Daniel Pedersen

The Courier Mail

June 7, 2001

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

AUSTRALIAN Holly Deane-Johns, 29, yesterday pleaded guilty in a Thai court to exporting heroin, conspiracy to export heroin and possession of heroin.

Having thrown herself at the mercy of the Thai judicial system at the earliest possible opportunity, she is now in limbo.

It could be years before she is sentenced, because her co-accused, New South Welshman Brian Halliwell, 55, will contest the charges against him.

Because the pair was charged together, Deane-Johns will not be sentenced until Halliwell’s case has been decided.

Given the snail’s pace at which Thai court proceedings creep, that could take years.

The pair was arrested in August last year in Bangkok.

Fellow Australian and volunteer prisoners advocate Susan Aldous said there were already Australians in the Thai court system who had been fighting drug charges for more than four years.

During a lull in yesterday’s court proceedings Deane-Johns urged Halliwell to enter a guilty plea.

Halliwell is charged with possession of more than 100gm of heroin and could face a death sentence if found guilty.

The longer the case drags on the more likely he is to receive such a sentence.

One hope for Deane-Johns is a treaty that is likely to be formalised later this month between Australia and Thailand.

The agreement will allow Australian prisoners to be transferred home after a period of incarceration. The same will go for Thais serving time in Australia.

Once signed, it will probably take another 12 months before the first of the prisoners will be considered for the transfer scheme, at which time a long assessment period would begin.

And it is likely the Thai authorities will demand any prisoner serve at least four to eight years of their sentence in Thailand before using the agreement.

After yesterday’s proceedings both prisoners were returned to their respective prisons.

For Deane-Johns it marked the beginning of what promises to be a long and agonising wait.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

January 26, 2002

By Daniel Pedersen

Thailand

A murder spells trouble for a privileged Thai family, writes Daniel Pedersen in Bangkok.

THE murder trial of former Thai army officer Duangchalerm Yoobamrung began last week without him.

In fact, since October 29 last year, when police allege Duangchalerm executed an undercover police officer in a bar, apparently because the officer stepped on his toes, a massive hunt has failed to net him.

It only took a couple of hours after the police officer’s death for investigators to issue an arrest warrant for the 29-year-old army sub-lieutenant.

But he was in hiding, leaving only a note stating his innocence.

Some sources say he is at home with his father, a senior New Aspiration Party politician. Others claim he has been sighted on the Thai-Burma border with a senior army commander.

But the most likely scenario, it seems, is that he has fled to neighbouring Cambodia.

For the most part Cambodia is a lawless state, and Duangchalerm is thought to be on the small island of Koh Kong, opposite Thailand’s Trat province in the far south. Captain Nopporn Wuthironarit, commander of the Trat marine corps, believes Cambodia would be a logical choice for the fugitive because he could get a passport in Phnom Penh to travel anywhere in the world.

The allegation is that late on the night of October 29 in Club Twenty, part of the swanky Chao Phraya Hotel on Ratchcadapisek Rd, Bangkok, Duangchalerm pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot Sergeant Suvichai Rodwimud in the head at point blank range.

Police say they have witnesses willing to testify against Duangchalerm, and those witnesses have been placed under maximum protection.

The reputations of the men of the Yoobamrung family precede them.

Their father, Chalerm, is a senior member of the ruling coalition and a police captain himself.

In fact, until about a week after the incident, he was New Aspiration’s deputy leader, second-in-command only to Deputy Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaidyudh.

Chalerm has three sons, upon whom he dotes, and his boys have the uncanny ability to become involved in a brawl at almost any licensed premise they enter.

His other sons, Wanchalerm and Artharn, both police sub-lieutenants, are accused of trying to help Duangchalerm flee the scene of the alleged crime.

Police officers present at the scene, who had been drinking with Suvichai, claim Wanchalerm pulled a gun on them as his younger brother made good his escape.

Duangchalerm himself has been accused of being responsible for 12 violent incidents in the past two years in which the police have been involved.

