04 April 2016•Update: 11 April 2016
By Max Constant
BANGKOK
Thailand's junta chief has ordered a probe into the distribution of red plastic bowls bearing a New Years message from a controversial former premier after thousands were discovered in a house in the country's north.
The order comes almost one week after a woman was arrested and charged with sedition after she posted a picture of herself with one of the receptacles on Facebook, raising scorn from media and human rights groups.
On Monday, the Bangkok Post reported junta chief-cum-Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha as giving the order after the seizure Saturday of around 9,000 of the bowls destined for supporters of junta nemesis Thaksin Shinawatra for the mid-April New Year.
“Why are red bowls given to people? Why not yellow ones or other colors?” asked Chan-ocha, after two people, including a former pro-Thaksin MP, were charged with sedition for possessing the bowls.
“Is the red one more practical than others of different colors? Why do people want to get free red bowls? Why don’t they buy one themselves?”
Red is the symbolic color of the "Red Shirts," -- the supporters of Thaksin and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra, a fellow former prime minister whose government was overthrown in a coup led by Chan-ocha on May 22, 2014.
Thaksin himself was overthrown in a Sept. 2006 coup, and then went into exile in 2008 to escape a conviction for abuse of power in relation to a land purchase by his then-wife.
Chan-ocha has claimed the distribution and use of the plastic bowls is “illegal”, because it would be equivalent to “supporting a wrongdoer”.
On March 29, Theerawan Charoensuk -- a resident of Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand, a Red Shirt bastion -- posted a picture of herself with the bowl.
It bore the words "I love the people you hate and hate the people you love. I love Poo," and was followed by Thaksin's signature.
Poo (crab in Thai) is the nickname of Thaksin's sister.
Charoensuk was arrested, charged with sedition and released on a $3,000 bail. She is to be tried by a military court and is liable to seven years jail if found guilty.
Four days later, a military raid was launched on the house of a pro-Thaksin MP in the same province.
Around 9,000 red plastic bowls, all bearing the words “Although the situation is hot, let our brothers and sisters be blessed with coolness through this bowl. Happy Songkran [the Thai New Year]” and signed by Thaksin, were seized.
The evidence is currently being stored in Suriyapong military camp in Nan province, also in the north.
The raids immediately drew scorn.
A cartoonist for Thai Rath -- the most popular Thai daily -- drew a soldier terrified by children throwing water at him with red plastic bowls, while in a Facebook post a political scientist questioned if the evidence would undergo “attitude adjustment sessions” -- coercive discussions recently announced by the ruling junta.
Thai editorials were also critical of the crackdown.
“Why be afraid of harmless red water bowls?” asked Veera Prateepchaikul in Monday’s Bangkok Post.
“Being criticized is part of politics, whether one is a civilian or in the guise of a military officer. If you cannot tolerate criticism, it is better not to be in politics in the first place."
Thaksin has also entered the fray.
“It is the custom for me to give away free water bowls to people to celebrate the Songkran festival,” he wrote Sunday on his Instagram account.
“It has been done for years without problems. It has not shaken the security of the country."
