Dear Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha,
I am not going to get into the politics and responsibilities of my country, Australia, or Thailand. I am not going to get into international laws or all of our responsibilities in regards to human rights.
I am writing to you from one human being to another. Everything that is happening to this young man, Hakeem al-Araibi, seems to be just one after the other stroke of terrible luck.
He was born into the country where there is very little respect for human life or rights. Speaking up for what is right resulted in having to leave the country I am sure he loved, his home, his friends, his family. His home country punished him and failed him.
The Australian government made a terrible mistake that put Araibi in this situation. And in turn put Thailand in terrible position in this tug of war between Australia and Bahrain. Araibi's adopted country Australia failed him.
His football community, his team mates, his supporters and Australian people are doing their best to support him. Fifa and the AFC on the other hand are also failing him. Failing to advocate for his human rights and uphold their own policies. The AFC is led by a man that once called for the punishment and torture of athletes, including Araibi and Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa.
It seems like whole lot of world power is against a young man that just wanted to live, speak freely and play his football. He has a wife back home in Australia, was four days away from getting his citizenship, has a new life, his team mates and many supporters. Please do not take that away from him.
I beg you on behalf of myself and thousands of those wanting his return to release him, do not let him become a political casualty and stuck in the system because of those wanting to punish him for simple privileges you and I have. He was already jailed in Bahrain for three months -- tortured and abused. Today marks 58 days of his life spent in Thai jail. He deserves better from all of us.
Please let Thailand be the one that does right by this young man. Please do not be the one in long line of people that have failed him.
Djanna Cehic
Lawless Thailand
An online article on Jan 23 said students and teachers in Lop Buri fled, choking from their smoke-filled classrooms as farmers defied a ban on burning their nearby cane fields to prepare the crop for harvest.
There, you have the whole story in a nutshell. There seems to be no one to enforce any legitimate laws, from traffic to burning to pollution control. With all its laws, Thailand is in its own way quite lawless, and people are quite law-defying.
Penalties mean a slap on the wrist, so why bother to take heed what anyone says? The Lop Buri provincial governor should be fined, replaced and jailed. The provincial governor I'm sure is well aware of all that goes on in his province.
General Golani
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