September 25, 2005

Thai Fighter

This man is talking a big game, and I hope he's playing it too. The Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, has a serious Islamist insurrection in the south of his country, and he's giving an ultimatum: if he doesn't crush the insurgency in three years, he's asked Thailand to vote him out of office.

One of the interesting steps he's taking is banning dual citizenship for Thais who were born in Malaysia or cross into Thailand to work--and to vote. After two Thai Navy officers were beaten to death in a village, the PM observed that the incident "made us realise that it's time to solve this problem once and for all. Those militants have no gratitude to their motherland, which has given them the freedom to practice any religious faith,"

Dual citizenship is a strange thing. I'm not sure how much of Thailand's problems it is actually responsible for, but certainly it's an interesting parallel with our own border problems in which people without any loyalty to the United States, often unwilling to cut their allegiance with their homeland, have arrived en masse over a porous border.

It's a good first step, I think: Thaksin has told his people to pick a side--you're for pluralist Thailand, or you're for Islamist Malaysia. The protection of the laws in a country--in other words, to have rights-- entails responsibilities and basic loyalty as well, and it's interesting that Thailand has caught on to this distinction even as many open-borders advocates in the USA continue to miss it. It's Thailand's version of "You're either with us, or with the terrorists...and don't show up looking for welfare if you're with the terroroists.".


By See-Dubya at 04:56 AM | |