With mounting speculation that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej will resign the Australian Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, has cautioned against anti-democratic intervention. In an interview with Sky News he said:
…we hope that the Thai political system will work its way through…we certainly hope that it will resolve itself politically through the parliamentary and democratic institutions and the last thing we want to see is an intervention by the military…We welcome very much Thailand moving back to a democracy…
This is consistent with last year’s ministerial statement welcoming the return of democracy to Thailand before the 23 December 2007 elections. And it follows the previous Australian government’s concern over the military coup that deposed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. From the good offices of Barton there is consistent support for the continuation of democratic government in one of Australia’s key Southeast Asian partners.
This at a time when, according to a number of reports, an Australian university lecturer named Harry Nicolaides, who has worked in Chiang Rai province and in the south, has been arrested for lèse majesté. The specifics of the charge appear, by my reading, to be unclear but may well focus on his 2005 novel, Verisimilitude: Is the truth, the truth?
No doubt all the relevant people are trying to find out exactly what Nicolaides has allegedly done. Nobody seems to know if his arrest is tied up with the current political crisis or whether it is, in fact, entirely unrelated and thus coincidental.
New Mandala readers who know more are very welcome to chime in with their two cents. In particular, any readers with a copy of the book close to hand may be able to give all of us some extra information on its contents and agenda.
Update: Harry Nicolaides recently wrote a provocative article that is available here. It is not for the squeamish and deals with some confronting subject matter. Nonetheless it may give some insight into the man who now languishes behind bars.
7 responses so far ↓
1 nganadeeleg // Sep 4, 2008 at 1:11 pm
All publicity is good publicity – I see another best seller coming!
Has anyone read the novel?
2 jonfernquest // Sep 4, 2008 at 2:17 pm
“we hope that the Thai political system …will resolve itself politically through the parliamentary and democratic institutions…”
…and that whoever is in power does not attempt to gut the constitution and stack government ministries with their cronies who should be serving 90-year jail sentences for sucking the life blood of the state [pocketing government money]. Amen.
“This at a time when, according to a number of reports, an Australian university lecturer named Harry Nicolaides, who has worked in Chiang Rai province and in the south, has been arrested for lèse majesté.”
Harry finally got what he wanted, after trying so hard. (I worked with him for year.) Wonder what he’s gong to do with his 15 minutes of Andy Warhol fame. Write another novel that no one would otherwise buy, I suppose.
3 rawingwong phonpiak // Sep 4, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Thank you so much, Australia, for your friendship and concern. Unfortunately, Thais are unlike Australians in that they are often irrational about what should be rational.
4 Val // Sep 5, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I don’t think the book exists, I think it’s a hoax perpetrated by Nicolaides as a publicity stunt. Very much as he did to his students once:
http://www.phuket-info.com/harry/031209-travel11.htm
5 jonfernquest // Sep 6, 2008 at 3:45 pm
“I don’t think the book exists, I think it’s a hoax perpetrated by Nicolaides as a publicity stunt.”
It definitely exists. He was bragging about it over lunch at the Thai TESOL conference two years ago. Even handed me a flyer. His buddy, nicknamed Shakespeare (because he thought Shakespeare is what beginning English language students need to learn) told me later, that he had been investigated and the books were discretely removed from the shelves.
Later, during one of those Paedophile English teacher incidents that Thailand had last year, he contributed an op-ed piece to the Bangkok Post lambasting all English teachers in Thailand as being crazy. Then he flew off to Saudi and worked at a university there for a short while. There was some Jihadi or anti-Jihadi drama at that university that got covered up in the NY Times. Harry contributed a Bangkok Post op-ed piece on his participation in that fandango. Then he tried to get a job in Kuwait, but he already had a reputation among ex-colleagues.
Harry is a walking, living, breathing PR stunt incarnate.
6 Voula // Sep 9, 2008 at 12:06 am
“Harry finally got what he wanted, after trying so hard. (I worked with him for year.) Wonder what he’s gong to do with his 15 minutes of Andy Warhol fame. Write another novel that no one would otherwise buy, I suppose.”
Jonfernquest… how can you say that this is what he wanted? Did he want to end up in a disgusting jail filled with cockroaches, lice and no running water? Did he want to put his family through anguish and pain not knowing what the fate of their son/brother would be?… My uncle is now 82 years old, do you think Harry would want to spend the next 15 years of his life locked up and rotting behind bars and never see his father or mother again?
Please think before you speak
Voula
Cyprus
7 Scott Newton // Oct 2, 2008 at 1:52 am
jonfern,
How I pity those that sink the boot in when the guy is on the floor-I feel that the cowardice is so unbecoming it must make oneself nauseous.
Harry, no matter what your thoughts, is simply an eccentric ‘entertainer’ who publicises his feelings and thoughts through articles and in the current case in questions, books.
Wow, he sold a whole seven, yes, seven copies, such was the impact of the book. Yet, a part of a paragraph has somewhow (and we don’t know how) come back to haunt him, do you?
You say you worked with him for a year- a relatively short time in one’s long life but obviously long enough for you to make such an opinion of your colleague. I would suggest there’s some jealousy in existence, but considering only 50 copies were published and just the seven sold ( I have a sixth sense you may have been one of those seven, looking for some pointers), I can’t use that as a reason.
However, if you were in his shoes right now, I just wonder how you would feel. Tell me jon, tell me how you would feel, incarcarted in medieval and inhumane conditions, sharing a single hole in the ground for bowel movements in a cell with up to ninety others ; most far more sinister and criminal compared to Harry. I wonder,,,,,,.
If Harry had access to this site (he access to nothing other than daily beatings, depression, thoughts of suicide, air unfit to inhale, a 20 minute visit amid a room full of three other inmate’s friends/family, shouting spit and phlegm through
a grill below a window- that is his only ‘real time’ he gets), I can’t imagine what he would think of you and you offerings.
I don’t know you, so I will make no comment on your authenticity or your demeanour. But just try and think humanely, even just for a split second, and imagine, what an ex-colleague of yours is going through. He has no trial date, no idea how long he’ll be kept there, no chance of bail; the squiggly-faced paedophile is going to serve less time than him- tell me that is justice jon!!!
I would be overjoyed to relay your comments posted post-jailing about Harry, giving him no chance of reply, but I think he has already taken enough in the month he has been there than you could even contemplate doing in a day.
Scott
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