THAILAND: Case of ‘Disappeared’ Lawyer Raises Rights Issues

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 10 2005 (IPS) - A criminal trial that began here this week has given a new platform to Angkana Wongrachain, the most visible face of traumatised Thai women whose husbands have been ‘disappeared’ over the past 20 months.

And her revelations during the opening session at the court have confirmed Angkana’s determination to expose the dark human rights record of a country often described as ‘the land of smiles’.

She had little qualm linking Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to the disappearance of her husband Somchai Neelaphaijit, a highly respected human rights lawyer from the country’s Muslim minority community,on the night of Mar.12,2004.

The 49-year-old Angkana told the court Tuesday that Thaksin, in a meeting she had had with him in June, said the government had information about the possible location where Somchai might have been taken.

”I have nothing to lose fighting for justice for my husband,” Angakana said in a quiet yet determined manner during an interview in the office of the Lawyers Council of Thailand, a Bangkok-based association of the country’s independent lawyers. ”If I don’t, no one else will,” she said.

Yet, it is a role that is taking some adjusting, since she had spent most of her life till that fateful night in March bringing up her five children, supporting her husband and doing a small business in sterling silver.

And beyond the pain she has lived with since the abduction of her 53-year-old husband, Angkana has also had to endure threats allegedly from police intelligence officials for daring to speak out against the culture of disappearances in Thailand.

It is a situation made worse by the government’s decision, recently, to promote one of the prime suspects in the Somchai case, Police Lieutenant Colonel Chadchai Liamsa-ngoun, to superintendent in the crime suppression division.

As a result, Angkana only offers a smile and no words when pressed with questions if the intimidations have increased over her high-profile appearances in the past few months. Among them was a meeting with the U.N. human rights committee in Geneva in July exposing a lack of enthusiasm by Thai authorities in the case.

The five police officers facing trial in the case are not being prosecuted for the disappearance and possible murder of the lawyer. Rather, they are up for minor charges such as robbing ”an injured person”.

The suspects, with senior ranks such as police major, lieutenant colonel, and sergeant are accused of depriving an ”injured” Somchai of his car, mobile phone, wrist watch and pen.

But such apparent nonchalance on the part of the government has been met with an opposite response from an increasing chorus of lawyers, jurists, U.N. officials and human rights activists both here and abroad.

”It is disappointing that no one has been charged with forcible abduction or murder, since it is clear that Somchai is not alive,” Elizabeth Evatt, a ranking member of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), told IPS. ”It raises questions about how effective the investigations have been”.

For justice to prevail, the independence of the legal profession must be guaranteed, added Evatt, who is here to monitor the trial for the ICJ. ”If lawyers are intimidated for their work, there will be no justice,” she said.

And members of the Lawyers Council of Thailand are well aware just how significant it is, given the hostile environment they work in when pursuing human rights cases, like that of Somchai.

”The police see lawyers as unwanted people,” Dej-Udom Kraitit, president of the Lawyers Council, said in an interview. ”They view lawyers as an obstacle to their success of getting guilty verdicts whether through direct or indirect means”.

Somchai is the third lawyer to have disappeared in Thailand in recent years says Dej-Udom . The other two were abducted from the country’s central province.

He fears possible repetition of the Somchai disappearance in the south of Thailand, where three provinces that are home to this Buddhist country’s Malay-Muslim minority have been engulfed in violence involving government troops and suspected Muslim separatists.

A number of lawyers in southern Thailand have begun investigating human rights violations in the area, added Dej-Udom. ”We have asked the lawyers there to work in pairs on each case because of the fear of being disappeared”.

Over 800 people have died in the escalating violence, including Buddhist and Muslim civilians, Buddhist monks, Muslim clerics, government officials, soldiers and policemen. Political analysts view the current tension as a more deadly cycle of bloodletting that goes back many decades, pitting a strong state against a minority that feels discriminated.

In addition, there are an estimated 100 to 200 Muslim men and boys who have disappeared since an attack on an army camp in the south in early 2004, say Thai human rights activists.

Thailand’s rights record has also been damaged by the number of disappearances and the accompanying culture of impunity during previous times, too.

The cases of between 30 to 35 people having disappeared in the early 1990s and hundreds of disappearances during student protests against ruling military dictatorships in the 1970s are among the most glaring.

”Till today no military officer or police official has been prosecuted for these disappearances,” said Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a member of the Thai working group on human rights defenders.

And by choosing to stay the course over her husband’s disappearance, Somchai’s wife is hoping to reverse this disturbing trend. ”I have asked other women in the south to send me the information and names of those who have disappeared,” said Angkana, who is always seen in public wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf.

”We have to interact,” she says of the women like her who have kin among Thailand’s disappeared. ”This is new to me, but important”.