“Get a German husband. Get a Swedish husband. Get a Norwegian husband,” Sunai Julphongsathorn, Pheu Thai Party MP, allegedly urges 1.000 red shirts at a meeting. The Thai language website Sanook was first to bring the story, which has caused a barrage of complaints on Thai web forums. Then the English language Coconuts took the story to a wider audience, highlighting quotes as:
“All you need is a farang husband and their government will pay you to study.”
“Get a German husband. Get a Swedish husband. Get a Norwegian husband. People used to love [Thailand] unreservedly. But the more they loved the country, the poorer they got. The more they loved the country, the stupider they got.”
The Coconuts also writes that Sunai told the audience: to find a farang husband for an easy life “because European governments give you everything for free.”
Even more controversial, he then implied that the best way to study a foreign language was by sleeping with a foreigner.
“Sitting studying is too slow. Lie down to study, then go to the hospital. They will pay you to have the baby… It’s all free, right up to the shitty diapers,” the Coconuts write.
Thai journalist Saksith Saiyasombut, who currently is based in Germany, has fact checked the story and gets to a different result.
“Listening to a clearer, more complete video feed (than the one used by Sanook and Coconuts) gives a very different impression and also reveals more context to what he was saying, before he was taken out of it by the aforementioned source,” he writes in an article on Asian Correspondent.
You can judge for yourself by these links:
Coconuts story: MP urges Thai women: Marry a farang for an easier life