He has never been found guilty of anything.

In the dynamic world of Thai politics, Chalerm is considered something of a master when it comes to diversionary tactics.

When police established the calibre of bullet that killed Suvichai, they found Chalerm and his wife Lamnao owned two guns of the same calibre.

These are among their 40 other firearms and 100 personal vehicles.

A subsequent raid on the family compound by scores of police failed to find Duangchalerm or the family’s two 6.35mm pistols.

On December 3, Chalerm claimed to have merely misplaced them and said he would undoubtedly find them if he continued his search.

He is yet to produce the pistols.

Chalerm also made conflicting statements almost daily after the murder.

A new lead in the case came on January 12 when a diesel and fertiliser bomb exploded in a casino in the Cambodian border town of Poipet, killing a guard.

It was reported that among those who fled the casino after the blast were members of Duangchalerm’s family.

Law enforcement officials were quick to suggest the clan may have been there to farewell Duangchalerm before he disappeared to a third country.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

February 25, 2006

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

PRIME Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, facing a mounting campaign to force him to quit, last night said he would call an early general election, three years before it was due.

"I dissolve Parliament," he told reporters after an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

"No reshuffle," he added after a senior official had said a cabinet change was "very likely".

Mr Thaksin’s announcement came as protesters pledged to take their people-power campaign against Mr Thaksin to another level this weekend.

Organisers say they will bring at least 100,000 people on to the streets of central Bangkok tomorrow and stay there until Mr Thaksin goes.

The flashpoint that made such a gathering possible was Mr Thaksin’s tax-free sale of his Shin Corporation to an investment arm of the Singapore Government.

The public outcry over claims that Mr Thaksin had sold the country down the drain drove a group of senators to petition the Constitution Court for his impeachment. Last week he narrowly escaped their first attempt.

Mr Thaksin came to power on a promise to give every village a one-million-baht revolving fund in a bid to reduce poverty.

The plan was that villagers could borrow from the fund, repay it and then other villagers in turn could borrow, in effect giving people a chance to lift themselves from the mire of poverty. But critics say the scheme fell at the first hurdle, and villagers instead bought new mobile phones and motor vehicles with the money and then failed to pay it back.

Many of the new phones were bought from AIS, a division of Shin Corp, until recently owned by Mr Thaksin’s family.

English-language daily The Nation has described Mr Thaksin’s election promises as vote-buying.

But the residents in poor neighbourhoods and rural areas still support Mr Thaksin despite the failure of his populist policies.

In a bid to hold on, Mr Thaksin is promising debt-relief schemes. He recently starred in a reality television program in which he visited the impoverished rural village of At Samat and handed out money.

Political observers believe Mr Thaksin’s only hope of survival is a snap election.

More than 130 universities have called for him to be ousted — unprecedented in a country where educational institutions are traditionally split along ideological lines.

And Mr Thaksin’s former mentor, Major-General Chamlong Srimuang, who introduced him to politics in 1996, has vowed to hound him until he steps down.

If General Chamlong succeeds it will not be the first time. He organised the 1992 Black May protests, which ousted military dictator Suchinda Krapayoon.

The military powerbroker said Mr Thaksin’s sale of Shin Corp for 73 billion baht (more than $24 million) was the straw that broke the camel’s back for him.

The sale went through on January 23, just three days after new foreign ownership rules relating to telecommunications companies came into force. The new rules permit 49 per cent foreign ownership and Mr Thaksin’s family sold 49 per cent of Shin Corp.

The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday said Mr Thaksin’s son Phantongtae violated share ownership reporting rules by failing to report indirect holdings in Shin Corp via an offshore company in 2000 and 2002, and also violated a mandatory tender offer rule.

The commission’s secretary-general, Theerachai Phuwanartnaranubal, said Mr Thaksin himself and his daughter had not violated any reporting requirements. Mr Theerachai said Mr Phantongtae could face a fine and as long as two years’ jail.

