said.
Meanwhile, the government’s own Smart City Project Management Committee on Thursday also proposed another six areas to be smart cities in Thailand.
Those areas, he said, are Lampang in the North, Muang Taiyong Buak Khang Smart City in Chiang Mai also in the North, Samut Prakarn in the Central region, tambon Theppharat in Chachoengsao in the East, Nikhom Phatthana Smart City in Rayong also in the East, and Nakhon Si Thammarat Municipality Smart City in the South.
He said these six smart cities would benefit about 1.8 million people.
Those new smart cities need to come up with a plan that responds well to the seven “smart” core values, which include “Smart Environment”, “Smart Economy”, and “Smart Governance.”
The kingdom’s Smart City plan currently covers 36 areas in 25 provinces, said Mr Chaiwut.
Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, president and chief executive of the Digital Economy Promotion Agency, said that the agency had produced 134 Smart City Ambassadors to work for their home towns for the initiative.
The plan included workshops named The Smart City Leadership Programme, held for more than 140 attendees from related sectors. A Smart City Solutions Awards 2023 will also be held at the Thailand Smart City Expo 2023 in November, he added.
‘Deal struck on next govt’
Ex-FFP boss meets with Thaksin in HK
A political deal involving the formation of a new government has been reached in Hong Kong between ousted prime Thaksin Shinawatra and Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the leader of the Progressive Movement, ahead of Thaksin’s plan to return to Thailand, a source in the Pheu Thai Party says.
The source said Mr Thanathorn flew to Hong Kong on Monday morning and returned to Thailand the following day.
“They discussed the possibility of the MFP [Move Forward Party] being excluded from the new government,” the source said. The source did not give further details.
The Progressive Movement emerged after the Future Forward Party (FFP), which Mr Thanathorn founded and served as leader, was disbanded over a loan he extended to the party, which the Constitutional Court deemed to be illegal.
While the dissolved outfit re-emerged as the MFP, its key figures — who were banned from participating in elections — came together to form the Progressive Movement, which has been helping the MFP campaign for the election.
Thaksin, meanwhile, is widely believed to be Pheu Thai’s de facto leader.
The revelation came after MFP secretary-general Chaithawat Tulathon dismissed a report on Wednesday which claimed the party’s key figures were planning to fly to Hong Kong to meet Thaksin to discuss the preconditions for joining a new government.
When asked if the MFP had any plans to meet Thaksin for talks, Mr Chaithawat insisted that any decision on the formation of a new government must be reached by the eight allies in the coalition.
According to sources, Mr Thanathorn flew to Hong Kong on flight CX700 on Monday and returned to Thailand on flight HX773 on Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, massage parlour tycoon-turned-whistleblower Chuvit Kamolvisit held a press conference on Thursday in which he claimed Pheu Thai had struck a deal with Bhumjaithai and the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) parties to form a government with a combined 279 MPs, excluding the MFP.
He said that key figures of the parties met Thaksin in Hong Kong to strike the deal on Tuesday — the same day Mr Thanathorn met Thaksin there, Mr Chuvit claimed.
“With the formation of a new coalition, the MFP, the United Thai Nation Party, and the Democrat Party would form the opposition,” he said.
A PM candidate nominated by the new coalition bloc would get the support from senators because the MFP would no longer be part of the coalition, Mr Chuvit said.
“The deal is designed to untie the knot [that binds Pheu Thai and the MFP under the MoU they signed],” Mr Chuvit said.
“The MFP failed in its bid to form a government and let Pheu Thai have a go at forming one, [but] Pheu Thai would not succeed, either.
“Bhumjaithai will then be given a chance and succeed. It will also invite other parties [outside the MFP-led bloc] to join the new coalition,” he said.
“Pheu Thai and the MFP are bound together. Pheu Thai cannot say it doesn’t want to stay with the MFP, so it has to let Bhumjaithai do the work because Bhumjaithai had made it clear from the very beginning that it will not work with the MFP,” Mr Chuvit said.
“Pheu Thai would nominate Chaikasem Nitisiri, but he won’t get enough support. Bhumjaithai would then take charge of forming a new government,” Mr Chuvit said.
Another source said that the leader of the PPRP, Prawit Wongsuwon, has thrown his support behind Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thaksin’s daughter and Pheu Thai PM candidate.
If Pheu Thai nominated her for the next PM vote, senators who have close ties with Gen Prawit would vote for her, the source said.
US intelligence report says China likely supplying tech for Russian military
WASHINGTON: China is helping Russia evade Western sanctions and likely providing Moscow with military and dual-use technology for use in Ukraine, according to an unclassified US intelligence report released on Thursday (Jul 27). The assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was published by the USContinue Reading
India LGBTQ+ couples: ‘My parents were ready to kill me for their honour’
Getty ImagesWhen 17-year-old Manoj – who was recorded female sex at birth – told his family that he felt like a man and loved a woman, he almost got killed.
He says his parents refused to accept him, tied his hands and feet, beat him up badly and locked him up in a corner of the house. His father threatened to kill him.
