More criminals busted, complete with the obligatory police forcing the suspects to point at their criminal ways for the photos.
The English-language websites we have available to us in Thailand and few and far between. There was a time when the Bangkok Post was actually a good source for English language news but I think it was about 2 coup d’etat events ago where their offices were raided and they basically, from that point forward, became an extension of the government propaganda machine. They will never post anything remotely critical of the government and if they do, you can bet your bottom dollar that they either ran this past the necessary government officials before it went to “print” or they were instructed to write what they wrote at the instructions of whoever happens to be in power.
Therefore, most of the news that we have access to, in English anyway, are puff-piece stories that mostly paint foreigners in negative light and the words that are used to describe them are normally considerably more abrasive than the ones that would be used to describe Thai nationals who are accused or guilty of the exact same thing.
A good example of this would be to look at the events of a few years ago that involved the heir to the Red Bull empire who drunk-drive killed a police officer, and the wording of the news stories about him that were made in Thailand were very kind, presented him as an innocent simpleton that just had a bad night, and that there was no government corruption being utilized to protect one of the most wealthy families in Thailand, and the world.
So we end up with stories about Chinese people who according to reports came to Thailand in order to break into houses and steal from people who were not home instead.
So these two gentlemen were arrested at the main international airport in Bankgkok, in the parking lot, as they were apparently attempting to make their grand heist getaway when the brilliant detectives intercepted them in their rental car filled with stolen merchandise and cash.
I find it wonderfully amusing that the police had them display all of the goodies from the car right there in the parking lot on the ground. Seriously? What is the deal with the pointing portion of police protcol here?
Another portion of nearly any police bust is that they have to pose a photo of them calmly sitting down talking to someone who just happens to be a “rising star” of the police force and I don’t believe any of this is natural. They most likely did this already but when the photographer turned up they make them go and sit back down for the pictures where the officers involved can get a chance to get a little bit of recognition for having been involved in the bust.
Sometimes I also wonder what sort of real crimes are going on while we are fed these puff-pieces because the grand total value of all the plunder, which was almost certainly over-valued for the sake of making it look as large a bust as possible, was at 1 million Baht. This is around $30,000. I’m not saying that is too little to care about, but it hardly warrants a nationwide news story.
Had these people been of this nation, I don’t think it would have been in the news at all.
If you live in a country with biased press I know that this must suck. But at least that biased garbage is probably balanced out by some other publication that is on the other end of the political spectrum. In this country there is only one style of news that is permitted and that is the government mandated one.
I guess I don't really care. None of it really affects my life anyway.