Security forces were last night preparing for the weekend rallies, with Defence Minister Thammarak Isarangura saying he feared a repeat of bloody protests of three decades ago that left dozens of students dead and triggered a coup.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

November 26, 2005

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THE Stock Exchange of Thailand was rocked this week by rumours of a looming coup d’etat against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s embattled Government.

His administration is under increasing pressure on all fronts.

It is fighting an out-of-control Muslim insurgency in the south, corruption scandals are dogging development of the country’s new international airport and a vocal critic is drawing thousands of people to open-air government-bashing sessions.

This week, one of Mr Thaksin’s top aides and a deputy transport minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, went public, insisting he could smell a coup brewing.

Thailand has a long history of military coups, but this time observers were sceptical to say the least, some going as far as to suggest the rumours were nothing more than government smokescreens.

But immediately after Mr Phumtham made public his coup claims, the tumble on the stock exchange began, with the market shedding almost 1 per cent in Tuesday afternoon trading.

It is yet to haul back its losses.

For weeks, Mr Thaksin’s most vocal critic, Manager Media publishing group proprietor Sondhi Limthongkul, has been drawing as many as 10,000 people each Friday to outdoor anti-Government rallies.

The crowds are growing, and if such gatherings are a barometer of public sentiment, the Government would not want to face an election just now.

Mr Phumtham said he feared someone could throw a bomb into the crowd during one of the rallies, and that could create a crisis beyond anybody’s control.

Mr Sondhi’s support base is built from his audience, people who read and listen religiously to his scathing attacks against Mr Thaksin.

One of Mr Sondhi’s latest allegations was that Mr Thaksin’s sister had used a military C-130 transport plane to fly people from Bangkok to the northern capital of Chiang Mai to attend her birthday party.

Since he first began challenging the Government, Mr Sondhi’s TV program has been axed and yesterday he faced multiple lawsuits at the hands of Mr Thaksin.

The show had been screened on a government-controlled, publicly-listed television station.

Mr Sondhi’s campaign comes against a backdrop of ever-tightening media restrictions, or what the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists describes as the political and financial interference, legal intimidation and coercion tactics employed by Mr Thaksin.

Mr Sondhi has been unrelenting, even as the lawsuits have piled up.

He is calling his audiences to inner-city Lumpini Park and the people are answering the call in their thousands.

Yesterday, there were 1200 police officers on hand to manage crowds.

Mr Sondhi has drawn the Government’s blood by exposing conflicts of interest and corruption scandals.

Web boards and internet chat forums are alive with political discussion.

People are waiting to see what Mr Sondhi does next.

Political observers on Thursday ventured that Mr Phumtham’s coup comments aimed to stop people attending Mr Sondhi’s rallies, by suggesting things might become violent.

Earlier this week, top military officers moved to subdue Mr Sondhi, drawing criticism.

Supreme Commander General Ruengroj Mahasaranond warned Mr Sondhi to stop invoking the monarchy in his allegations or face the military’s wrath.

But Mr Sondhi’s website, no longer gagged by Supreme Court order, receives about 120,000 visitors daily, according to a recent survey by Nielsen Media Research.

It showed the readership of Manager Daily, as well as the company’s website, almost doubled in August.

ENDS

Courier Mail

January 24, 2006

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

ONE police officer has been jailed for three years and a further four were acquitted by a court during the week after being tried for kidnapping a Muslim lawyer who has not been seen for almost two years.

Prosecutors alleged the five men colluded to kidnap Somchai Neelapaijt, an action designed to facilitate state-sanctioned murder.

Mr Somchai’s disappearance was one of the catalysts of a Muslim insurgency that has since claimed thousands of lives.

The lawyer has not been seen since March 2004, when witnesses saw five men bundle him into a car.

He is presumed dead.

At the time of his disappearance, Mr Somchai had been representing militants accused of involvement in a January 4, 2004, raid on a military arms depot in which more than 300 automatic weapons were stolen.

