Military has attempted to ban a book about the rice subsidy program authored by politicians from Pheu Thai Party.
On 14 June 2017, Gen Chalermchai Sittisat, Chief of the Royal Thai Army (RTA), told media about a visit to the house of Yutthaphong Charutsathien, a former Pheu Thai MP and Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives, by eight soldiers on 11 June.
Dismissing the earlier report that the soldiers went the politician house to ask Yuthaphong to answer the junta head Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha’s four questions on elections, he clarified that the visit was in fact about a book about the rice pledge scheme titled ‘Destroying the Rice Pledge Scheme, but Kill the Farmers’.
The book was written by Yutthaphong and four other former MPs of Pheu Thai Party about the the rice subsidy program of Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration, which reportedly cost billions of dollars of financial loss. Yingluck, the former elected Prime Minister, current faces impeachment over corruption charges in connection with the program.
According to the army chief, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) already prohibited the distribution of the book.
The Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), however, pointed out that it is unclear which laws the authorities invoked to ban the book. Nonetheless, on 27 May soldiers searched the house of Suchart Lainamngern, one of the authors of the book, and confiscated 190 books without presenting any warrant.
On 29 April, soldiers and police officers also forced cancellation the launch of the book at Se-Ed Book Centre in Chaisaeng District of Singburi Province. Earlier on 25 March, the soldiers and police officers cited the junta political gathering ban to disrupt the press briefing for the book at State Railway Public Park in Bangkok.
The TLHR reported that the Pheu Thai MPs said the books have been suspended from many bookstores. However, Se-Ed Book Company clarified that the book was out of stock.
The prohibition of any publication in Thailand is subjected to the 2007 Publication Act in which the nation’s police chief can authorise the ban on publications deemed defamatory to the Thai Monarchy or deemed as threats to national security or public morale.
In April 2016, the French edition of Marie Claire magazine was banned because of an article related a member of Thai royal family.
In 2014, the Thai police banned ‘A Kingdom in Crisis,’ the book written by embattled former Reuters journalist Andrew McGregor Marshall due to lèse majesté.
The book talks about Thailand’s deep political divide between the pro-establishment yellow shirts and anti-establishment red shirts, including references to the revered Thai monarchy. It also discusses the succession in terms of the anxiety it creates for Thai royalists.
The cover of ‘Destroying the Rice Pledge Scheme, but Kill the Farmers’ (Photo from THLR)