“The violence was beyond anything I had imagined,” he says.
“I had thought whatever be my truth, I would be accepted, after all this was my family. But my parents were ready to kill me for their honour.”
For a woman in rural India, wanting to assert the right to identify as a trans man could lead to sharp retaliation.
Manoj says he was pulled out of the village school in one of India’s poorest states – Bihar in northern India – and forcibly married to a man twice his age.
“I even contemplated taking my own life, but my girlfriend stood by me through it all. That I am alive, and we are together now, is because she didn’t give up on me,” he says.
Now 22, and hiding in a big city for the past year, Manoj and his girlfriend, Rashmi, are eagerly awaiting the Supreme Court’s verdict on their petition asking for the legal right to marry.
India decriminalised gay sex in 2018, but same-sex marriages are still not recognised. The Supreme Court heard 21 petitions asking for legalisation this year and a ruling is expected soon.
While others have argued for the right to marry as a matter of equality, Manoj and Rashmi’s petition, filed jointly with two couples and four LGBTQ+ feminist activists, asserts that marriage is a way out of the brutal physical and mental violence inflicted on them by their own families.
“Legal recognition of our relationship is the only way out of this life of fear,” Manoj says.
India has half-a-million transgender people, as counted in the last census in 2011, a number that activists believe is a gross underestimation.
In 2014, the Supreme Court had ruled that trans people be recognised as the third gender. Five years later, India passed a law that prohibits discrimination in education, employment, healthcare and criminalises offences against them, including physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse.
But violence from families is a complex challenge.
Violent families
Most laws and the society perceive family by blood, marriage, or adoption as the safest space for individuals, says Mumbai-based feminist lawyer Veena Gowda.
“Familial violence is not unknown to any of us, be it against the wife, children, or queer trans people. But it is made consciously invisible, as seeing it and acknowledging it would mean questioning the very institution of ‘family’,” she says.
Ms Gowda was part of a panel comprising a retired judge, lawyers, academicians, activists and a government social worker that heard detailed testimonies of familial violence faced by 31 people from the LGBTQ+ community in a closed-door public hearing.
Its findings were published in April this year in a report titled, ‘Apno ka bahut lagta hai’ (Our own hurt us the most) that recommended that LGBTQ+ people be given the right to choose their own family.
“Seeing the nature of violence faced by the testifiers, it would amount to denying them their very right to life and life with dignity if they do not have a right to choose their own family, free from violence,” Ms Gowda says.
“The right to marry would be a way of creating this new family and redefining it.”
A few months after his forced marriage, Manoj tried to get together again with Rashmi, but was tracked down by his “spouse”, who he says threatened to sexually assault both of them.
They escaped to the nearest railway station and boarded the first train that was leaving but he says they were found by their family and brought home to a fresh round of beatings.
“He was being forced to sign a ‘suicide letter’ that blamed me for his death,” Rashmi recounts.
Manoj’s resistance meant he was locked up again and his mobile phone taken away.
It was only after Rashmi contacted a LGBTQ+ feminist resource group and the women cell of the local police that they were able to get protection and escape Manoj’s family home.
They moved into a government shelter for trans people but had to move out soon as Rashmi is not a transgender person.
Escape and survival
Manoj was also able to get a divorce. But support systems that help in escaping violent families and building a new life are few.
Koyel Ghosh, who uses “they” and “them” as personal pronouns, is the managing trustee of Sappho for Equality, the first Lesbian-Bisexual-Transmasculine people rights collective in eastern India that started two decades ago. They remember clearly the day in 2020 they got a helpline call about a couple who had run away to a city in eastern India but then had to sleep on the footpath for seven nights.
“We rented a space and put them there so that they had temporary shelter for three months and they could focus on getting a job as that is the only way they can build a new life,” Koyel says.
Apart from social stigma, the threat of violence at home, disrupted education and forced marriages, many trans people also struggle to find stable employment.
India’s last census showed that their literacy rate at 49.76% was much lower than the country’s 74.04%.
According to a survey of 900 trans people in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh by the National Human Rights Commission in 2017, 96% had been denied jobs or forced into begging and sex work.
Saphho has set up a shelter to help runaway couples rebuild their lives – 35 couples have been housed there in the past two years.
It’s tough work. Koyel gets three to five distress calls daily and regularly reaches out to a support network of lawyers to find solutions.
“I have received death threats, faced mobs in villages, hostility in police stations because I am also open with my queer identity and they just can’t deal with it,” Koyel says.
When Asif, a trans man, and his girlfriend, Samina, reached out to Koyel, they were at their local police station in a village in eastern India.
Samina alleges that the constables called her a eunuch and said she should have died instead of going public with her relationship.
Childhood friends-turned-lovers, they had fled their families twice before but were brought back. This was their last chance to escape and they needed support.
“It was only when Koyel arrived that the police’s bad behaviour stopped. A senior officer chided their juniors for their prejudice and ignorance of laws as public servants,” Samina says.
Now living safely in a big city, the couple are co-petitioners with Manoj and Rashmi in the Supreme Court.
