Comments made by Daniel Russel, a representative of the US State Department, condemned the current Thai government’s legal proceedings against deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the nepotist proxy of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, also deposed in a military coup in 2006, and guilty of mass murder, serial corruption and abuse of power, terrorism, and backing armed insurrection in 2009 and 2010.
Russel’s comments were verbatim the talking points used for years by the Shinawatra regime to fend off attempts to check its autocratic despotism, and were again repeated by the remnants of Shinawatra’s political front in Thailand after Russel’s comments, prompting Thai authorities to summon 3 senior members of Shinawatra’ political party.
During Shinawatra’s short term in office, her political party bankrupted the country and devastated its rice industry, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of farmers. Nearly one million farmers went unpaid for over half a year after a government subsidy scheme collapsed amid rampant corruption and theft. The rice scheme in particular led to Shinawatra’s impeachment from office, an impeachment the US maintains is “politically driven.”
Also during Yingluck Shinawatra’s tenure in office, amid growing protests against the regime she posed as head of, her brother’s political network employed heavily armed terrorists wielding M16s, AK47s, M79 grenade launchers, pistols, and hand grenades, killing nearly thirty unarmed protesters and bystanders including women and children, and maiming over 800 more.
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| Image: The Shinawatra regime has employed heavily armed terrorists throughout its time in power, including in 2010 (above) where militants murdered soldiers, police, protesters, and by-standers alike – caught openly brandishing war weapons. Despite the depravity of the Shinawatra regime throughout its time in power, the US State Department is still defending it, and condemning those attempting to remove its destructive influence from Thailand’s political landscape. |
Confirmation of Shinawatra’s role in the terrorism aimed at breaking the will of protesters and maintaining his grip on political power in Thailand, came from one of his most stalwart foreign media supporters, ex-senior Reuters editor Andrew McGregor Marshall, who fled Thailand and has worked as part of Shinawatra’s lobbying and public relations efforts since 2011. Marshall claims to have spoken directly with the killers and has confirmed that they were indeed “red,” the term used to describe members of Shinawatra’s political machine.
The US then, in addition to defending a deposed prime minister guilty of immense, overt criminality and corruption, is also defending a deposed regime that employed terrorism and mass murder against its own people. If Marshall’s story is true, Russel should perhaps be questioning why the new Thai government is only impeaching Yingluck Shinawatra, and not trying her for treason or for supporting terrorism.
If Marshall’s story is not true, perhaps networks like the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and papers like the Guardian should stop deferring to him as an “expert” on Thai politics.
Regardless, that the narrative employed by both the US State Department and Shinawatra’s political machine, echoes similar US-backed sedition seen recently in Hong Kong, and documented in other nations including Libya, Syria, and Egypt where protests led to wide scale violence and even full-scale war.
