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Thailand's bloody battle to eradicate
drugs
By Christopher Johnson
BANGKOK - Speed has never fit the postcard image
of laid-back tropical Thailand. But since the economy
accelerated into a higher gear over a decade ago,
workers have increasingly sought stimulants to keep them
awake all night.
Pep drinks Red Bull, Shark, and
M150 weren't enough. Methamphetamine, known in Thai as
yaba (crazy medicine), has hooked millions:
skeletal sex workers dieting on pills as cheap as a
plate of pad thai; red-eyed taxi drivers going
160 km/h on the expressway; teen motorcycle racing
gangs; staff at techno discos serving pills like beer or
whiskey; and village youth hanging around 7-Elevens all
night. Also known as the "crime drug", yaba has
given Thailand one of the world's highest per capita
prison populations, including thousands of foreigners
who mistakenly thought Thailand was a free-for-all.
Prison might be the safest haven since Thai
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched a three-month
war on drugs February 1. Thousands on blacklists risk
arrest or murder by gangsters covering their tracks.
Thailand's Interior Ministry said recently that 1,282
had died. Police say they've arrested nearly 10,000
suspects, including 48 state officials. Even if
authorities are inflating numbers to meet quotas and
save their jobs, few doubt the severity of the campaign.
"In this war, drug dealers must die," said Thaksin. "But
we do not kill them. It is a matter of bad guys killing
bad guys."
Not all drug dealers conform to the
stereotype of hardened wise-guys in opulent palaces. A
police raid on a ghetto off Bangkok's Lad Prao 82 netted
housewives who allegedly sold yaba at their
pineapple and papaya stands. The director of the
Narcotics Control Office for northern Thailand says more
students are selling in schools since the anti-drug
drive began.
Thaksin's opponents wonder how many
murdered suspects were merely users, part-time dealers
or innocents caught in the crossfire. Three police
officers, charged with gunning down a nine-year-old boy
while pursuing his mother in a car, claim dealers did it
to silence potential informants.
Even as Thaksin
pledges an investigation, many Thais remain unconvinced
that the war on drugs is a war on thugs. Despite the
interior minister's repeated warnings that no one is
immune, a group of intoxicated godfathers recently
boasted they have nothing to fear. Police have arrested
only 36 suspects accused of killing footsoldiers.
Foreigners are surprised that few Thais have
publicly protested the carnage. After United Nations
Commissioner on Human Rights Asma Jahangir called for
restraint and independent investigation of
extra-judicial killings, Thaksin shrugged it off by
saying Thailand has the right to clean its own house,
and police are only shooting in self-defense. Even some
Buddhist monks say kill them all.
There's a
uniquely Thai reason for this consent. Drug-ridden
Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia, which
might be tempted to copy Thai methods, lack leaders with
the persuasive power of King Bhumibol Adulyadej,
Thailand's most worshipped figure, whose reference to
drug issues early this year prompted elected officials
to take action.
Indonesian crackdowns appear
hypocritical to those who accuse the military of priming
vigilantes on anjing gila (crazy dog) to ransack
breakaway East Timor in 1999. Philippine leaders risk
pushing the drug trade even deeper into the hands of
guerrillas accused of smuggling shabu through
porous sea borders. Likewise for Myanmar, where ethnic
rebels manufacture much of Asia's supply. With the price
of speed pills doubling in northern Thailand, addicts
are reportedly crossing borders to buy at fire-sale
rates as low as 20 baht (less than 50 US cents) a pill.
A decade ago, Thailand's ban on logging pushed
devastation into Cambodia and Laos.
So far,
embassies need not issue travel advisories. But if
casualties continue to climb, international aid agencies
that once swarmed into Thailand to help refugees from
Indochina wars might consider assisting survivors of the
drug war who can't afford losing face or income in
Thailand's intensive one-to-three-month rehab programs.
Though few will rally for the cause of drug
dealers, authorities should be careful not to blame the
real victims. Along with Thailand's other social
problems - prostitution, drinking, and gambling on
European football - drug addiction is merely the symptom
of a deeper ill - a very un-Buddhist fixation with quick
money that demands a faster lifestyle and increasingly
harder work and study routines. Instead of becoming the
new Colombia, the Kingdom should rediscover its Buddhist
tradition of tolerance.
Freelance journalist
Christopher Johnson has covered Thailand since
1987.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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