RIGHTS-THAILAND: U.N. Drug Agency Hit for Soft Stand on Deaths

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 3 2004 (IPS) - Recent remarks and documents by the U.N. anti-drug agency have put it under fire for a glaring lack of concern for the large number of people who were reportedly murdered during Thailand’s 10-month campaign last year to rid the country of narcotics.

The head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) had communicated with the Thai government on this issue last year, ”but as far as I understand it was not a letter of concern as such but an inquiry about the facts,” said Akira Fujino of UNODC’s East Asia and Pacific office. ”There was no further letter sent,” Fujino, who heads the regional office, added during a press conference here Wednesday to accompany the launch of an annual report by the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), a U.N. agency.

Just days after a damning U.S. government report on the same issue, the INCB’s 2003 report has also let off Bangkok lightly on the human rights violations in Thailand’s ‘war on drugs’, which began in February and lasted till November 2003.

”The Board notes that while the Government states that the campaign was successful in curbing the drug problem, its unintended side effects have been widely criticised,” the report stated. ”The Board has requested the Government to be informed of the results of the campaign, which, it is hoped, would be successful.”

When pressed on why the INCB had not been more critical and expressed its own judgement on the consequences of Bangkok’s tough anti-drug drive, Fujino affirmed that the INCB had still not received a factual account of the ”war on drugs” from the Thai government.

”Without getting the facts, it is not possible to say what form of law enforcement activities had been effective or not,” he added. ”We can only act on government sources.”

But human rights activists here are far from impressed by line of argument. This is more so, they assert, in the wake of a steady stream of reports that shed light on Thailand’s disturbing rights record due to the death toll linked to the ‘war on drugs’.

”The failure by these U.N. agencies to mention the human rights violations that occurred during the anti-drug campaign is very disappointing,” Srirak Plipat, the director of Amnesty International’s Thai division, told IPS.

This lack of urgency to convey an accurate picture of what happened undermines the call made by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Srirak added. ”He has insisted that the protection of human rights must be upheld by all U..N. agencies, including the UNODC.”

The most recent report to take Bangkok to task was the annual human rights report of the U.S. State Department, which stated that Thailand’s rights record had ”worsened” due to the killings that accompanied the government’s harsh crackdown on drug traffickers.

The report, released last week, faulted the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for the ”excessive use” of ”lethal force against criminal suspects” and also drew attention to the disturbing pattern of ”extrajudicial, arbitrary and unlawful killings” during the crackdown on drugs.

”According to official figures, there were 1,386 narcotics-related deaths between February 1 and April 30, 2003. No arrests were made in 1,195 of these cases, which led many observers to believe police were responsible for most of these deaths,” the report stated.

The human rights lobby Amnesty International arrived at similar conclusions and drew attention to the climate of fear around the drug campaign in a report released in November

”After the launch of the ‘drugs war,”’ it noted, ”many people were reportedly afraid to leave their homes and others avoided travelling to areas where they were not known, for fear of being suspected of being drug traffickers and shot dead.”

By the end of the 10-month campaign – during which officials had seized nearly 40 million amphetamine tablets and arrested 52,374 suspected drug producers and dealers – human rights activists here estimated close to 3,000 people were killed during the offensive.

Among the victims were men like Suweep Kumatom, a father of two, who was killed on Feb. 26 in Pattaya, the Thai tourist resort town south of Bangkok known for its go-go bars and sex industry. ”He was murdered during Thailand’s ‘war on drugs’ although he was never involved in any drug business at all,” wrote his Swedish wife, Anna Kumatom, soon after to a local newspaper.

The high death toll has been disputed by the government. On Wednesday, for instance, Rasamee Vistaveth, the deputy secretary general of the narcotics control board, told the press conference that 1,329 people had died in drug-related killings last year..

”There were no human rights violations during the ‘war on drugs,” she added. ”Families can file complaints with the ministry of justice if they feel that a relative was wrongfully killed.”

Prime Minister Thaksin has not taken too kindly to critical reports about the ”war on drugs.” Over the weekend, he accused Washington of being a ”useless friend” following the U.S. State Department’s report.

Such comments, though, will hardly be directed at the U.N. drug agencies, say rights activists here, given the stance displayed this week by the likes of Fujino.