Mr Somchai publicly accused police of torturing four of his clients. The clients, all Muslim men, were accused of belonging to regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, but were acquitted in June last year.

Since the arms raid, the south has been stricken by a Muslim insurgency.

Police statistics this week showed that since 2004, more Muslims than Buddhists have been killed in the south, where urban attacks on soft targets such as markets have become commonplace.

Most of Thailand’s Muslim minority lives in the south, far outnumbering Buddhists in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.

Buddhists in those provinces make up only about 13 per cent of the population.

The police statistics attributed 3138 deaths to the insurgency — 1750 civilian Muslims and 477 civilian Buddhists, religion not being recorded in every report.

But Buddhists have to this point been painted as the victims of the violence and local media has particularly focused on the deaths of four monks.

Interpreting the police figures, officials suggested ruthless infighting and treachery among Muslims, claiming those killed had been working for the government, either as civil servants or informants.

These previously unreleased figures dwarf what had previously been regarded as official estimates of casualties, compiled by the army, which put the number of deaths related to the hostilities at 1076.

Police have documented the deaths of 406 security personnel and 298 militants.

Despite the security presence sent to protect the general populace, trust in the military and security forces is at a low ebb.

Security reports from Singapore suggested Bangkok was facing a real prospect of a terrorist attack as tensions rise.

Rohan Gunaratna, a security analyst at Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies , said it was only a matter of time before Bangkok was attacked.

He said Thailand’s Government needed to expand its intelligence and work with Malaysia to stop the spread of cross-border terrorism.

"If they don’t do that, our assessment is that terrorists will attack Bangkok before the end of the year," he said.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

February 4, 2006

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THAI Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is fighting for political survival after selling his family’s telecommunications company to Singaporean interests.

His decision has caused a nationalistic backlash and strengthened calls for the Government to step down or face defeat at the polls.

Protest organisers expect tens of thousands of demonstrators to choke the streets of Bangkok today to demand Mr Thaksin’s resignation.

Until recently he had ridden a wave of popularity.

But when he sold Shin Corporation last month there was outrage.

Shin Corporation controls much of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

It has just been sold for 73 billion baht ($2.5 billion) to an investment arm of Singapore’s Government known as Temasek.

Mr Thaksin has managed to avoid capital gains tax by keeping the matter a family affair and setting up a company in the British Virgin Isles by the name of Ample Rich.

He also recently relaxed regulations for foreign ownership of telecommunications companies, opening it to 49 per cent, matching the stake he sold in Shin Corp.

Upon becoming prime minister, and having been indicted by the Constitutional Court for not having disclosed his true wealth, Mr Thaksin bequeathed his riches to his household servants.

Unfortunately, the servants were not aware of the transaction.

It seems the people who voted Mr Thaksin to power with an overwhelming majority have had enough. Groups from all over the country were assembling in Bangkok last night for today’s rally, which will be led by publishing tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul.

Mr Sondhi was once an ardent admirer of Mr Thaksin, but times have changed and since late September he has been leading rallies across the country aimed at discrediting the Prime Minister.

Until now it seemed unlikely he would garner broad support within the greater population, but Mr Thaksin’s sale of Shin Corp has forged unlikely alliances among academics, farmers’ groups, teachers and Buddhists.

Even Mr Thaksin’s own party is preparing for the worst, with a crisis meeting convened on Thursday night.

Some within the party are advocating dissolution of parliament as the only means of maintaining credibility.

The furore rattled Mr Thaksin’s cabinet yesterday as Culture Minister Uraiwan Thienthong announced her resignation.

"Under the current circumstances I have wondered whether to quit or to stay," she said.

"And now my final decision is to quit the cabinet in order to preserve political ethics."

Ms Uraiwan is married to Sanoh Thienthong, who leads one of the major factions within Mr Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party.

The Shin Corp row has exposed nationalistic tendencies in this constitutional monarchy.

