RIGHTS-THAILAND: Number of Deaths Rise with Anti-drug Campaign

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 12 2003 (IPS) - On the face of it, Thailand’s drug traffickers appear to have gone on a killing spree – if you believe the police, that is.

The rapid rise in killings in the first 10 days of the Thai government’s latest war on drugs – 87 suspected drug traffickers killed – is the work of the traffickers themselves, police officials keep telling the media.

This week, the Thai police told the ‘Bangkok Post,’ an English-language daily, that the drug dealers were ”killing each other to avoid the risk of betrayal”.

The police, on the other hand, admit to killing only eight drug suspects between Feb. 1 to Feb. 9 – and even then, the officers told the ‘Post,’ each of the deaths amounted to cases of self-defence.

However, that story line of trigger-happy drug traffickers has failed to convince the country’s human rights community, who are expressing concern at what they see as extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers.

The government has implied through its policy in the anti-drug campaign that the authorities can use extrajudicial means to go after drug traffickers, says Srirak Plipat, director of Amnesty International’s Thailand office. ”It is getting worse by the day.”

”The number of extrajudicial deaths is unusually high, but this does not mean there were no extrajudicial killings before, during anti-drug crackdowns,” he adds.

What is clearly different, though, is the tone and tenor of the current war on drugs, he explains. ”The language is new. The government is taking the campaign very seriously, and (conveyed that it) will use violence to pursue it.”

That has been implied in the comments this week by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who mounted this anti-drug crusade with precise objectives – the police and local authorities have three months, from February to April, to rid the country of drugs.

He appealed to the public to appreciate the police’s efforts, and to show some understanding when suspected drug dealers were killed by police officers in acts of self-defence.

”These officers do not deal in drugs. I think it’s quite unusual the drug dealers (killed by the police) are getting sympathy,” Thaksin was quoted in Wednesday’s ‘Post.’

What is more, the premier wanted the country to appreciate the initial success of the crackdown on drugs.

In the first 10 days of this campaign, the government has arrested 6,907 suspected drug dealers and seized 4.2 million methamphetamine pills. To that, the government also hails the nearly 50,000 drug users who have turned themselves in. This war on drugs soon aims to bring in the lords of the trade, including suspected state officials, during the third and fourth weeks of the campaign.

Thaksin has also warned provincial police chiefs that he would not tolerate those who perform under par. Transfers to less important posts are among the threats the tough-talking Thaksin has in mind for those who fail his cleanse their areas of drugs.

This drive is being praised by the U.N. drug control agency. ”Thailand has always been a leader in the fight against drugs during the past 30 years, and the current effort is another good example,” says Sandro Calvani, who heads the East Asia and Pacific office of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCP).

”The Thai campaign makes sense,” he argues, since it is pursuing the problem in a broad measure, ”mobilising many government resources and civil society’s help.”There is also ”a sense of urgency,” he said.

These efforts, Calvani adds, will ensure that the communities in Thailand will control the drug traffickers, rather than the traffickers controlling the community, which is often the reality.

Asked about an anti-drug crusade that has resulted in so many killings, Calvani explained that the United Nations is committed to human rights and it is concerned about rights violations, but the U.N. is also committed to ”the rights of the children and youth to live in a drug-free environment.”

Achieving this environment for the Thai youth is no easy feat, given that this South-east Asian country currently has the highest percentage of the population in the world that abuses amphetamines.

In Thailand, which has 62 million people, as many as one in 17, or 5.9 percent of Thais aged 15 and above are reported to be abusers of amphetamines, states a UNDCP report.

Currently, there are over 600,000 students across the country, from primary schools to universities, who are drug addicts, newspapers report. It is an addiction fed from neighbouring Burma, which annually supplies 500 million to 700 million amphetamine pills from the drug laboratories located along the Thai-Burma border.

Thailand’s record of seizing drugs over the past years has done little to dent the drug malaise. In 2001, for instance, Thai authorities succeeded in seizing 8,338 kg of methamphetamines, slightly more than the 7,422 kg in 2000.

In Burma, on the other hand, the authorities seized 2,877 kg in 2001 and 2,408 kg in 2000.

Given this reality, human rights activists say they do not object to the Thaksin administration’s mission to take on the drug trade. But the mounting extrajudicial killings linked to the effort cannot be ignored, they say.

”This is true of the public too,” says Amnesty’s Srirak. ”The people support the drug control campaign but they are not endorsing the extrajudicial killings.”