Sonic Sovereignty and Sleep as Sabotage: Thailand’s Border Psyops and UN Dissonance
Sonic Sovereignty and Sleep as Sabotage: Thailand’s Border Psyops and UN Dissonance
By Tim Garbutt
The Thai–Cambodian border is no longer just a cartographic dispute—it’s a stage for militarised theatre, where sound cannons scream white noise and ghostly screams into the night, and sleep deprivation is weaponised as psychological warfare. And Torture plain and simple.
In Sa Kaeo province, Thai forces deployed Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) against Cambodian civilians earlier this Autumn (after the ceasefire) and soldiers were attempting to dismantle and re-fix concertina wire fencing at Ban Nong Chan.
The sonic blasts—piercing, disorienting, and relentless—on innocent civilians mirror tactics once reserved for riot control, now repurposed for border psyops.
This isn’t crowd dispersal. It’s symbolic domination of disputed land from 1904 or 1941 or 1979. The sound cannon doesn’t just repel—it erodes cognition, disrupts sleep, and fractures community resilience. And veers into Ethnic Cleansing War Crimes territory.
Sound cannons perhaps most visible as a weapon in the 1989 USA invasion of Panama with dictator Noriega's refuge in the Vatican embassy then blasted with loud rock music by the 82nd Airborne and PSYOP Command. The playlist perhaps apt in a clunky khaki way as tracks included:
“I Fought the Law” – The Clash
“Nowhere to Run” – Martha and the Vandellas
“Welcome to the Jungle” – Guns N’ Roses
“Dead Man’s Party” – Oingo Boingo
“Danger Zone” – Kenny Loggins
Although one might question if Kenny Loggins, mullet aside, inspired the requisite terror in Old Pineapple Face Noriega. The playlist was later released via FOIA request and even compiled on Spotify fas the soundtrack for any wannabe narcostate dictators.
Loudspeakers of music and speeches regularly featured by both sides on the Korean DMZ from the 1960's until earlier this year with SKorea removing the last 20 fixed loudspeaker units.
Thailand the only border sound psyops nation now?
Sleep deprivation though is a torture tactic lifted from the darkest corners of carceral logic: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo CIA Black Sites/Rendition, and the H-blocks of Long Kesh. And most recently by detainees of the Greta Flotilla in Israeli prison awakened every few hours.
Sleep Deprivation as Torture: From Baghdad to Bangkok
Sleep deprivation is not a side effect—it’s a deliberate tactic of control. At Abu Ghraib, detainees were subjected to prolonged sleeplessness, stress positions, and sensory overload. In Ulster’s Long Kesh, internees endured 24-hour lighting, forced isolation, and psychological disintegration.
These methods weren’t anomalies—they were codified techniques, later exposed by Amnesty and the UN as violations of the Convention Against Torture and certified as such by the European Human Rights Commission in 1976.
UK torture in the Kenya and Malaysia colonial revolts only outpaced by The School for Torturers at Fort Bragg (now badged as WHINSEC at Fort Benning) from 1946 (with Nazi learnings?) with South Vietnam Phoenix Program torture and assassination refined with 60,000 Latin American soldiers tutored for the Argentina Dirty War of 30k disparus, Pinochet's Chile 80k Condor wider deaths and El Salvador psyops and torture and massacres.
While 9/11 saw widespread use of torture in the CIA black sites and hunt for Bin Laden with torture updated and couched in legalese word play such as degrading treatment or enhanced interrogation.
The Five Techniques first developed by UK army on the 14 Irish Hooded Men developed to 7 main techniques (excluding electric shock torture or beatings) as:
1. Sleep deprivation: awakened through noise, light or beatings
2. Sound torture: blaring music or white noise
3.Stress positions: Palestinian chair, tiger bench, wall-standing etc
4. Waterboarding: near drowning with cloth and water
5. Sensory deprivation: hooding, strobe lights, white noise, blackout cells
6. Solitary confinement: human contact removed
7. Food and drink deprivation or forced feeding
Now, Thailand joins this less than illustrious lineage with both Sound cannon and White noise screams for Sleep Deprivation on innocent villagers. The Khmer UN protests already reaching UN Torture Rapporteur Volker Turk with villagers, detained and denied rest, and echoing the same Torture logic: exhaustion as erasure, and fatigue as silencing weapons imported from Thailand.
