By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BAN PONG, Mar 29 2006 (IPS)

The search for her husband’s remains brings a Thai Muslim woman to the banks of a river that flows past this small town some 100 km west of Bangkok.

The trips that 50-year-old Angkana Neelaphaijit makes to the brown waters of the Mae Klong river to ensue that a team of divers does its job thoroughly is a reminder of her difficult quest for clues to the abduction and disappearance of her husband, Somchai Neelaphaijit, two years ago.

”If we do nothing; they will do nothing,” said Angkana, as she stood by the riverside on a recent morning, wearing a dark blue scarf over her head, a blue-and-white checked long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. ”Everything we must do by ourselves. We have to push them.”

The people she alludes to are Thailand’s police and the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), a supposedly independent investigative arm of the government. On Mar. 17, the DSI made a sudden announcement that it had been tipped off by residents of Ban Pong, in the Ratchaburi province, of having witnessed a group of men dumping an oil drum into the river shortly after Somchai had disappeared on the night of Mar.12, 2004.

The DSI has also revealed that the place identified by the witnesses coincided with the spot where, according to telephone records, the suspects in this disappearance case had made a few calls.

Yet, as she watches the divers survey the river and mark out sections for closer scrutiny, Angkana has little reason to feel hopeful. ”The DSI has not been serious about Somchai’s disappearance from the beginning.”

Her pessimism, in fact, goes to the heart of this case that is not only troubling to both local and international human rights groups but is proving to be deeply embarrassing for the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Five police officers were linked to the abduction of Somchai, who was last seen being pulled out of his car on that March night and bundled into a nearby vehicle. It had happened, according to eyewitnesses, on a busy street in the heart of Bangkok.

There was little mystery to why the 53-year-old Somchai had been kidnapped. He was a Thai Muslim lawyer who had gained a reputation as a fearless defender of human rights. A number of his clients were Muslims from the country’s south, arrested for suspected ‘’terrorist’ activities. The cases he had been fighting, before he ‘disappeared’, had resulted in the police being exposed to charges of torturing his clients.

Yet, the five-month trial, that ended in January this year, never sought answers about what had happened to Somchai. It focused on minor offences such as ‘injuring’ the Muslim lawyer, coercion and theft of his personal possessions, such as his wristwatch, mobile phone and pen.

Even before the verdict, groups like the New York-based Human Rights First, had described the proceedings as ‘’a sham trial”. The court’s acquittal of four police defendants, for lack of evidence and improper investigation, only added to scepticism about Thailand’s criminal justice system.

”After all this time the question, ‘where is Somchai’ remains,” said Basil Fernando, head of the Asian Human Rights Commission, a Hong Kong-based regional rights watchdog, soon after the verdict. ”The authorities will have to redouble their efforts to investigate this case and reveal what ultimately happened to Somchai.”

And Thai human rights activists echo Angkana’s reservations about the agency that should be taking the lead in this new round of investigations – the DSI. ”We believe that the DSI has more information than it is prepared to reveal,” Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a member of the Thai working group on human rights defenders, told IPS. ”It looks like a cover-up.”

Others are more blunt. ”What we have heard is that the police who were involved in the killing of Somchai have a close relationship with a senior DSI officer,” Somchai Homlaor, a leading human rights lawyer, said in an interview.

The DSI, however, is trying to counter such pressure by giving the impression that it is still searching for the missing lawyer. Last week, after revealing sketchy details of possible clues in the Mae Klong river, the head of the DSI told reporters that a breakthrough was possible.

”We have found people we suspect of killing and then burning Somchai to get rid of the evidence,” police general Sombat Amornwiwat was quoted in the local papers as having said. ”But we need to gather as much evidence as we can to link people to every step of the crime.”

Further failures to solve the case of the missing lawyer will only add to the Thaksin administration’s increasingly questionable record on human rights.

The Somchai case has set a benchmark at two levels in this South-east Asian country. For one, the local media has doggedly kept this story in the spotlight, unlike other cases of reported disappearances.

More importantly, this is the first time that a case of a person abducted and ‘disappeared’ in Thailand has made it to the courts. ”This case is a milestone to have come this far and that is why human rights activists are pushing for justice,” Sunai Phasuk, Thai researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

Currently, government officials have confirmed to human rights groups that there are over 20 confirmed cases of disappearances in the troubled southern provinces, where suspected insurgents from the region’s Malay- Muslim minority are fighting the security forces of predominantly Buddhist Thailand. The unofficial number of disappearances is much higher and, according to rights groups, may be as high as 200.

”The Somchai case exposes the weakness in the Thai criminal justice system, particularly when the perpetrators involved in disappearances belong to the country’s police and armed forces,” says Sunai. ”The results, so far, show that the Thai authorities lack the political will to seek justice.”

The wife of the disappeared lawyer appears undaunted, however, even after she has received threats over the phone and in person by men demanding that she drop her search for Somchai.

A week ago, a man showed up at Agkana’s home located in a narrow crowded street in the Thai capital, and warned her that she could meet with an accident or find a bomb under her car, when she next travels. But she has refused to be silenced, choosing, instead, to make a public appeal for the DSI to be taken off the case.

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