Yingluck Shinawatra: ex-Thai PM sentenced to five years in jail

Agencies
September 27, 2017

Thailand, Sept 27: Thailand’s supreme court has found the former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra guilty of negligence and sentenced her to five years in prison, a verdict delivered in absentia a month after she fled the country.

Yingluck, whose elected government was overthrown in 2014 by the army generals who still control the kingdom, had denied allegations relating to a mishandled and costly rice subsidy scheme.

The verdict was due to be delivered on 25 August but Yingluck shocked the nation, and thousands of supporters who had gathered at the court, by failing to show up.

Her lawyer cited an ear problem as the reason for her no-show. However, the court rejected the excuse and delayed the verdict, later issuing an arrest warrant. The junta chief, Prayuth Chan-ocha, ordered border checks to be increased.

Yingluck’s exact whereabouts are unknown, although senior sources in her opposition Puea Thai party said she fled to Cambodia and flew via Singapore to Dubai. She has made no public comments since she left Thailand.

Stories of her escape, possibly assisted by several police officers, have entranced the country. Some believe she may be in London, where her family owns a residence.

Authorities are conducting DNA sampling from a Toyota Camry with fake number plates that she allegedly escaped in, with results due in a month’s time. Investigators believe that at least two cars, both a similar colour, were used in the getaway. One car was as a decoy, they say.

Three senior police officers have been detained for questioning, including a police colonel who worked in eastern Thailand.

On the eve of the verdict on Wednesday, Prayuth said he knew where Yingluck had fled to, but would not reveal the location until after the judgment was delivered.

“I know, but I won’t say yet,” he told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting. “I’ll tell you where she is after 27 September. I have spies.”

Many people suspect military leaders cut a deal with Yingluck. While the politician can avoid jail time by being abroad, her departure also leaves the country without its most prominent opposition figure, handing power-hungry generals a headless opposition. The junta has repeatedly delayed elections and sought to stamp out dissent.

Coup leaders may also have wanted to avoid putting Yingluck behind bars, a situation that could have led to a resurgence of anger from her poor, rural base.

Paul Chambers, an expert on Thai politics, said: “By getting Yingluck out of Thailand, the military gets rid of a potential thorn in their side who could become a martyr if jailed, or a powerful politician again if she is not.”

The Shinawatra family is a hugely influential political dynasty, winning every election it has taken part in since 2001, but is hated by many in the royalist and military elite in Bangkok. Yingluck’s billionaire brother, the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a 2008 prison sentence for corruption.

The rice subsidy scheme, which paid farmers nearly twice the market rate for their crop, was seen by Yingluck’s foes as handing billions of dollars to her voter base as well as creating unsold mountains of rotten rice. Losses amounted to more than £6bn, according to the government.

Prosecutors alleged that the expensive rice programme was susceptible to corruption, although Yingluck is not accused of graft.

The fallout of the scandal led to violent street protests in 2013-14 that eventually overthrew Yingluck’s administration. The former leader, whose supporters called themselves the redshirts, has said she is the victim of “a subtle political game”.

A military-backed legislature found Yingluck guilty in a separate impeachment case in 2015, and banned her from politics for five years.

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News Network
January 30,2020

New York, Jan 30: Three Indian citizens were arrested by border patrol agents here for entering the US illegally.

US Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle near Massena in New York state along the county's northern border on January 24. During the vehicle checking, the agents found that two of the passengers were Indian citizens who entered the US illegally and not at a designated port of entry.

Both the passengers were transported to the Border Patrol Station for processing and charged.

The vehicle driver, also an Indian citizen who originally entered illegally into the US in 2012 and was ordered removed from the country in absentia last December, was charged with alien smuggling, a felony, which carries a penalty of a fine and up to five years of imprisonment for each violation.

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News Network
July 14,2020

Washington, Jul 14: The United States has the biggest Covid-19 testing programme in the world, better than big countries like Russia, China, India and Brazil, President Donald Trump said on Monday, asserting that America has "just about the lowest mortality rate" due to the disease in the world.

"We have one of the lowest mortality rates anywhere," Trump said at a White House roundtable. More than 34 lakh Americans have tested positive for Covid-19 so far and over 1,37,000 have died due to the disease, both of which are the largest numbers among all the countries.

The huge number of positive cases, the president said, is due to the massive testing efforts undertaken by his administration, more extensive than any other country.

"We test more than anybody by far. And when you test, you create cases. So we have created cases. I can tell you that some countries, they test when somebody walks into a hospital sick or walks into maybe a doctor's office, but usually a hospital. That is the testing they do, so they do not have cases, whereas we have all these cases. So, it is a double-edged sword," he said.

At the same time, the United States has the lowest mortality rate or just about the lowest mortality rate due to the disease in the world, Trump added. "We are doing a great job. We are doing very well with vaccines and we are doing very, very well with therapeutics. I think we are going to have some very good information coming out soon," he said in response to a question.

"But we have the best and certainly, by far, the biggest testing programme anywhere in the world. If you tested China or Russia or any of the larger countries, if you just tested India, as an example, the way we test, you would see numbers that would be very surprising. Brazil too. You know, Brazil is going through a big problem, but they do not do testing like we do," Trump said.

"So we do the testing and by doing the testing, we have tremendous numbers of cases. As an example, we have done 45 million tests. If we did half that number, you would have half the cases probably -- around that number. If we did another half of that, you would have half the numbers. Everyone would be saying, 'Oh, we are doing so well on cases'," he added.

Responding to a question, Trump said what China did to the world should not be forgotten.

"I think what China has done to the world with what took place -- the China plague -- you can call it the China virus, you can call it whatever you want to call it. It has about 20 different names. What they did to the world should not be forgotten," he said.

The trade deal with China that was signed early this year remains intact, the president said. "It is intact, they (China) are buying. Whether they buy or not, that is up to them. They are buying," he said.

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News Network
April 20,2020

Washington, Apr 20: The US wants to send a team of experts to China to investigate coronavirus, President Donald Trump has said, a day after he warned Beijing of "consequences" if it was knowingly responsible for the spread of COVID-19 which has killed more than 165,000 people globally, including over 41,000 in America.

Describing the coronavirus as a plague, Trump, during his White House news conference on Sunday, said that he is not happy with China where the pandemic emerged in December last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

“We spoke to them (Chinese) a long time ago about going in. We want to go in. We want to see what's going on. And we weren't exactly invited, I can tell you that,” the President told reporters.

“I was very happy with the (trade) deal (with China), very happy with everything and then we found out about the plague and since we found out about that I'm not happy,” he said.

The US has launched an investigation into whether the deadly virus "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

He has repeatedly expressed disappointment over China's handling of the coronavirus disease, alleged non-transparency and initial non-cooperation from Beijing with Washington on dealing with the crisis.

“Based on an investigation, we are going to find out,” Trump told reporters.

A day earlier, he warned China that it should face consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the spread of the novel coronavirus, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If they (China) were knowingly responsible… then there should be consequences. You're talking about, you know, potentially lives like nobody's seen since 1917,” Trump said on Saturday.

The opposition Democratic Party said that Trump has falsely claimed he acted early by restricting travel from China when it was little too late and he continued to downplay the virus throughout February.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US crossed 41,000 and the total infections were more than 764,000 so far.

New York, the epicentre of the deadly COVID-19 in the US, has 2,42,000 cases and over 17,600 fatalities so far. It has registered a 50-percent decline in new cases over an eight-day period.

The novel virus, which emerged in China in December last year, has killed over 160,000 and infected more than 2.3 million people worldwide.

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