A roused Senor Turk no doubt picking up on Thailand’s 2023 Anti-Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act as marking a historic shift in the country’s legal landscape, criminalising torture, cruel treatment, and enforced disappearance for the first time.
The law mandates prompt, impartial investigations, guarantees victim compensation, and aligns with international protocols such as UNCAT and the Minnesota Protocol - and UNHCR. It was introduced in response to decades of military impunity and civil society pressure, offering a legal framework for accountability and redress.
Yet two years on, enforcement remains staggeringly weak. Of the just 141 cases filed under the Act—including torture, cruel treatment, and disappearance—only two(!) have reached the courts. Bureaucratic delays, especially from the Finance Ministry, have stalled victim compensation (echoes of the UK Mr Bates Post Office Scandal of 900(!) postmasters falsely jailed/fined from Fujitsu knowingly-faulty accounts software with 13 suicides, now the largest legal scandal in UK history with £9Bn compensation).
The Isaan border is in danger of becoming a laboratory for state-induced insomnia and social neglect, where sovereignty is asserted not through law, but through sleeplessness and sensory deprivation and Nelsonian blind eyes to scandals. That is all the more concerning under the ASEAN truce - and with Thailand and UK on the UN Human Rights Council.
Cambodia long expressing concerns and a desire for UN intervention on the border demarcation as 1962 Preah Vihar rather than bilateral or ASEAN discussions.
Thailand’s UN Human Rights Council Seat: Symbolic Farce
In 2025, Thailand secured a seat on the UN Human Rights Council—a move hailed as progress, yet riddled with contradictions now amplified on the border. While Bangkok postures as a rights defender, with just cause in many instances, its domestic terrain tells another story - a story that a role in UNHCR was to be a catalyst for reform:
Gaza Prison Logic: Thai prisons mirror Israeli carceral tactics albeit with less state brutality—overcrowding, denial of medical care, and some political detention. The death of activist Netiporn Sanesangkhom in 112 lese majeste pretrial detention on Hunger Strike exposed systemic neglect, much as the Bobby Sands Long Kesh death. Over 280 lese majeste 112 prisoners remain in Thai jails from the 2014 coup, with charges upto 18 years eg human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, and debate continues on both Charter reform and 112 specific repeals.
Sabotage of Refugee Work: Despite UNHCR objective and fulsome praise as recently as August 2025 for granting work rights to 81,000 long-term Myanmar Karen and Karenni refugees in 9 main camps, Thailand’s implementation remains opaque. Bureaucratic hurdles, surveillance, and border militarisation now undermine the very policy it claims to champion. Yet there is a clear lesson for fellow-UNHCR member UK in the East Kent Channel refugees from the Calais Jungle camp and legal routes for asylum/migration/work. Such issues currently the hot button of UK politics with hotel stays and a long hot summer of flag riots and Facebook Thought Police on citizen-crackdowns beyond just Palestine Action.
Thai-Cambodia refugees and residents: the sound cannons deployed in Isaan flag up the Thai strengths in welcoming KH villagers from 1979, fleeing the Pol Pot horrors that only fizzled out in 1998, to camps that are now villages contested by both nations. Such distinctions artificially trumped up with Isaan as mixed Thai-KH heritage that should be seen as a strength even in distant BKK or PP. While the brutal weaknesses of Thai refugee work is evident, not in the ephemera of sound cannons or agit-prop films, but the 1979 Dangrek Massacre of 45,000 villagers driven back across the western KH border by the Thai army with 400-10,000 deaths by the Khmer Rouge and minefields.
