Pallop Pinmanee

Pallop Pinmanee ( Thai พัลลภ ปิ่น มณี , RTGS Phanlop Pinmani ; born May 25, 1936 in Bangkok ) is a retired Thai army officer with the rank of four-star general. He was Deputy Director of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) from 2002 to 2006 . After the coup in 2006 he was an advisor to ISOC and from 2011 advisor to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra . The general gained international fame through his participation in several military coups, through the killing of 32 insurgents in the Krue-Se Mosque in Pattani and the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra .

Military career

Pallop Pinmanee graduated from the Chulachomklao Military Academy in 1960 , he belonged to their final class 7, the year of the " Young Turks ". He began his military career in special units that suppressed a communist uprising. He also took part as a volunteer in operations in the Lao Civil War from 1966 to 1967, where he took over the leadership of the Special Thai Ranger Army in 1967 . These operations, which were carried out in the officially neutral country of Laos , were funded by the CIA . They were particularly directed against the Ho Chi Minh Trail , a network of paths and roads that the North Vietnamese used to transport supplies to South Vietnam and which led through neutral Laos. Around 1970 Pallop was a member of a secret seven-man commando force that committed targeted murders of communist insurgents in various parts of Thailand.

In the early 1970s he worked for the then Communist Suppression Operations Command (CSOC) - the forerunner of the ISOC - in southern Thailand, which at that time murdered thousands of actual or supposed sympathizers of the Communist Party of Thailand . It is uncertain whether Pallop himself was involved in the murders in the Tambon (subdistrict) Lam Sai in the southern Thai province of Phatthalung , where several hundred villagers - some of them alive - were burned in oil drums by CSOC troops. Pallop claims in his memoir that he only had the body of a single suspect, whom another officer killed during an interrogation, cremated in such a barrel. From this one incident the fiction of hundreds or thousands of murders emerged.

In 1979 Pallop became the commander of the 19th Infantry Regiment. He was in charge of operations on the Thai- Cambodian border. Pallop and his regiment took part in the attempted coup by the "Young Turks" on April 1, 1981, and advanced with over 100 tanks, one artillery and three infantry battalions from his location in eastern Thailand to Bangkok. However, the coup failed. Pallop fled to Laos but was arrested, detained for two months and released from the military. Since the failed coup attempt, which was put down by General Arthit Kamlang-ek , Pallop has tried seven times to kill Arthit. In 1987 he was allowed to return to military service, and in 1996 he received regular retirement.

Political activity

While still active in the military, Pallop Pinmanee was appointed to the military-controlled Senate in 1979. In 1985, he became an advisor to Bangkok Governor Chamlong Srimuang , a classmate from the Military Academy. After his retirement, he ran in the 1996 general election as a candidate for the Democratic Party in the Bangkok constituency 1, but was unsuccessful. Instead, he was reappointed a senator.

In 2002 he took over the post of deputy director of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) during the Thaksin Shinawatra administration . He had special responsibility for resolving the conflict with Muslim-Malay separatists in the three southernmost provinces. He was also appointed head of the Southern Border Provinces Peace Promotion Command (SBPPC), which replaced the Southern Border Provinces Administration Center (SBPAC), which was dissolved by Thaksin . His approach was seen as that of a "hawk" (hardliner). Under his aegis, the conflict intensified massively from the beginning of 2004 .

On April 28, 2004, Pallop ordered the storming of the Krue-Se Mosque in Pattani , in which some adolescent government opponents armed with machetes had holed up. In doing so, he disregarded the express order from Vice Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh , who was responsible for security policy , who wanted to peacefully end the siege of the insurgents in the mosque by the ISOC. All 32 insurgents were killed in the mosque during the storming. This fueled the conflict further. Pallop was subsequently stripped of responsibility for the conflict in the south, but he was not dismissed or charged. Chavalit referred to Pallop as the " General MacArthur of Thailand" despite his disobedience . He then published a book entitled "Was I wrong to storm Krue Se?" ( ผม ผิด หรือ? ที่ ยึด ก รือ เซะ! , Phom Phit Rue? Thi Yuet Krue Se! ), In which he sensationalized his alleged audacity in the Vietnam War and the fight against the communists. The book became a bestseller and made it a symbol of tough military action in the south.

