Miss Universe Thailand has resigned less than a month into her reign after being harshly criticized on social media for political comments she made and her looks.
Weluree Ditsayabut, 22, on Monday tearfully announced that she was giving up the title that qualified her for the international Miss Universe pageant.
The actress and former talk show host said she was initially pleased to have won the title, but that the hail of brutal comments on social media deriding her outspoken political views and calling her fat had hurt her family.
Photo: AFP
Weluree was criticized for comments she posted on Facebook attacking the Red Shirt supporters of the ousted Thai government for what she said was their opposition to the monarchy and calling for the execution of their leaders.
“You Red Shirts, you get out of here,” she wrote in mid-November last year before winning the title. “Thailand’s soil is dirty because of anti-monarchy people like you.”
She said that because of the criticism, “the happiness we used to have disappeared totally. When I saw my mom not being able to sleep at night, I couldn’t either.”
Weluree’s post struck at the heart of Thailand’s long-running political crisis, expressing the attitude of the elite and royalists toward the government of ousted Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was also ousted as prime minister in a coup.
The months of unrest saw at least 28 people killed and more than 700 injured, culminating in Yingluck being ousted on May 22 by Royal Thai Army Commander-in-Chief Prayuth Chan-ocha.
In another defense of Thailand’s revered royal family, serial hunger striker Chalad Vorachat yesterday filed charges against Prayuth and his ruling military council for defaming the monarchy and committing treason.
Vorachat, a retired navy lieutenant, argues in a complaint filed with a Bangkok criminal court that the army’s intervention based on the country’s Martial Law Act had a shaky legal basis.
“In order to announce martial law, the country must be at war or there must be a violent conflict. Permission must also be granted by the prime minister and the monarch,” Chalad told reporters.
Chalad, 71, first went on hunger strike in 1992 against unelected former Thai prime minister General Suchinda Kraprayoon.
His action gave momentum to protests that the army then put down. Public outage over the violence forced former army commander Suchinda, who seized power in a 1991 coup, to resign.
This time, Chalad has been on hunger strike for 19 days seeking a constitution that will make Thailand a “true democracy.”
“If there is no prime minister from an election then let me starve until my life is over,” he said.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS