After having rather huffily put down my pen after the UK Government web guidelines debacle, I checked my email.
Now it is no secret that I write the JusticeForTom site (it is not brilliant, but it will do). When I went to do the final email check before bed – I was a bit peeved about the guidance thing, and a bit scared that I may have upset some pretty important people (maybe) – I saw that I had a comment to approve in Tom’s blog.
Here is the comment (duly approved):
Hello Tom I’m Tony, I live in a remote rice farming community in Northeastern Thailand. My heart goes out to you and your family, I pray for you and send all the luck in the world. i too am a prisoner, I too am being made into a politically motivated example. I too have fed the poor and given my time by teaching in the local school, giving medicine and help to many poor and old people here in Thailand, but it mean nothing to a politically corrupt system as is Thailand’s. I am lucky not to be in prison, I’m a house prisoner, without my UK passport, but I face 15 years in the Bangkok Hilton. My crime was not paying the police for protection. They made up charges anyway, one was for not having a licence for a bird, a bird I saved from death. I hate to see free spirits like you being made into a political scape goat. I lived in Mombasa for a while, i’ve lived all over the world. They cannot take those memories from people like us. Close your eyes and fly out of there Tom.
Do you know my first thought? Is Thailand prisoner, can I trust them? What kind of bird? Human?
What a bad reflection on society and bias is that?
But how ace (H/T Ben Hammersley who think most things are ‘ace’) is that? Through this blog, one prisoner has reached out to another, neither of whom are convicted, both of whom could be you or I, talking to each other, through this WordPress blog.
I can say no more. Communication between experts, the experienced and the novices is already happening; if it can make this a better world to live in – hurrah.
3 Comments
June 13, 2008 at 9:45 am
Right, am taking that as the final kick up the arse required to make the JfT site beautiful!
June 13, 2008 at 11:56 am
Ha!!
June 14, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I think the site is already better if not more beautiful, though perhaps more difficult to nativgate, than the old one. The extra pages make it more official looking. Couldn’t resist that lowly opinion. Another brilliant site for social justice is http://www.avaaz.org/