Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd, spokesperson for the CRES, has told a Sub-Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Thailand that unscrupulous persons are claiming that 91 people were killed during the red shirt demonstration in Bangkok in April and May.

‘Some people have tried to convince the public that 91 people had been killed during the security forces’ operations, particularly on 19 May which was claimed to take most of the 91 lives.’ says the colonel. ‘The distorted claim that 91 people were killed is not true.’

Well, no one has seriously claimed that all deaths were at the hands of the security forces at one time and in one place. But unless the press, radio, TV and even government sources of information themselves are all in a conspiracy of deceit, it is true that these people died.

But not all at that spot, seems to be the colonel’s claim. Or at that time. So it could have been anybody. So why point the finger at those people who happened to turn up in combat gear, carrying war weapons with live ammunition and backed up by APCs?

One member of the Commission’s Sub-Committee, Lt Gen Pheerapong Manakij, is reported as being impressed with the information provided to them. He must have read last week’s column on how the correct response to government explanations is unquestioning acceptance, because he is quoted in Prachatai’s report of a Khaosod article as saying that ‘the CRES explained its practice …, readily answering any questions and doubts without concealment. So the Sub-Committee was aware that the CRES had worked in accordance with the law, and with the intent to solve the situation.’

However this idea – that the reports of killings between 10 April and 19 May, repeated in every newspaper, radio station and television channel, can in fact be somehow labelled as false –is gaining favour in government and military circles.

It is feared that the T&R Commission is going to hear many more ‘explanations’ from the security forces that seek to deny what so far has been accepted, or to recast the events in a way that removes any shadow of blame from the government side.

For example, it is reported that bullet casings were discovered on the skytrain tracks above the entrance to Wat Pathumwan. This evidence, together with photographs, apparently taken from within the compound of the Police Headquarters, of men in military fatigues aiming down into the temple compound, seems to support the contention that military personnel were responsible for firing into the temple ‘sanctuary’ on May 19, when 6 people, including medical personnel, were shot dead.

This is mere malicious speculation, according CRES sources. The photographs, for example, clearly fail to show any smoke, although at the time of the alleged shootings, Central World had been set alight only 200 metres away. Since it is well-known that smoke from red-shirt arson attempts always blows sideways and never goes straight up, this is proof that the pictures were taken at some completely different occasion when the military happened to be firing innocently into Wat Pathumwan.

The empty casings, furthermore, do not prove that any shooting took place. Ill-intentioned people may have been responsible for deliberately manufacturing casings, complete with pseudo-incriminating markings, and then dropping them from the non-opening windows of skytrain carriages as they passed the spot.

A military spokesperson has also cast doubt on whether the alleged military crackdown on the Ratchaprasong protest site ever in fact took place. ‘Reports repeatedly refer to the rally as occurring at the Ratchaprasong intersection,’ says the nameless officer. ‘Yet the dictionary defines an intersection as a place where traffic flows cross each other.’

The officer claims that CRES personnel have carefully scrutinized hundreds of thousands of photographs of the red shirt rally and have never detected any evidence of traffic. ‘During that period, Ratchaprasong was therefore not an intersection. So to claim there was a crackdown there is patently false. The security forces could not have done any such thing.’

Criticism of the CRES for using such logic is being deflected by the argument that the CRES itself does not exist, but is merely the product of the fevered imaginations of anti-government conspiracy theorists. True, there are military personnel working from offices in the 11th Infantry compound, but this is no more than one would expect from a military camp.

Many of the documents issued, supposedly in the name of the CRES, such as the anti-monarchy flow-chart and the list of financial supporters of the red-shirt protests, have been declared by many as fanciful fabrications with little or no basis in fact. This, argues the military, is consistent with the idea that no organization was responsible for producing them.

When asked by reporters how he could be CRES spokesperson, if there was no CRES to speak on behalf of, Col Sansern, like the Cheshire Cat, said nothing, smiled, and slowly vanished into thin air.

About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).