POLITICS-THAILAND: Thaksin Launches Drug War III

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 15 2005 (IPS) - By declaring another war against the country’s narcotics trade, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appears steeled in his determination to rid Thailand of illicit drugs.

Bangkok already has a magic number in mind as the new ”war on drugs” got underway this week. The authorities hope to target over 10,000 ”major drug dealers” during this assault.

In the cross hairs of Thailand’s anti-drug authorities are drug smugglers who are operating along this country’s eastern borders, which it shares with Cambodia and Laos.

To be targeted in the third campaign are networks operating in Thai provinces such as Ubon Ratchathani, Sa Kaeo and Surin in the north-east. In contrast, the first drug war launched in 2003 zeroed in country’s northern provinces. This was carried over into a second less brutal campaign that lasted from October to December 2004.

The focus then was on northern provinces sharing a border with Burma, identified as a major supplier of methamphetamines, known as ”ya baa” locally and ”speed” internationally.

But already, this new anti-drug campaign is coming up against a barrage of concerns. Questions have been raised by sections of the media and human rights groups about the need for the current campaign and the manner in which it will be pursued. Will it be brutal?

”Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has yet to convince all Thais that his grand campaigns are the best remedy. His declaration this week of the third war on drugs was greeted with large dollops of scepticism,” wrote the ‘Bangkok Post’ in an editorial on Friday.

Human rights activists worry that the campaign may leave a trail of dead bodies as was the case during the first ”war on drugs,” when an estimated 2,500 people were killed during the first three months of that campaign.

”We will have to monitor this campaign again,” Somchai Homlaor, a leading human rights lawyer, told IPS. ”The government will face a lot of criticism if the ‘war on drugs’ is carried out like the first phase.”

When the Thaksin administration launched its 2003 anti-drug crusade, Thailand was confronted with a disturbing picture about a sizeable number of its youth, even as young as 15 years, hooked on methamphetamines.

A U.N. study at the time estimated that anything from 500 to 700 million ‘speed’ pills produced in narcotics labs in Burma were smuggled across the border into Thailand annually.

By the end of the first anti-drug campaign, the Thaksin administration confirmed that it had seized some 40 million methamphetamine tablets, had crushed drug production centres in the country, arrested 52,374 suspected producers and dealers of narcotics and, importantly, declared schools as drug-free zones.

However, Thaksin was unable to wipe away the stain that the ”war on drugs” had led to widespread extrajudicial killings by the police and other anti-drug officials. Leading human rights groups such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and even the U.S. government condemned the Thaksin administration for the excessive bloodshed in 2003.

”Throughout the war on drugs, the Thai government at the highest levels encouraged violence and discrimination against anyone suspected of using or trafficking narcotic drugs,” HRW declared in a subsequent report.

According to Somchai, there are enough ”eye-witness accounts to prove that the police did it.” Yet if, as the government said at the time, the killings were the work of narcotic gangs, he asks why the police has not prosecuted a suspect for such an alleged crime. ”The authorities have a duty to protect life and must bring the offenders to justice.”

The Thaksin administration, however, appeared vindicated by the support it received from a wide section of the country for cracking down on the narcotics trade. This sentiment was reflected during the February general election, say Thai political analysts, where Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party was reelected by a thumping majority.

A study published by a group of Thai and foreign researchers last month noted that the 2003 campaign’s greatest impact was felt among the country’s heroin users, particularly those living in the rural areas.

An estimated 70 percent of injecting drug users admitted that ”they stopped using heroin after the campaign began,” revealed a statement released by the authors of the study, who were attached to the Johns Hopkins University, in the United States, and Thailand’s Chiang Mai University.

”The study found that the war on drugs had a greater impact in rural communities, where drug users are easier to identify, than their counterparts in urban centers,” it added. ”Seventy- eight percent of rural drug users said they quit injecting drugs compared to 55 percent of urban users.”

On Monday, as he launched the third phase of the anti-drug campaign, Thaksin revealed just how far he would go with his latest onslaught: ”As long as I am still the prime minister, I will not allow narcotic drugs to return.”