Bangkok Post (Thailand)
The Cambodians have made their resentment and anger heard. The Lao people, too. The Burmese, so far, have remained strangely silent. Probably the generals are too busy with their violent crackdown on ethnic Karen peasants to pay attention to how their country is being portrayed in Thai films. In less than one month, a new generation of Thai film makers has released three films that clearly show the utter failure of our education system to instil respect for other cultures and histories in our own young.
The film Ghost Game tells us that these young creative minds feel nothing about trivialising the genocide in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime for cheap thrills.
The comedy Mak Teh shows that our cinematic talents think ridiculing our Lao neighbour is plain funny. And by showing Burma in a diabolical light, the animation film Kan Kluay shows how deep these young film makers are still stuck in ultra-nationalism filled with false grandeur and prejudice.
These film makers and their producers have a common dream: to break into the international market, artistically and commercially. They may have now honed their cinematographic skills and have the necessary technological tools to do so. But if they are still stuck in Thai cultural prejudices that only talk to the Thais, they cannot expect to speak to the world, which is now rife with ethnic tensions, making cultural sensitivity more crucial than ever.
With the producers' decision to withdraw the screening of Mak Teh, the Thai industry has now got the message. Cultural insensitivity hurts foreign relations, but more important is that it can hurt the film makers' own pockets heavily.
While this monetary aspect will surely make the Thai film industry more careful with stories dealing with neighbouring countries in the future, our prejudice machine is still intact: our war-obsessed, ultra-nationalist history.
During the uproar against Ghost Game and Mak Teh from Cambodia and Laos, the authorities at the Culture and Foreign Affairs ministries relished lecturing the film makers on the importance of cultural sensitivity. But these puyai were completely silent about the education system which has brainwashed our young to harbour hatred, distrust and contempt towards our neighbours and our own ethnic minorities. While they fear that cultural insensitivity can harm relations with other countries, our own home front is already burning hot because of it. Just look South. To start with, the dominant Buddhist Thais just have no idea about the distinct history of the southern Malay Muslims and their way of life at all. Nor about how the southern Muslims suffer from state oppression and state-sanctioned economic exploitation.
But who can blame them? Isn't it our national history that teaches them to believe that Thailand belongs first and foremost to the ethnic Thais who are Buddhists? Isn't it the modern religion of development and materialism that makes them believe economic growth comes before nature and cultures?
This racist history has robbed other ethnic groups of their right to be recognised as part of the political, economic and social processes that make up what we are today. Worse, it has robbed us of our humanity. Trapped in cultural superiority and racist nationalism, many of us support state violence in the deep South, refuse education and work opportunities to stateless children, and feel nothing about evicting the indigenous hill peoples from their forest dwellings.
Many Burmese, Lao and Cambodian immigrant workers are also severely exploited in our country. Their children, like ours, need education and medical services to grow up healthy and full of hope. Yet our hearts remain firmly shut.
Films like Ghost Game, Mak Teh and Kan Kluay are mere symptoms of our own racist nationalism which grows on racist history. Unless we try to undo it, we cannot expect our neighbours to like us. And with our hearts so cold to others' misery, how can we like ourselves?
Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.
The film Ghost Game tells us that these young creative minds feel nothing about trivialising the genocide in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime for cheap thrills.
The comedy Mak Teh shows that our cinematic talents think ridiculing our Lao neighbour is plain funny. And by showing Burma in a diabolical light, the animation film Kan Kluay shows how deep these young film makers are still stuck in ultra-nationalism filled with false grandeur and prejudice.
These film makers and their producers have a common dream: to break into the international market, artistically and commercially. They may have now honed their cinematographic skills and have the necessary technological tools to do so. But if they are still stuck in Thai cultural prejudices that only talk to the Thais, they cannot expect to speak to the world, which is now rife with ethnic tensions, making cultural sensitivity more crucial than ever.
With the producers' decision to withdraw the screening of Mak Teh, the Thai industry has now got the message. Cultural insensitivity hurts foreign relations, but more important is that it can hurt the film makers' own pockets heavily.
While this monetary aspect will surely make the Thai film industry more careful with stories dealing with neighbouring countries in the future, our prejudice machine is still intact: our war-obsessed, ultra-nationalist history.
During the uproar against Ghost Game and Mak Teh from Cambodia and Laos, the authorities at the Culture and Foreign Affairs ministries relished lecturing the film makers on the importance of cultural sensitivity. But these puyai were completely silent about the education system which has brainwashed our young to harbour hatred, distrust and contempt towards our neighbours and our own ethnic minorities. While they fear that cultural insensitivity can harm relations with other countries, our own home front is already burning hot because of it. Just look South. To start with, the dominant Buddhist Thais just have no idea about the distinct history of the southern Malay Muslims and their way of life at all. Nor about how the southern Muslims suffer from state oppression and state-sanctioned economic exploitation.
But who can blame them? Isn't it our national history that teaches them to believe that Thailand belongs first and foremost to the ethnic Thais who are Buddhists? Isn't it the modern religion of development and materialism that makes them believe economic growth comes before nature and cultures?
This racist history has robbed other ethnic groups of their right to be recognised as part of the political, economic and social processes that make up what we are today. Worse, it has robbed us of our humanity. Trapped in cultural superiority and racist nationalism, many of us support state violence in the deep South, refuse education and work opportunities to stateless children, and feel nothing about evicting the indigenous hill peoples from their forest dwellings.