Rosana Tositrakul, who is chairman of the Network of 30 Organisations Against Corruption group, said selling Shin Corp to Temasek was inexcusable, and went as far as to suggest a conspiracy on the Singapore Government’s behalf.

"We have to condemn Singapore’s action as a form of colonialism," he said.

Farmers’ leader Bamrung Kayotha said: "I think the time for Thaksin is over and the country has been damaged, and now it is up to him whether he leaves politely, or else."

About two-thirds of Bangkok residents in the Assumption University polls think Mr Thaksin should step down.

On Thursday, the Prime Minister said he would continue in office because Thai Rak Thai had a political mandate from the votes of 19 million people he had won less than a year ago.

"They may have to wait until the next life to see me resign," he said.

"Let the rules prevail as they are constituted."

ENDS

p class=”mediareportage”>The Courier Mail

February 25, 2006

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

PRIME Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, facing a mounting campaign to force him to quit, last night said he would call an early general election, three years before it was due.

"I dissolve Parliament," he told reporters after an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

"No reshuffle," he added after a senior official had said a cabinet change was "very likely".

Mr Thaksin’s announcement came as protesters pledged to take their people-power campaign against Mr Thaksin to another level this weekend.

Organisers say they will bring at least 100,000 people on to the streets of central Bangkok tomorrow and stay there until Mr Thaksin goes.

The flashpoint that made such a gathering possible was Mr Thaksin’s tax-free sale of his Shin Corporation to an investment arm of the Singapore Government.

The public outcry over claims that Mr Thaksin had sold the country down the drain drove a group of senators to petition the Constitution Court for his impeachment. Last week he narrowly escaped their first attempt.

Mr Thaksin came to power on a promise to give every village a one-million-baht revolving fund in a bid to reduce poverty.

The plan was that villagers could borrow from the fund, repay it and then other villagers in turn could borrow, in effect giving people a chance to lift themselves from the mire of poverty. But critics say the scheme fell at the first hurdle, and villagers instead bought new mobile phones and motor vehicles with the money and then failed to pay it back.

Many of the new phones were bought from AIS, a division of Shin Corp, until recently owned by Mr Thaksin’s family.

English-language daily The Nation has described Mr Thaksin’s election promises as vote-buying.

But the residents in poor neighbourhoods and rural areas still support Mr Thaksin despite the failure of his populist policies.

In a bid to hold on, Mr Thaksin is promising debt-relief schemes. He recently starred in a reality television program in which he visited the impoverished rural village of At Samat and handed out money.

Political observers believe Mr Thaksin’s only hope of survival is a snap election.

More than 130 universities have called for him to be ousted — unprecedented in a country where educational institutions are traditionally split along ideological lines.

And Mr Thaksin’s former mentor, Major-General Chamlong Srimuang, who introduced him to politics in 1996, has vowed to hound him until he steps down.

If General Chamlong succeeds it will not be the first time. He organised the 1992 Black May protests, which ousted military dictator Suchinda Krapayoon.

The military powerbroker said Mr Thaksin’s sale of Shin Corp for 73 billion baht (more than $24 million) was the straw that broke the camel’s back for him.

The sale went through on January 23, just three days after new foreign ownership rules relating to telecommunications companies came into force. The new rules permit 49 per cent foreign ownership and Mr Thaksin’s family sold 49 per cent of Shin Corp.

The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday said Mr Thaksin’s son Phantongtae violated share ownership reporting rules by failing to report indirect holdings in Shin Corp via an offshore company in 2000 and 2002, and also violated a mandatory tender offer rule.

The commission’s secretary-general, Theerachai Phuwanartnaranubal, said Mr Thaksin himself and his daughter had not violated any reporting requirements. Mr Theerachai said Mr Phantongtae could face a fine and as long as two years’ jail.

Security forces were last night preparing for the weekend rallies, with Defence Minister Thammarak Isarangura saying he feared a repeat of bloody protests of three decades ago that left dozens of students dead and triggered a coup.

ENDS