Paetongtarn Shinawatra: “If you ask me whether I’m worried, I am...”

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has voted unanimously to accept a petition by thirty-six senators that accuses Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of breaching ethical standards. The court also voted, by a 7–2 majority, to suspend Paetongtarn from office during its investigation. The petition was provoked by a leaked recording of Paetongtarn’s phone call to former Cambodian PM Hun Sen, in which the Thai leader seemed to side with Cambodia against her own military.

At a press conference yesterday, before the court voted to accept the petition against her, Paetongtarn said: “If you ask me whether I’m worried, I am.” She has good reason to be, as less than a year ago another group of senators successfully petitioned the Constitutional Court to dismiss her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin. Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck was also dismissed by the Constitutional Court, as were Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat.

Apart from their run-ins with the court, there’s another connection between Paetongtarn, Srettha, Yingluck, Samak, and Somchai: they were all chosen as PM by Thaksin Shinawatra, who was barred from politics by the Constitutional Court in 2007. In fact, today’s announcement came the day after Thaksin attended the Criminal Court for a pre-trial hearing related to his lèse-majesté prosecution, so Thaksin and his daughter Paetongtarn now both have active legal cases against them.

In Thai politics over the last two decades, the same cycle has repeated several times:

1. A prime minister makes an error of judgement.
2. This triggers street protests in Bangkok.
3. The protests escalate, disrupting an election.
4. This leads to political stalemate.
5. This establishes the conditions for a coup.
6. The military overthrows the government.

This process happened in 2006, when Thaksin sold his stake in Shin Corp., sparking the yellow-shirt protests that resulted in a coup. It was repeated in 2014, when protests against Yingluck’s political amnesty policy provoked another coup.

There are already signs that the cycle is beginning again, and anti-Shinawatra protest leaders are preparing to follow the same playbook. The Hun Sen phone call prompted a rally of more than 20,000 nationalist protesters at Victory Monument on 28th June, calling for Paetongtarn’s removal from office, and — if the past is any indicator — they may well achieve their goal.

LeMan

Six members of staff working for the satirical Turkish magazine LeMan were detained by police in Istanbul yesterday, after a cartoon led to protests outside their offices. They have not been formally arrested, though they are accused of violating article 216 of Turkey’s penal code, which covers insults against religion. Images of the cartoon were shared on social media, and a riot broke out; police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at around 300 demonstrators.

LeMan’s current issue (no. 1699), published on 26th July, includes a cartoon showing two men — one Muslim, the other Jewish — with halos and angel’s wings. They greet each other as bombs rain down around them, and the two men appear to represent civilian casualties on both sides of the Israel–Gaza war. The Muslim character introduces himself as “MUHAMMED”, and this has been interpreted as a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed.

Islam forbids visual depictions of prophets, though LeMan’s editor Tuncay Akgün told the AFP news agency: “In this work, the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Mohammed. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Mohammed.”

Censorship in Turkey

LeMan was previously censored in 2016, when an issue was banned due to its cover illustration. In 2022, a Turkish singer was also charged with insulting religion, as was a Penguen cartoonist in 2011. Two cartoonists were charged with defamation after caricaturing former president Abdullah Gül in 2008.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of filing criminal charges against cartoonists and journalists, most recently in 2022. He has filed defamation charges against the newspaper Cumhuriyet (in 2004 and 2014), and the magazines Penguen (in 2014) and Nokta (in 2015). In 2006, he sued the artist Michael Dickinson over the collages Good Boy and Best in Show. In 2020, he filed charges against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In 2016, Erdoğan sued a German comedian who recited a poem mocking him. The poem was read out in solidarity in the German parliament, and The Spectator launched an anti-Erdoğan poetry competition that was won by Boris Johnson. Ironically, Erdoğan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting a poem: in a 1997 speech, he had quoted lines from a poem by Ziya Gökalp — “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers” — and was sentenced to ten months in jail as a result.

Mohammed Cartoons

The cartoon in the current issue of LeMan does not depict the prophet Mohammed, though caricatures of Mohammed have caused worldwide controversy over the past two decades, after a dozen Mohammed cartoons were published by a Danish newspaper in 2005. (The twelve cartoons were reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2020.) Cherian George’s book Red Lines covers the Mohammed cartoon debate in considerable detail.

Mohammed cartoons have been censored in Bangladesh, India, and Palestine. In France, a dozen staff at Charlie Hebdo were killed by terrorists in 2015, and the magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published a series of offensive Mohammed cartoons, beginning in 2006. Barely a week after the 2015 terrorist attack, Charlie Hebdo published yet another front-page Mohammed cartoon.

