Last night, I was having a slight headache but I didn’t feel sleepy at all so I lay on the floor watching tv for a long time.
There was nothing to wacth much because it was so late. Music channels were country mostly. Movies on ubc were so old so I turned to channel 7. The show there’s called ‘Rueng Jing Pan Jor’ or ‘Real TV.’ The first video I saw was so violent. One girl hit another girl (younger one). She hit her with hands, a pot and a pan. She even sharlpy pull the younger girl’s hair. I couldn’t understand what the hitter said at all. All I could hear was the young girl’s scream.
I decided not to watch anymore because it was far too cruel and then a preview of a next story came, it was about “Four-faced image.” It’s interesting for me so I kept on watching.
As Thai people know, there had always been the four-faced image at one corner of Ratcha Prasong crossroads. Loads of Thai people and foreigners came to pay respect and ask wishes everyday. People have really strong faith in this image because they always got what they asked for. And that image was there for a long time protecting people (well, crossroads r dangerous, right?) so people felt related to this image so much. Then one day, unexpectedly, one guy, named A-meen, bashed this image real hard. Parts of the image’s were separated everywhere. People who saw screamed shockingly. Two men, govermental cleaning officers, ran after that guy and beated him up until he died. People around there (including others who heard the news later) were satisfied and thought A-meen deserved it. They all believed that because they believed A-meen ruined their ‘faith.’
After a long investigation, now that we know A-meen was lunatic. He had to take medication from one funny farm in Bangkok. The night that this happened, his dad saw him smoking outside of the house like usual and it was already so late, he didn’t think anything would happen so he went to bed. On the other hand, when it was quiet, A-meen grabbed one hammer and walked directly to the image.
Now that A-meen’s dead. The reasons for doing that died with him. After a while, this story is gonna fade away in Thai society and the world. The image’s gonna be repaired and come back again. People are gonna forget about this whole thing and keep on paying respect.
Personally, I respect this image myself. I went to ask for something a couple of times. And I believe having faith in something is a good thing. But I still don’t think this’ going right. Those officers overreacted. He could have caught A-meen and waited until the cops came coz A-meen was going to be arrested and punished anyways. But they didn’t.
He’s got some mental disease. The police said his charge was only “destroying public property.” He didn’t have to die. We don’t even know why he had to do that. Ofcourse, he destroyed our ‘faith.’ But he’s still one human. In this case, was one.
Why is there “Amnesty International?” Because stuff like this happens. Criminals commit crimes. Murderers do slay. They do cruel things. But what if they were one of your loves, your families’ memebers, your friends? It’s true that they might not deserve a second chance. But people, they’re still human. People are not gods. They can make mistakes, big and small. When we do something wrong, we ask for the second chance. Why can’t they?
More than 50% of all criminals (including lunatic ones) commit crimes because of stress; diappointment, sadness and pain. The society is always the cause. The society adores clever people. The society worships rich people. The society does treat paupers as junk. Only two choices for them to react, one, try to be clever and rich to delete society’s insults and another, just act as rubbish coz the society already treats them just like useless junk.
I don’t think that was the result the image wished to see. He must have expected something better since he sacrificed himself to be this ruined. Why don’t we ask ourselves if something we did and felt for this are something right and fair already?
