There was a joke long ago. “In California, you can be killed by some stranger, for no reason at all!” Another guy says, “yeah, in New York you can get killed by a stranger, BUT HE'LL HAVE A REASON.”
It turns out that the reason for this terrible event in Korat can be easily understood.
As a general rule, I do not complain about my country of residence. For one thing, it's a little bit like a marriage. No one is completely delighted with every single thing that their spouse does around the house. If your goal is a happy marriage, but your wife leaves the top off of the toothpaste, you just keep your mouth shut about it. That's my habit here, as a resident alien. If I see something about Thailand that could use some fine tuning, I keep quiet. I came to Thailand as an American Peace Corps volunteer, and there was no part of our program that sounded like, “fix the place.” Besides, I'm a foreigner. What do I know about how to run Thailand? Thais have been doing a fine job of running Thailand for thousands of years. It has sometimes been the case that a Thai custom that was at first annoying to me turned out to have good reasoning behind it. So I keep my mouth shut and my eyes open. This is their country, and Thai people know best.
Yes, there is a “but” coming.
The other day, one of Thailand's little annoyances overflowed into a huge explosion of violence. Guns were involved, lots of guns. Twenty people were killed, was it twenty people? About forty people got shot, so maybe a couple more have succumbed to their wounds. May the dead rest in peace, and may the living overcome their terrible experience. There was one shooter, and he too was killed by gunfire. Events like this are common in America now, but this was very, very unusual for Thailand.
What was it that drove this young man over the edge? The New York Times quoted Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha saying that the young shooter was driven to that extreme reaction by the behavior of a real estate agent of some kind in a land deal involving the agent and the shooter. The shooter, a young sergeant in the Royal Thai Army, believed that the agent owed him some money. He believed, in other words, that he had been scammed somehow. And he wanted the money back.
Two people accompanied the agent at their final meeting. When the young soldier demanded his money, I've heard that the agent's response was, “ask a judge.” That answer was not acceptable to the soldier, and he shot all three of them. Then he stopped by his base and loaded up on weapons, including two M-60 light infantry machine guns. That is a very serious weapon, based upon the old German MG-42, nicknamed “Hitler's Buzzsaw.” He killed another soldier in the process, so this scam had produced in him an anger that had gone global, no longer being limited to the people who had scammed him in the first place.
As is now the custom around the world, the young soldier posted updates on Facebook. “Nobody can escape death. Rich from cheating and taking advantage of people . . . Do they think they can take money to spend in Hell?” (As quoted by the New York Times.)
In a strange coincidence, this Thai problem of scams and thefts committed by people in positions of some authority has been much on my mind, because I was the victim of such a scam very recently, in December 2019. It was a lawyer who stole the money from me, and a good deal of money it was. I had a matter that I wanted to take care of, and I asked a school colleague if he could suggest a lawyer, perhaps a former student of ours, who could handle it. We are both on the law faculty. He did recommend someone, and we set up a meeting. We spoke in a blend of Thai and English, my colleague served as interpreter, and I wrote notes to show in plain language what I wanted done. We all understood what was needed. The lawyer quoted me a price, and it was right in the ball park. The price included the normal and proper fee to be paid to the ministry, which is about $3,000 (95,000 baht). I said okay.
At our next meeting, the lawyer took care of some preliminary documentation, and I turned over the money. Thereafter, she simply said that the job was done. There are more details, but I'll gloss over them here. It became obvious that the lawyer had no idea what she was doing, beyond tricking me into handing over some money. She was so oblivious to the laws and procedures involved that she agreed to accompany me to a branch of the ministry where an official with three stars on her shoulder explained to the lawyer that she had done nothing useful, and that no work at all had been done on the matter that she had been paid for. Outside the office, the lawyer sheepishly apologized to me and my colleague, and she agreed to return the unearned fees.
That's the last that anyone has heard from her. I have sent her two letters, but I'm sure it's all a big laugh to her. No responses, of course. Like the dead real estate agent, the lawyer is smiling and saying, “ask a judge.” Like the young soldier, I am not happy with that answer, but like the young soldier, what can I do? Nothing, legally. Neither the soldier nor I have any practicable remedy under Thai law.
I have heard of various lawsuits over the years involving my colleagues on the law faculty. They wend their way through the courts at a snail's pace, ten or fifteen years is not uncommon. Nothing seems to be happening for years at a time. Neither are the police of any assistance in these situations. Like the police in America, they will nod their heads and say, “that's a civil matter,” i.e., “ask the judge.” In America, of course, I could simply take the lawyer to Small Claims Court, because the amount in question is less than $5,000, but this is not America. I know Thais who have spent years in court fighting over a couple of thousand dollars, with appeals and everything.
No, here it seems to be viewed like that land agent, or that lawyer, stole that money from the soldier and I fair and square, and so we should just get over it. This is frustrating, as was dramatically demonstrated by that soldier in Korat the other day. I am not a threat to inflict violence on people just because they scammed me out of some money, because I know very clearly that resorting to violence can only make matters worse for the victim of the scam. It does no good for anybody. But we have seen in America that many people, faced with one frustration too many in what may be a life full of frustration and disappointment, snap in the way that this young soldier snapped. He was drawing a line. He decided that he would no longer stand still for the cheating, lying, thieves of the world. Whatever the consequences, he was passing judgment and inflicting punishment on those who wronged him, and he was doing it now, with a pistol. Then he really went to some dark place. Did he decide that the entire world was at fault? Who can say. Whatever he was thinking, he went off the deep end all together and shot up a lot of innocent people down at the Korat Terminal 21.
I love Thailand, and, as I mentioned above, I am not one of the Farang who came to Thailand to complain. I have spent my sixteen years in Thailand teaching, helping Thai English teachers, and counseling my students to guide them to a better life. I have never been political. But in this one matter, may I suggest to my hosts, from my shaky perch as a foreigner, that better remedies are needed when lawyers, agents, or others in a position of trust, take advantage of Thai people, or foreigners, and just help themselves to handfuls of money simply because they know that they can get away with it.
I know that there are many Thai people in the same situation as that young soldier. They have lost some money, or property, or some other advantage, to some clever Thai with good connections, and when they ask for the money back, the clever boy just smiles and tells them, “ask a judge!” I pray that no one will look at what this young soldier has done and find wisdom there, because there was none. I pray that such a terrible thing never happens again in my beloved “Land of Smiles.”
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