From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema

In 1962, a group of young German film directors signed a manifesto at Oberhausen calling for a revival of the country’s cinema, and a shift away from the nostalgic, escapist German films of the 1950s. The group released their first feature films in 1966, most notably Alexander Kluger’s Yesterday Girl (Abschied von gestern). By the early 1970s, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder were leading a German new wave (das neue Kino) that lasted until Fassbinder’s death in 1982.

Yesterday Girl will be shown at Khontemporary in Khon Kaen this afternoon, alongside Herzog’s epic Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), as part of a programme titled From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema (จาก Oberhausen Manifesto สู่ New German Cinema). The event is organised by Doc Club.

The From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema programme was first shown at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre earlier this year. Aguirre, the Wrath of God was previously shown in 2020 at Bangkok Screening Room. The Oberhausen manifesto is reprinted in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures.

Glastonbury Festival 2025

In the UK, Avon and Somerset Police are investigating the punk duo Bob Vylan after their performance at the Glastonbury Festival yesterday. Bobby Vylan, the group’s front man, led the crowd in a chant of “death, death to the IDF”, a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. The police issued a statement on social media: “Video evidence will be assessed by officers to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation.”

Police are also examining video of the Irish rap group Kneecap’s performance at Glastonbury on the same day. On stage, Móglaí Bap called for fans to “start a riot” outside court when his fellow band member Mo Chara’s trial on terrorism charges begins. (A few minutes later, after realising that his comments could be construed as an incitement to violence, he explained that he wasn’t literally asking people to riot.)

Taklee Genesis

“Make sure we’re not forgotten.”
— Taklee Genesis

Chookiat Sakveerakul’s Taklee Genesis (ตาคลี เจเนซิส) will be shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on 14th and 23rd July, as part of the พระเจ้าช้างเผือกและหนังเพื่อสันติภาพอื่นๆ (‘The King of the White Elephant and other peace films’) season. Taklee Genesis features time travel, dinosaurs, kaiju monsters, zombies, cavemen, the Cold War, a dystopian future, and the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University, all woven together into an ambitious sci-fi epic.

In a prologue that takes place in May 1992 (an unspoken reference to ‘Black May’), a young girl witnesses “dead bodies falling from the sky.” These are students who died during the Thammasat tragedy, their bodies teleported by the Taklee Genesis device, a time machine that can create alternate realities. As one character says: “Taklee Genesis was used to cover up a massacre.”

When the girl, Stella, grows up, she learns that her father was a CIA agent involved in the development of the Taklee Genesis. One of the project’s test subjects, Lawan, was transformed into a forest-dwelling spirit, like the monkey ghost in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ), another supernatural personification of the legacy of the Cold War.

Stella and her friend Kong use the Taklee Genesis to travel back in time to Thammasat on 6th October 1976, after Kong discovers that he is one of the massacre victims who fell from the sky. Chookiat recreates the violence of that day, showing Red Gaur militiamen gunning down students. A young boy stands alone on a balcony laughing at the carnage, in a reference to a smiling onlooker in a photograph by Neal Ulevich. (The artist Khai Maew created a model of the child, which he called Happy Boy.)

Thanks to the Taklee Genesis, Kong has the chance to fight back against the vigilantes who have stormed the campus. This fantasy scenario, in which a Thammasat victim is given the agency to tackle his potential killers, is similar to the alternate history narrative in Preecha Raksorn’s comic strip Once Upon a Time at..., in which the victim in Ulevich’s photograph escapes from his assailant.

Discussion of the Thammasat massacre was suppressed for years, not by the fictional Taklee Genesis device, but instead by successive military governments. Today, it’s primarily through photographs of the event, particularly the famous image by Ulevich, that the incident is remembered. In one of the film’s most powerful moments, Kong takes a roll of film from the camera of his Thammasat classmate and gives it to Stella, telling her: “Make sure we’re not forgotten.”

The Thammasat massacre is a notorious incident in Thailand’s modern history, though it has rarely been represented on screen. The 6th October scenes in Taklee Genesis are almost unprecedented: the only previous attempt to dramatise the brutality of the event was in the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ), which was cut by the Thai film censors.

