Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights

THAILAND: ‘Thaksin Link in Rights Lawyer’s Disappearance’

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 7 2006 (IPS) - With an eye on justice, Angkana Neelaphaijit is prepared to wait even longer for the truth about the disappearance – and possible murder – of her husband, Somchai, a prominent human rights lawyer from Thailand’s minority Muslim community.

Over the weekend, the 50-year-old Angkana sent a letter to the country’s Department of Special Investigations (DSI) not to issue warrants to arrest suspects for the alleged murder of Somchai Neelaphaijit, abducted by police officers from a busy street in Bangkok on a night in March 2004. His body was never found.

‘’I, as an injured party, have some concerns regarding the issuing of arrest warrants without sufficient evidence to bring a murder case against the perpetrators,” she wrote. ‘’There has been no use of forensic science to gather evidence, and the lack of witness protection has resulted in eye-witnesses being threatened, and not being willing to come and give testimony due to a lack of confidence in their safety.”

Somchai’s disappearance came soon after he publicly accused the police of torturing his clients, Muslims from the country’s southern provinces, who were accused of being involved in a raid by unknown militants on a military camp in January 2004. The five suspects were subsequently acquitted.

Her determination to secure proper accountability is being backed by the local and international human rights community, since the Somchai case has come to symbolise two features that defined the over five-year administration of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed from power in a Sept. 19 coup.

For some, the Somchai case was emblematic of the culture of impunity that had worsened after Thaksin, a former police officer himself, was elected to power. A judgement in January this year conveyed the ease with which the five police officers got away on minor chargers, such as coercion, theft and ‘’injuring” Somchai, who was 53 years at the time. Only one officer was convicted, while the other four were acquitted due to insufficient evidence.

At the same time, the ‘’disappearance” of Somchai was viewed as one in a growing list of human rights violations – ranging from an orgy of killings, abductions, assaults and intimidation – committed by agents of the state against those the Thaksin administration determined as ‘’enemies” or threats to the country.

‘’This is a very important case for those in the society fighting for justice,” Angkhana said in an IPS interview. ‘’The DSI can find the evidence if it wants to.”

‘’It is a very critical case because the police was involved,” adds Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, coordinator of the Working group on Justice for Peace, a local human rights lobby. ‘’Because the culture of impunity worsened during the Thaksin years.”

This push by human rights groups is aimed to dismantle the culture of impunity ‘’enjoyed by those in power,” she explained to IPS. ‘’It has to end. This is a good case and we have to secure proper justice.”

The renewed interest in the case – which was seen as all but lost while Thaksin was in power – is due to a fillip from an unexpected quarter. Last week, General Sonthi Boonyarataklin, head of the junta that threw out Thaksin, revealed that some officials close to the deposed premier were involved in the disappearance of the Muslim lawyer.

‘’I have received information from investigators that some individuals close to the former prime minister Thaksin were behind the disappearance of Somchai,” Sonthi was quoted as having told the local media.

And if this revelation by Thailand’s army chief is a hint at what the junta has in mind – to turn the heat on Thaksin for his brutal record – then, as human rights groups confirm, the list of violations during the 2001-2006 period is long and bloody. It is an exposure, furthermore, that could give the coup leaders a series of concrete crimes to go after Thaksin as they struggle to find violations he committed in other areas, such as corruption and nepotism.

The first to feel the heat after Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai- TRT) party swept to power with a thumping electoral victory in January 2001 were community activists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on social, environmental and human rights issues. By the time the TRT was forced out by the mid-September putsch, 21 human rights defenders had been killed for standing in the way of powerful, often local, figures.

In December 2002, riot police were accused by human rights groups of using ‘’excessive force” to quash a peaceful protest by communities in the southern province of Hat Yai opposed to the construction of a Thai-Malaysian gas pipeline protest. ‘’I will look unfavourably upon any protest organised by these NGOs,” Thaksin said soon after, as he defended the police action.

The following year came to be marked as the bloodiest, when the government launched its 2003 ‘war on drugs’ to crush the narcotics networks in the country. Over an estimated 2,200 people were killed in the first three months – many in mafia-style shootings – prompting critics to say that Thaksin had given the police ‘’a license to kill” civilians.

And in 2004, state brutality visited the increasingly violent south, particularly in October 2004, when 78 Muslim boys and men died in military custody due to suffocation. They had been arrested for being among the thousands who had staged a protest outside the police station in the town of Tak Bai. None of the military officers who were found guilty following an inquiry were taken to court.

At the same time, Thaksin launched verbal salvos at those who criticised his tough responses. In the firing line of the enraged premier were local human rights groups, officials from the United Nations and even the U.S. State Department, following its exposure of Thailand’s ‘’worsening” rights record in an annual report in 2004.

‘’Nobody can lead this government by the nose. We are a U.N. member, not a U.N. underling,” Thaksin snipped at Hina Jilani, a U.N. human rights envoy, after she stated there was ‘’a climate of fear” in Thailand following a nine-day visit.

The human rights cases that kept piling up during the Thaksin years has led one leading lawyer to describe it as a period when the police ‘’were given the green light to kill, to go beyond the law.”

‘’The criminal justice system worsened during the Thaksin years,” added Somchai Homlaor in an IPS interview. ‘’He helped his friends in the system. It became a police state.”