UN hit as soft on Thai drug war
deaths By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - The United Nations anti-drug agency is
under fire for its lack of concern over the large number
of people reportedly murdered during Thailand's 10-month
campaign last year to rid the country of narcotics - a
campaign so bloody that even the US State Department has
expressed dismay.
By the end of the anti-drug
campaign - during which officials seized nearly 40
million amphetamine tablets and arrested 52,374
suspected drug producers and dealers - human-rights
activists here estimated that close to 3,000 people had
been killed.
The head of the UN Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC) did communicate with the Thai
government on the issue last year, "but as far as I
understand it was not a letter of concern as such but an
inquiry about the facts", said Akira Fujino of the
UNODC's East Asia and Pacific office.
"There was
no further letter sent," Fujino, who heads the regional
office, added during a press conference here on
Wednesday to accompany the launch of an annual report by
the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board
(INCB), also a UN agency.
Just days after a
damning US government report on the same issue, the
INCB's 2003 report has also let off Bangkok lightly on
the alleged human-rights violations in Thailand's "war
on drugs", which began in February 2003 and lasted until
November.
"The board notes that while the
government states that the campaign was successful in
curbing the drug problem, its unintended side-effects
have been widely criticized," the report stated. "The
board has requested the government to be informed of the
results of the campaign, which, it is hoped, would be
successful."
When pressed on why the INCB had
not been more critical and expressed its own judgment on
the consequences of Bangkok's tough anti-drug drive,
Fujino affirmed that the INCB had still not received a
factual account of the "war on drugs" from the Thai
government.
"Without getting the facts, it is
not possible to say what form of law-enforcement
activities had been effective or not," he said. "We can
only act on government sources."
And the
government, which enjoyed strong public support for its
battle against the growing drug-addiction problem,
particularly among young Thais, remains unapologetic for
the carnage, insisting that the death toll has been
exaggerated in any case. On Wednesday, Rasamee
Vistaveth, the deputy secretary general of the Narcotics
Control Board, told the press conference that 1,329
people had died in drug-related killings last year.
"There were no human-rights violations during
the 'war on drugs'," she said. "Families can file
complaints with the Ministry of Justice if they feel
that a relative was wrongfully killed."
The
UK-based human-rights lobby Amnesty International is
impressed neither by Bangkok's official line nor by the
lack of concern shown by the UN. "The failure by these
UN agencies to mention the human-rights violations that
occurred during the anti-drug campaign is very
disappointing," said Srirak Plipat, the director of
Amnesty International's Thai division.
This lack
of urgency to convey an accurate picture of what
happened undermines the call made by UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan, Srirak added. "He has insisted that
the protection of human rights must be upheld by all UN
agencies, including the UNODC."
The annual
human-rights report of the US State Department, released
last week, was the latest to take Bangkok to task. The
department's country report faulted the government of
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for the "excessive
use" of "lethal force against criminal suspects" and
also drew attention to the disturbing pattern of
"extrajudicial, arbitrary and unlawful killings" during
the crackdown on drugs.
"According to official
figures, there were 1,386 narcotics-related deaths
between February 1 and April 30, 2003. No arrests were
made in 1,195 of these cases, which led many observers
to believe police were responsible for most of these
deaths," the report stated.
Thaksin, considered a
close ally of US President George W Bush, bristled at
the report, accusing Washington of being a "useless
friend".
But Amnesty International had
previously arrived at conclusions similar to those made
by the State Department and drew attention to the
climate of fear around the drug campaign in a report
released in November.
"After the launch of the
'drugs war'," it noted, "many people were reportedly
afraid to leave their homes and others avoided traveling
to areas where they were not known, for fear of being
suspected of being drug traffickers and shot dead."
Among the alleged victims was Suweep Kumatom, a
father of two, who was killed on February 26, 2003, in
Pattaya, a tourist resort town south of Bangkok known
for its go-go bars and sex industry. "He was murdered
during Thailand's 'war on drugs' although he was never
involved in any drug business at all," his Swedish wife,
Anna Kumatom, wrote soon after to a local newspaper.