Many Burmese, Lao and Cambodian immigrant workers are also severely exploited in our country. Their children, like ours, need education and medical services to grow up healthy and full of hope. Yet our hearts remain firmly shut.
Films like Ghost Game, Mak Teh and Kan Kluay are mere symptoms of our own racist nationalism which grows on racist history. Unless we try to undo it, we cannot expect our neighbours to like us. And with our hearts so cold to others' misery, how can we like ourselves?
Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.
11 comments:
I want to thank Bangkok Post Editor Sanitsuda Ekachai who wrote, "The [Thai] education system has brainwashed our young to habour hatred, distrust and contempt towards our neighbours and our own ethnic minorities."
The editor also points out that Thailand has institutionalized "state oppression and state-sanctioned economic exploitation" against their ethnic minorities.
Khmer refugees staying in the UN-run refugee campas in Thailand can attest to the despicable human behavior of the Thais visiting the camps. As a whole the Thais are not respectable people that anyone should talk good about. Remember our Khmer ancestors carved the images of these original Siamese on the great wall of Angkor Wat gallery to remind the Khmer later generations the lowly homeless barbaric nature of them as a people.
Khmer Surin people and Khmer Issan people should have the Khmer national pride of the Khmer Krom people. Don't you see, you are hated and distrusted by these Siamese thoughtless barbarians. They are the oppressors of the Khmer people. The Khmer Surin and Khmer Issan people should stand up and say to these barbaric thoughtless Thai oppressors that enough is enough. Khmer Surin and Khmer Issan people should demand their rights to self determination NOW and NOW forevermore.
Echo my support to your comment. Never forget how cruel Thais treated Khmer refugees.... These people have no humanity. They respected the corrupted rich (first group) refugees most were from Lon Nol's military officers. Later they treated poor farmers like animals. Brought them so much gems and lumbers, KR were treated well.....
The Thai can lambast Cambodia all they want but with time Cambodia have no other choice except to mordernize! The time will come when Cambodian export all the Thais prejudice and hatred back to so called Cambodian-Thai living in Thailand for century as a wake up call that the Cambodian who live in Thailand are no different than those Cambodian living in Cambodia!These Cambodian-Thai can claim that they are Thai but the Thai will never let them be anything more than a peasant! The Muslim in Southern Thialand rebellion is only the beginning! In the future, the Thai will see the Khmer Surin...Cambodia don't need a neighbor like Thailand!
As former LORDS of Southeast Asia, we Khmer people must regain our majesty so that we can teach them close-minded Thai people how to be a civlized people on this planet earth.
Yes, I, too, would like thank the editor. One only hope that your remark would open the eyes of some Thais. I just want to make one comment or reminder to the Thais. That you are borned of Khmers, no matter how much you try or denied Khmer heritages.
Looked at your Language, it's a derivatives of Khmer language. The traditional dances that you have modified, it originates from Khmer. The squares column of some architecture you have had, those are the column of Angkor Wat. Your culture, language, and architect -- you have are the images of Khmer's blood scorched in your heart forever. You cannot erase us, no matter how much you try to deny our rights. We live, even the Khmer country is wipe out.
WAKE UP AND TEACHES YOUR CHILDREN THE FACTS OF HISTORY.
Yes i also express my deep thank to Bangkok Post that they can write fairly, reflectively, reasonably, and critically.
It is the time that ´the Thais should learn more about themselves. They have been so arrognat to all their neigborings.
The Thai always look down on us but they never live and develop without us. Look they hate us but they live with our pride... I always see the Thai display the Temples of Phimai and other temples which built by soryavarman II in every cultural fairs national and international without realizing that they are exposing the Khmer culture, art.. They said they are superior but they are still our students since they learn from us, art, dance, architecture, and many other things.
They said they are civilized but they are so ignorant about others and themselves and cultural sensitivity and live their lives of looking down on others without looking at oneself.
I hoe they will change. and they will realize where they are from.
Try to better ourselve so other can respect us, That human nature!
Even with Ah Kwack Hun Sen leading the country backward for all these years, Cambodia manages to thrive and develop. His Excellency Sam Rainsy said that when all the Khmer people pool all the resources together, it will take just less than a decade to catch up with the so-called highly developed neighbors such as Vietnam and Thailand. Come to think about it, those countries have no room to grow. Cambodia has lots of room to grow better and better. I think in the future we will grow so technogically advanced than others that we go colonize another planet in another solar system and call it Khemarak Planet. Hahhah.
Thank for the dream!
I am very happy to see all the comments, it is really interresting.
Actually, thai people look down on us because of the educations system and their leaders, they try to teach their young to see khmer people in the badly manner.
I want you all of you to be hopefull and not to be hopeless, if i am not confused, according to the history Khmer used to be under Chvea colonia for more than century and the great king Jayavaramon II have recused our country. Right now late use look at Kampuchea krom, Sorin and Khmer Isaan. Just only around 50 years. It is not too late and it is not neither over. We have time and chance if khmer people unify, I don't think that A Kvak Hum Sen will live more than 100 year, he will die soon because many peple damn him everyday.
When the black crow goes aways, we khmer people will see the sun light. This message is just an alarm to Siam and VN about their future, don't forget Thai is surrounding by the enemies, one day all his anemies will incorporate and destroy him to the dust.
I never heard about Khmer under Chvea? where do you get this information?
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