In August 2006, while the country was in political crisis, Pallop's former chauffeur Lieutenant Thawatchai Klinchana was arrested by police near the home of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in Bangkok. There was a working bomb in the trunk of the vehicle containing 22 kilograms of explosives and dynamite sticks. Pallop was considered a critic of Thaksin, but denied having been involved in the matter. Thaksin officially dismissed Pallop as deputy director of the ISOC because his position was "no longer necessary". There were doubts whether the attempted assassination was real or staged by Thaksin himself to gain support and compassion during the crisis.

After the coup in September 2006 , which ousted Thaksin, the military junta appointed Pallop as an advisor to ISOC in May 2007. While the New York Times correspondent described him as the “top security adviser” to the generals, the US Embassy in Bangkok assessed Pallop's role as “very limited”. The political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak, who specializes in security issues, said that diplomacy was not Pallop's strength: "His competence is to kill people and do things with violence."

He reconciled with the Thaksin camp and joined the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) in early 2010 . During the "red shirt" riots in spring 2010 , he proposed the formation of a "people's army" to fight against the government. The leading members of the "Red Shirts" ( National Democratic Alliance against Dictatorship ) rejected this. Pallop was also mentioned as a possible backer of the "Men in Black", unidentified shooters who attacked government forces, from whom the majority of the "red shirts" distanced themselves. Following the 2011 election of the PTP, the new Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra (Thaksin's sister), appointed Pallop as her security advisor.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Somboon Suksamran: Military Elite in Thai Politics. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 1984, p. 20.
2. ^ Richard A. Falk: The Vietnam War and International Law. Volume 4: The Concluding Phase. P. 526 ff.
3. ^ ^{A b c} Thomas Fuller: Thai Security Chief Vows a Tough Stand Against Muslim Separatists. In: The New York Times (online), May 27, 2007.
4. ^ Tyrell Haberkorn: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI) / London 2018, pp. 106–107.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Ralph L. Boyce: Background on General Pallop Pinmanee , dispatch from the US Embassy in Bangkok, June 29, 2007, published by Wikileaks , 07BANGKOK3625_a.
6. ↑ Ukrist Pathmanand: Thaksin's Achilles' Heel. The Failure of Hawkish Approaches in the Thai South. In: Duncan McCargo: Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence. NUS Press, Singapore 2007, pp. 69-88, at p. 76.
7. ↑ Piyanart Srival: Southern Command - Pallop moved for insubordination. In: The Nation , April 30, 2004.
8. ↑ Ukrist Pathmanand: Thaksin's Achilles' Heel. The Failure of Hawkish Approaches in the Thai South. In: Duncan McCargo: Rethinking Thailand's Southern Violence. NUS Press, Singapore 2007, pp. 69-88, at p. 82.
9. ↑ Police defuse bomb near home of Thai prime minister. In: CBC World. August 24, 2006, accessed September 10, 2018 . 
10. ↑ Michael J. Montesano: Political Contests in the Advent of Bangkok's September 19 coup. In: John Funston: Divided over Thaksin. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 2009, pp. 1–26, on p. 9.
11. ↑ Wassana Nanuam: Retired army general lured to join Puea Thai. In: Bangkok Post , January 3, 2010.
12. ↑ Martin Petty: Q + A Who are Thailand's mysterious black-clad gunmen? Reuters World News, April 27, 2010.
13. ↑ James Ockey: Broken Power. The Thai Military in the Aftermath of the 2006 Coup. In: Pavin Chachavalpongpun: “Good Coup” Gone Bad. ISEAS Publishing, Singapore 2014, pp. 49–78, on p. 69.