The border is symbolic sabotage—where reform is announced, but asset terrain remains hostile. Refugees are granted rights in theory, but denied mobility, dignity, and protection in practice.
And White Noise abuses risk provoking another 50 deaths and 300k displaced in just days.
Deep South: Torture as Tactical Doctrine
Thailand also in danger of blowing up its kudos in reform of the Deep South terrorism issue along the Malay border with recent calls for Army control to be swapped for Police oversight.
Thailand’s Deep South remains a paradox of strategic success and systemic sabotage. While peace dialogues with BRN insurgents gain some traction and relatively few bomb incidents, as deaths fall to just 15 in 2025, the region still reels from a murky history of unresolved disappearances, entrenched torture, and cross-border trafficking networks.
The 2025 Anti-Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act has yielded only two prosecutions despite over 125 complaints, exposing a justice system stalled by impunity. All are regulatory and open markets factors in both OECD membership and EU-FTA Free Trade deals that were progressing as smooth as silk.
Even the Thai death penalty an immoveable hurdle in EU deals is largely a moratorium now if not de facto ban.
And Indonesia's accession to EU-FTA after the Suharto genocidal 500k bloodbath of 1966, shows the dangers of Thailand’s Deep South remaining a crucible for military experimentation if not a pariah as Myanmar.
Reports from Yala/Nong Chik, Pattani, and Narathiwat detail:
Waterboarding, electric shocks, beatings and suffocation in military detention - and redolent of the hazing and deaths of Thai Army conscripts
“Attitude adjustment” sessions targeting activists and journalists
Martial law overrides that nullify legal protections ie murder, disparu and torture of suspects - again perhaps lessons for UK in UNHCR with ongoing trials of UK soldiers from The Bloody Sunday Era of The Ulster Troubles. Or even the 10 year delay(!) and Duke of Lancaster regiment officers/MOD/Embassy cover up of the Agnes murders in Kenya. Or RAF secret flights over the Gaza genocide moonscape
The 2004 Tak Bai Massacre of 85 Narathiwat protestors suffocated in crowded army trucks are a black hole in Thai discourse as are the 32 Moslems killed in 2004 the Krue Se mosque and the Red Drum killings in 1972 of 200-3,000(!) Phatthalung villagers burned alive in oil drums by the army still with an omerta secrecy worthy of The Mafia
Yet the recent (6th October) commemoration of the 1976 Thammasat University Second Massacre of 45 student protestors against junta dictatorship by army/lynch mobs creates a chair for Thailand to stand on to highlight such wrongs and move forward - much as the 2010 Redshirt Crackdown in BKK with 90 killed by army snipers will eventually be dragged kicking and screaming into the light
Indeed the October 1973 First Thammasat Massacre of 77 civilians by army and police tanks and snipers now badged as both The Day of Great Sorrow and the Thai People's Rights and Freedom Day celebrating democracy over dictatorship
The Thai army’s training on democratic norms and human rights has been hollowed out by a general psyops doctrine, where torture is reframed as behavioural correction, and democracy is reduced to optics.
Meanwhile, proposed rollbacks to Thailand’s IUU fishing laws threaten to undo hard-won reforms, risking renewed EU sanctions and enabling Forced Labour human rights/Modern Slavery abuses at sea. Hard won improvements by Thai Navy whether targeted IUU advertising or light touch Trat-KH border martial law seem doomed to be lost in the one-note echo-chamber of border white noise.
Scam centres linked to transnational traffiking—often using Thai infrastructure and border routes—continue to exploit migrants through coercion and digital fraud most notably on the Khmer and Myanmar borders.
Rangsiman Rome MP proving to be a tiger in the Thai parliament on these pig butchering scandals and role of Ben Mauerberger/Smith - and links to both Thai and KH politicians that may well have been a factor in the border war or logging as detailed by journalists Tom Wright or Gerry Flynn.
