BANGKOK (AP) — Miss Universe Thailand has resigned less than a
month into her reign after being harshly criticized on social media
over her political comments and looks.
Weluree Ditsayabut, 22, tearfully announced she was
giving up the title that would have allowed her to compete in the
international Miss Universe pageant.
The actress and former talk
show host said Monday she was initially pleased to have won the title,
but that the hail of brutal comments on social media blasting her
outspoken political views and calling her fat had hurt her family.
Weluree
was criticized for comments she posted on Facebook attacking the "Red
Shirt" supporters of the former government, whom she accused of opposing
Thailand's monarchy, and calling for the execution of their leaders.
"You
Red Shirts, you get out of here," she wrote in mid-November, before
winning her title. "Thailand's soil is dirty because of anti-monarchy
people like you."
Weluree 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," she
told a news conference. She didn't specify which remarks she found most
hurtful.
Weluree's comments struck at the heart of Thailand's
long-running political crisis, expressing the attitude of the country's
educated elite and royalists toward the government of then-Prime
Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
Yingluck, who was backed by many in
Thailand's rural north and northeast, was forced to step down last
month, and the military soon afterward staged a coup against the elected
civilian government.
Thai
society has been sharply polarized since 2006, when Yingluck's brother,
then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was ousted in a coup and
subsequently fled into exile to avoid a corruption conviction. Since
then until the recent coup, Thaksin's opponents and the Red Shirts
staged competing protests in an ongoing battle for political power
Culled from yahoo Celebrity(AP)
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