Jaws (4k blu-ray)

Steven Spielberg’s iconic blockbuster Jaws was first released fifty years ago, in 1975. The new fiftieth anniversary 4k blu-ray from Universal is a repackaging of the previous edition, though it does include one additional blu-ray disc: the new documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. The feature-length documentary was directed by Laurent Bouzereau, who made the excellent The Making of Jaws for the film’s ‘signature edition’ laserdisc in 1995. (Bouzereau also directed the superb The Making of Psycho for that film’s ‘signature edition’ laserdisc.)

Jaws @ 50 has an awkward title (surely the ‘@’ symbol wasn’t necessary?), but it includes new interviews with Spielberg, who is more open about the personal impact of Jaws than he has been in previous interviews. Its release on blu-ray came almost a month before its 10th July broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.

There have already been a handful of decent Jaws documentaries — Bouzereau’s in 1995, In the Teeth of Jaws from BBC2 in 1997, The Shark Is Still Working in 2007, and Jaws: The Inside Story from the Biography Channel in 2010 — but Jaws @ 50 still manages to present some previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage and new production anecdotes. (The Shark Is Still Working, which covers the film’s cult following in a bit too much detail, is included on recent Jaws blu-ray and 4k releases.)

Unfortunately, none of the many Jaws releases on DVD, blu-ray, and 4k — including the fiftieth anniversary edition — has ever featured a lossless version of the film’s original mono soundtrack. This means, incredibly, that the laserdisc’s PCM audio is still the best version of the film’s soundtrack. (Incidentally, the same is true for The Godfather and Taxi Driver: their laserdisc PCM tracks are also superior to the audio available on any DVD, blu-ray, or 4k discs.)

Doc Talk 05 Boundary

Doc Club’s Doc Talk series of discussions with documentary filmmakers continues next month with its fifth installment: Nontawat Numbenchapol’s controversial documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง). The film will be shown at Thammasat University’s College of Innovation on 18th July, and Nontawat will take part in a Q&A after the screening.

Boundary documents the 2008 conflict between Thailand and Cambodia when the disputed Preah Vihear Temple was exploited for nationalist political gain. The issue was so sensitive that the director couldn’t even reveal his identity while filming at the temple. As he told me in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “I could not tell anyone in Cambodia that I’m Thai, because it would be hard to shoot. I had to tell everybody I’m Chinese-American... My name was Thomas in Cambodia.”

Boundary is composed largely of silent, still sequences depicting the serenity of rural life, as a counterpoint to the fierce border dispute surrounding the temple. Nontawat begins by interviewing Aod, a young soldier, in his home village. Idyllic sequences of novice monks bathing and Aod’s father fishing are contrasted with Aod describing his military conscription and the army’s crackdown against red-shirt protesters in 2010.

After footage of the Thai military firing at their Cambodian counterparts near Preah Vihear, we see damage to houses and a school close to the temple, caused by bombs and gunfire from Cambodian troops. Finally, at the end of the film, Nontawat’s camera explores the temple itself, the ruined Khmer compound that has been the subject of such bloodshed and ultra-nationalism.

Next month’s screening is especially timely, as another border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia is currently taking place. At a time when the Cambodian government is inflaming tensions, and nationalist groups in Thailand are exploiting the political crisis, Boundary represents a plea for de-escalation on both sides, and a reminder of the dangers of history repeating itself.

The film was previously shown at Lido Connect and Warehouse 30 in Bangkok in 2019, and its most recent screening was at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya earlier this year. It has been subject to censorship twice: it was cut before its theatrical release in 2013, and a screening in Chonburi was prohibited by the military in 2015. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the censorship history of Boundary in much more detail.)

Hungry for Freedom

“Do we really have to starve to death, before we get bail?”
— Netiporn Sanesangkhom

Rachata Thongruay’s documentary Hungry for Freedom, a profile of political prisoners Netiporn Sanesangkhom and Nutthanit Duangmusit, will be shown at Artcade in Phayao on 28th July. The event, ความสูญเสียในโลกที่ไม่เคยหยุดเจ็บ (‘loss in a world that never stops hurting’), marks the closing of the Phayao Through Poster exhibition, and Nutthanit will take part in a Q&A after the screening.

Netiporn died of cardiac arrest last year, after going on a prolonged hunger strike to protest against the jailing of political protesters. A leader of the Thalu Wang protest group, she had been charged with lèse-majesté, and was released on bail only after a previous hunger strike of sixty-four days.