While UK's Russian bribes scandal and MP finance reporting concerns of £800k houses etc of Nigel Farage's Reform party seems to have something of a Thai Connection with Christopher Harborne aka Chakrit Skunkrit, of crypto firms Singular/Bitfinex/Tether and Sherriff Global aircraft, with huge £10M Reform donations and £27k to Farage for a 2025 trip to the Trump inauguration.
The Thai economy suffering not just from border trade falls but Chinese tourism and now Korean fears of scam centre kidnapping and traffik.
The Deep South’s terrain, once a crucible of insurgency, now hosts a convergence of carceral erosion and labour exploitation where reform was beginning to take effect but now risks being drowned out by the Isaan border loudspeaker psyops and huge Scam Centres.
Bangkok Rules: Gendered Carcerality and Institutional Erosion
Thailand’s adoption of the Bangkok Rules—UN guidelines for the treatment of women prisoners—was once a landmark moment and great success that could have been trumpeted in UNHCR if not across The Global South and now may also be affected by frivolous noise psyops. And where implementation remains patchy, Thailand could have driven home UNHCR aid and kudos:
Menstrual hygiene is inconsistent across facilities (UK, especially Scotland with the 2021 Free Period Products law and Pick Up My Period app, is active on tax reductions and skool supplies for tampons and UNHCR nascent menstrual labour/health laws)
Pregnant inmates lack adequate care and privacy - UK facing fierce legal/courts UNHCR debate over 229 pregnant women in prison and a horrific 7x still birth rate, and 10% of births in prison itself not hospitals with at least 2 baby deaths in the Powell-Cleary cases (and wider issue of 401 UK prison deaths a 30% yoy hike and 86 suicides)
Transgender women face prison discrimination and unsafe housing: UK with 5 male/trans prisoners held in HMP Downview female prison while Thailand has ~900 trans inmates and an innovative UNHCR 3 tier categorisation for safety
The Bangkok Rules were meant to rupture male-centric prison logic, yet Thai facilities remain structurally weak for gendered needs. The symbolic terrain of “Kam Lang Jai” (moral support) is hollowed out by the relatively simple UNHCR issue of overcrowding whether jail refurbishment or home detention.
Sonic Sovereignty Sleeps - yet Sleep is Resistance
Thailand’s sonic warfare though isn’t just noise—it’s statecraft. It weaponises sleep, erodes cognition, and asserts control through exhaustion.
From Ban Nong Chan village to Bangkok’s detention cells, the logic is consistent: deny rest, deny resistance - and now Thailand faces an uphill battle not just amongst the Isaan border temples but in the UNHCR offices with the minefield of blatant and egregious human rights abuses that are essentially self-inflicted wounds.
And round ups of Khmer villagers in contested territory by boot and rifle butt, assuming Khmer troops merely watch, them driven off to Thai jails, is hardly positive UNHCR optics for 21C Thailand.
Thailand still shedding UN concerns as a hub for transational repression:
# Wanchalearm Satsaksit: Abducted in Phnom Penh, 2020—linked to Thai intelligence
# Surachai Danwattananusorn: Exiled critic, disappeared in Laos; aides found murdered
# Kaeng Krachan: Karen forest rights/eco activists disappeared
# 220 Uighur refugees: Deported 2015-25 to Turkey and China: 5 died in jail and 8 still imprisoned
And Fort Bragg/Condor state-coordinated repression seems to appear with Cambodia: Lim Kimya KH politician assassinated in BKK this year, Kung Raiya Candlelight Party critic arrested in BKK ahead of Bristol's Hun Manet visit, Lim Soka of KH Refugee Committee arrested, Phan Phana anti-CPP arrested with deportation threat and 6 CNRP activists/refugees deported to KH.
General Benchapol’s Midnight Doctrine: Psyops as Patriotic Fever Dream
While Major General Benchapol Dechatiwong Na Ayutthaya, commander of Thailand’s Burapha Force, dismissed Cambodia’s formal complaint over ghost sounds, jet engine noise, air raid sirens and helicopter noises broadcast at his border zone with a chilling nonchalance:
“I was helping to wake up(!) my soldier brothers. So what? It’s done on my home, my land. If they want to file a lawsuit… I don’t care.”