“We are happy now. But we need that piece of paper, a marriage certificate, to deter our families and community with fear of penalties or police action,” Asif says.
“If the Supreme Court doesn’t help us, we may have to die. We will never be accepted as we are, will remain on the run, always afraid of being separated,” he says.
Names of petitioners have been changed to protect their identities.
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Women’s World Cup: Steel Roses outkick men in Chinese football
Getty ImagesAs a defender for China’s women’s national football team, Xue Jiao recalls how her squad did the impossible in 2015 when they ended the US team’s 11-year unbeaten streak at home in Los Angeles.
Xue says the display of willpower showed the world why Chinese fans call them the Steel Roses. And she hopes the team will live up to that name during the Women’s World Cup taking place in Australia and New Zealand.
“Everyone thought we would lose when the Americans invited us to join the match. But football is round, you never know what will happen until the very last second,” the 30-year-old Xue, now retired, tells the BBC.
“To beat one of the best teams in the world, in their home country, and break such a winning record… that victory put us over the moon,” says Xue, who will watch the World Cup from her home in the north-eastern city of Dalian.
China has work to do to get to the next round. After losing their first game to Denmark, they have to beat Haiti in Adelaide on Friday to remain hopeful for the next round when they face England next Tuesday.
Outside the World Cup however, the Steel Roses are outperforming their male counterparts in China, a remarkable feat in a country that has long associated the sport with men.
No matter the results at the World Cup, the team will be welcomed as heroes.
“The girls have demonstrated the great demeanour of Chinese women’s football, showed their desire for victory, and that was the most valuable quality passed on by generations of Chinese women’s football,” says Huang Jianxiang, one of the most famous football commentators in the country, after the first game.
“They looked much better than our men’s team,” read one comment from China’s social media platform Weibo.
Team spirit
For years, the women’s football team has been a source of pride while the men’s team is seen as a constant disappointment.
The women’s team is currently ranked 14th in the world while the men are in 80th place.
China’s men peaked in the early 2000s, when they qualified for the World Cup finals for the first – and only time – in 2002 and came second in the Asian Cup in 2004
The women’s team, on the other hand, has a much longer history of winning at international tournaments. They dominated the sport in the 90s and hosted the first Women’s World Cup in 1991.
The women’s team also entered its prime during that decade. Captained by Sun Wen, widely considered one of the greatest female footballers of all time, the team was invincible in Asia, and won silver medals at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 1999 World Cup.
At home, the team is beloved as the Steel Roses, which is also the title of their theme song that millions of Chinese know by heart.
Xue says the keys to their success are intensive training and the close bond built among them during the sessions – a tradition passed from the old generations.
Their training hours are longer than most of the teams, she says. Each session usually takes two to two and half hours, and they train up to three times a day, from morning to evening.
“Even if the ball goes out, we will still chase it till the last second. That spirit has always been within the team,” she says.
The real national football team
While the team’s current play is not on the level of their 90s heyday, they are relatively strong compared with the men’s team.
So much so that many in China have been calling the women’s squad the country’s real gouzu, or national team – not the men.
But the patriarchal nature of Chinese society remains on the men’s team’s side.
When the Chinese Football Association unveiled plans in 2016 to make China a football superpower – a vision set out by President Xi Jinping, most of the resources and strategies focused on the men.
“The national football development plans were essentially framed in male terms,” says Simon Chadwick, professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at Skema Business School in Paris.
Xue also concedes that football in China is “quite patriarchal”.
“The financial disparity is huge, and the attention we get is not on the same level. When it comes to men’s games, the seats would be filled up a lot of times, but when we compete, the spectators are usually just our families and friends.”
As in many countries, it’s also the men who rake in the money. According to the government-backed Shanghai Observer, the average income of clubs in the women’s professional football league is 60 to 90 times less than the men’s.
Will reforms work?
The gender divide has worked to the women’s advantage in several respects. They have been spared from the noise and dirty rumours that typically hound men and this has become obvious during this World Cup season.
Since November, at least 13 senior officials were investigated or punished as part of a crackdown on corruption and match-fixing.
The crackdown targeted men’s league and national teams – one of the officials is a legendary player and former head coach of the men’s national team Li Tie.
Big money on the men’s side of the sport likely brings with it more temptation to cheat, according to Mark Dreyer, author of Sporting Superpower, a book about China’s sporting ambitions.
There is also less intervention from the Communist Party officials when it comes to management and governance, giving them wider breathing room for development, argues Prof Chadwick.
“There are regular, unpredictable, and sometimes damaging state interventions into football,” says he. “And the Chinese government and Chinese football authorities went after men. They didn’t go after women.”
However, when the Chinese Football Association issued a reform plan for women’s football last year, many saw it as a signal of more state involvement that could throw the team off course.
The bottom-to-top approach that has worked to grow football contradicts the top-down set-up of Chinese society, says Mr Dreyer.
“All this [the orders] comes from the government and filters down through people who absolutely have no idea about football by large… China can’t make it work because it can’t resolve this contradiction between bottoms up and top down.”