Asia Times: LAND OF SMILES: Just like in the movies?


	March 23, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

LAND OF SMILES: Just like in the movies?
By Bradley Martin

Is it just nostalgia, or was Thai corruption 35 years ago somehow kinder, gentler than it is now?

A long-ago Thailand Peace Corps colleague who read the recent column Annals of corruption wrote to ask for a reaction to "Brokedown Palace", which he had just seen on videotape.

He explained that the movie, released last year in the United States, shows an Australian heroin smuggler seducing an American tourist who is visiting Thailand to celebrate her high school graduation. The smuggler invites his new conquest and her classmate/traveling companion to Hong Kong.

But before departure the smuggler sets both of the women up for a drug bust at the airport, where they are arrested for carrying two kilos of heroin in a backpack. The women draw 33-year prison sentences. The police are in on the scheme, getting credit for a big bust plus a bribe from the smuggler to ignore his other drug-runners.

"My impression was that it was wildly overdone," the ex-Peace Corpsman wrote. "I know that Thailand is corrupt, but the corruption never seemed so evil." He suggested a "scene-by-scene commentary on the validity of the portrayals".

This column can't meet that request, alas, because "Brokedown Palace" hasn't been shown in Thailand. It routinely takes many months for a Hollywood release to make it to the country's theaters and more months after that for the video versions to become available - if the flick gets in at all. Some movies about Thailand, such as "Anna and the King", are banned because they are deemed to insult Thai institutions.

We shall see whether "Brokedown Palace" hurts local sensitivities too much to be shown. Meanwhile, anyone interested in knowing whether police are really as corrupt and "evil" as "Brokedown Palace" suggests should take a look at a Bangkok Post article, Abusing other people's children.

A Hollywood movie that has made it to Bangkok is "The Beach". There's not a whole lot to this Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle. Nevertheless - since you asked - here are some answers to a few questions that may have occurred to viewers outside Thailand:

Q: Could Bangkok's Khaosan Road - the once-sedate business street that in recent years has become the world headquarters of backpackers - possibly be that noisy and grungy and full of doped-out youngsters flimsily attired?

A: Yup.

Q: Do those world travelers really and truly come all the way to Thailand and spend their time lounging in front of TV/video screens, just as if they were back home?

A: You better believe it.

Q: Does that pristine beach really exist?

A: Well, the moviemakers had to modify the existing beach to install coconut trees (because the platonic or at least Hollywood ideal of "beach" definitely includes coconut trees) and to make sure the sand would be pure white - for better contrast with the red, red blood in the shark-bite scene. The modifications enraged environmentalists, as you no doubt heard or read.

Q: Finally, is it realistic in the closing scenes of "The Beach" that not a single one of the expelled beach-dwelling backpackers is shown going to the police to point out that ganja-growers on the other side of the island have shot dead four more backpackers (for exceeding the backpacker quota on the island)?

A: It's pretty realistic, alas. The backpacker characters have been in country long enough to know that Thailand these days is overrun with gunmen - and that many if not most of those enjoy close ties to and protection from politicians and "influential figures" (that's the euphemism for godfathers), who are often one and the same.

Local press reports last weekend quoted an unnamed police source as saying the National Police Office keeps a list of some 800 gunmen-for-hire, most of them "under the influence of known politicians".

They do plenty of regular criminal work, such as guarding marijuana plantations and assassinating businesspersons who inconsiderately cause problems for their associates. But the day job of such gunmen is often to act as hitmen in attacks on their bosses' political rivals. This they usually do as pillion riders on stolen motorcycles. The cyclist-hitman teams normally make clean getaways, snaking through any traffic they encounter before abandoning the vehicles.

They've been active lately. A gunman injured a member of parliament from Buri Ram province in December. The perpetrator was caught, for a change, and said he had been hired by a named member of a prominent political family in the province. Somehow the authorities in the months since then have not managed to catch up with the alleged mastermind of the crime, whose father and brother both represent the province in the parliament.

The other day a prosecutor, brother of yet another member of parliament from Buri Ram, was shot while his car was stuck in Bangkok traffic. Again the gunman's aim was poor and the injuries so far have not proved fatal. But the high profile of such gunmen has begun to get on the nerves of the public. Top government officials seem to feel compelled at long last to do - or at least say - something.

"Some fellow members of parliament have large numbers of gunmen under their wings," Interior Minister Sanan Kachornprasart told the House of Representatives last Thursday. "I would like to ask you to stop doing that or we will be in discord."

What if the pols don't know how to break their ties with the gunsels without getting broken in return? Sanan, himself a pretty tough guy, had an answer for them: "Ask me to do it for you."

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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