This isn’t just ludicrously glib—it’s institutional gaslighting. Benchapol reframes psyops and white noise screams at midnight as camaraderie, torture as morale, and border warfare as domestic housekeeping.
Army spox General Winthai with a different excuse that it was nothing to do with the army or keeping soldiers awake but Thai civilians acting alone - an odd view given the loudspeakers proximity to the border and army previous use of sound cannons.
And a strange muddling of human rights with law enforcement given the loudspeakers are on Thai soil but directed at Cambodia. And the General misunderstands the basic point that, right or wrong, the territory is disputed - and often just by 50 metres or so.
His statement echoes the logic not of an early Halloween prank of ghost noises but systemic clunky psyops of Operation Wandering Soul, the Vietnam-era U.S. campaign that used ghost tapes to psychologically destabilise and terrorise Viet Cong fighters. But unlike the covert jungle broadcasts of the 1970s, Thailand’s sonic warfare is brazen, public, and unapologetic.
And the Thai Army with form on psyops and IO hype: Royal Thai Army’s 2nd Infantry Division (Eastern Tigers) were exposed in 2020 for controlling 17,562 fake Twitter accounts, used to amplify pro-government content and attack opposition figures. While other leaked documents in 2020 revealed the Army ISOC role in funding cyber warfare against peace activists in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat.
This hidden hand democracy or khaki backseat driving seems to have blossomed into sound psyops with social media activists, redolent of the Bibi $7k bounty for Tiktokers for favourable Israeli coverage after the Gaza disaster.
YouTuber Gun: Redeployed After Manure Threats?
All the more concerning is that questions swirl around the redeployment of YouTuber Guntouch Jompalang and his role in the noise cannons, a Thai military-affiliated content creator, after he previously threatened manure spray attacks(!) by 14 slurry lorries on KH protesters.
Despite public backlash at the crass abuse, Gun is now not just back at the sensitive border area - but reportedly reinstated into military-linked media operations, raising concerns over:
Impunity for incitement and excess
Weaponisation of both digital and physical terrain
Sabotage and ultranationalist incitement of KH protest legitimacy
Guntouch’s redeployment with white noise mirrors the broader erosion of civil-military boundaries, where content creators become psyops agents, and threats become tactics.
The febrile nature of the Isaan border now could best be contextualised by 85 deaths in the Afghan-Pakistan border overnight spat, and Yellowshirt ultranationalist street demos in Bangkok city centre (aptly at the 1941 Victory Monument to the Franco-Thai border war).
And even AI/Photoshop images online of say Guntouch spraying KH villagers with manure could start a doom spiral of retaliation and conflict. The online feeding frenzy of KH claims and images is explosive given a one party state single direction and lack of dissent or scrutiny.
The Thai chemical weapons attacks claimed by Bristol's PM Hun Manet's wife - that were easily disproved as USA Wildfire planes rather than a casus belli bigger than the Portland Frog Antifa hype - flags up the very real risk of another 50 war deaths just by Social Media provocations.
While Cambodia television news and radio stations must be itching to play the ghost psyops noise on primetime news in heavy rotation.
Despite the destabilising din of sound cannons the full attention of wiser heads is needed in charting a course away from a wider Thai-KH border war.
Sleep is not surrender whether on the border or in jail or in BKK's 5 star hotels. It’s a human right, a symbolic terrain, and a rupture vector. Whether in Gaza, Ulster, or Sa Kaeo, the fight for sleep is the fight for human sovereignty.
In all sincerity, Thailand may sit on the UN Human Rights Council, but its sound cannons scream louder than its resolutions at the moment.
And the world must listen—not to the noise, but to the silence enforced as the guns fall silent.
@timg33
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