Rachata interviewed Netiporn and Nutthanit while they were out on bail after their initial hunger strike. Netiporn tells him: “I thought... do we really have to starve to death, before we get bail?” The film has had two previous Thai screenings: last year at Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus, and earlier this year at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre during the Remembering Her, Remember Us (“บุ้ง เนติพร” วันที่เธอหายไป) event.

Sony TR-610

Sony released its TR-610 transistor radio in 1958, and sold around 500,000 of them — an unprecedented international success for the company. This was the product that established Sony as a world-leader in consumer electronics, a position it retained for the next forty years. Sony’s TR-610 was also the first truly pocket-sized radio, meaning that — two decades before the Walkman — consumers could carry around a personal audio device.

The transistor itself, and the first transistor radio, were American inventions, though Sony (and, shortly afterwards, other Japanese manufacturers) quickly overtook the US in transistor radio development. The TR-610 set the standard for all subsequent transistor radios, and its iconic design was imitated by dozens of other electronics companies: it’s the quintessential portable radio.

“Opposition to the Thai government, such as the 2nd Army Region commander...”

A leaked recording of a phone call between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen is putting Paetongtarn under intense pressure. During the conversation, she criticised Boonsin Padklang, a regional military commander: “As for the opposition to the Thai government, such as the 2nd Army Region commander, he could say anything that doesn’t benefit the country — anything just to make himself look cool”.

There is an active border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, and Boonsin commands troops in Thailand’s northeastern region, which includes the Thai–Cambodia border. In the phone call, Paetongtarn appears to side with Cambodia against her own military, and seems to accept Cambodia’s conditions to resolve the dispute. This doesn’t bode well for Pheu Thai, considering the military’s history of political interventions and the prominent nationalist sentiment in Thailand — a new alliance of yellow-shirt and disaffected red-shirt protesters, including รวมพลังแผ่นดิน (‘unite the land’) and the Thailand Watch Foundation, have called for a rally on 28th June at Victory Monument.

The call took place on 15th June. A nine-minute extract was leaked online yesterday, and the Cambodian government then released the complete seventeen-minute recording. Anutin Charnvirakul has used the controversy as a pretext to withdraw his Bhumjaithai party from the coalition government. (Bhumjaithai joined the coalition in 2023. There had already been credible rumours that Anutin would quit, as he was likely to be replaced as Minister of the Interior in an upcoming cabinet reshuffle.)

A previous government, also backed by Paetongtarn’s father Thaksin, faced similar accusations of disloyalty in 2008 over another territorial dispute with Cambodia. At that time, People Power Party foreign minister Noppadon Pattama endorsed Cambodia’s ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple, and was forced to resign after the Constitutional Court ruled that he had acted unanimously.

Rewind: A Brief History of Leaked Tapes

In 2013, Thaksin himself was caught out by a leaked recording of his private conversation with Yuthasak Sasiprapha, who was deputy defence minister at the time. (It became known as the ‘cordyceps tape’, as the two men discussed the health benefits of eating this fungus.) Neither Thaksin nor Yuthasak has confirmed that the recording is genuine, though it’s widely believed to be authentic. It was broadcast by ASTV, and a transcript appears in Wad Rawee’s book Old Soldiers Never Die, Old Royalists Die (โอลด์รอยัลลิสต์ดาย).

Last year, in leaked audio of a conversation between Palang Pracharath Party leader Prawit Wongsuwon and an unidentified man, Prawit could be heard complaining that he had not yet become prime minister: “I want the people to give me a chance to be the number one.” Former PM Abhisit Vejjajiva was the victim of a fake audio clip in 2009: in the recording, he appeared to call for the suppression of red-shirt demonstrators “using all forms of violence”, though the tape was later revealed to be a hoax.

In the US and UK, there have been some notorious leaked recordings of private conversations. The most consequential of all was the ‘smoking gun’ tape that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. British tabloids reported on the so-called ‘Camillagate’, ‘Dianagate’, ‘bastardgate’, and ‘Majorgate’ tapes in the early 1990s and, a few years later, Linda Tripp’s surreptitious tapes of her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky were used as evidence of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton.

Two of the biggest scandals of US President Donald Trump’s first term were related to leaked conversations. American presidential elections are often preceded by an ‘October surprise’ — a last-minute revelation — and one of 2016’s October surprises was the infamous recording of Trump boasting to TV anchor Billy Bush about groping women: “Grab ’em by the pussy.” Trump was impeached in 2020 after a transcript of his phone call to President Zelensky of Ukraine showed that he had tried to pressure Zelensky into digging up dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid (“I would like you to do us a favour, though”).