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Thailand's drug war
redux
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - By declaring another war against
the country's narcotics trade, Thai Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra appears steeled in his
determination to rid Thailand of illicit drugs.
During the country's third "war on drugs", which
got underway last week, Bangkok hopes to target
more than 10,000 "major drug dealers".
In
the cross hairs of Thailand's anti-drug
authorities are smugglers operating along the
country's eastern borders, which it shares with
Laos and Cambodia.
The third campaign will
target drug networks operating in provinces such
as Ubon Ratchathani, Sa Kaeo and Surin in the
northeast, in contrast to the first drug war
launched in 2003 that zeroed in on the country's
northern provinces. This was carried over into a
second less brutal campaign that lasted from
October to December 2004. The focus then was on
northern provinces that share a border with
Myanmar, identified as a major supplier of
methamphetamines, known as "ya baa" locally and
"speed" internationally.
But already this
new anti-drug campaign has come up against a
barrage of concerns. Questions have been raised by
sections of the media and human-rights groups
about the need for the current campaign and the
manner in which it will be pursued.
"Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has yet to convince
all Thais that his grand campaigns are the best
remedy. His declaration this week of the third war
on drugs was greeted with large dollops of
skepticism," wrote the Bangkok Post in an
editorial on Friday.
Human-rights
activists worry that the campaign may leave a
trail of dead bodies in its wake as was the case
during the first "war on drugs," when an estimated
2,500 people were killed during the first three
months of that campaign.
"We will have to
monitor this campaign again," Somchai Homlaor, a
leading human-rights lawyer, told Inter Press
Service. "The government will face a lot of
criticism if the 'war on drugs' is carried out
like the first phase."
Bangkok, meanwhile,
is hoping to secure international support for its
campaign at the United Nations Congress on Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice that opened in the
capital on Monday. Thailand will use the eight-day
meeting to call for international cooperation in
controlling the precursors used to produce illicit
drugs such as methamphetamines and will seek
cooperation in tracking drug dealers, the Bangkok
Post reported.
When the Thaksin
administration launched its 2003 anti-drug
crusade, Thailand was confronted with a disturbing
picture about a sizeable number of its youth, even
as young as 15 years of age, hooked on
methamphetamines. A UN study at the time estimated
that anywhere from 500 million to 700 million
speed pills produced in narcotics labs in Myanmar
were smuggled across the border into Thailand
annually.
By the end of the first
anti-drug campaign, the Thaksin administration
confirmed that it had seized some 40 million
methamphetamine tablets, crushed drug production
centers in the country, arrested 52,374 suspected
producers and dealers of narcotics and,
importantly, declared schools as drug-free zones.
However, Thaksin was unable to wipe away
the stain that the "war on drugs" had led to
widespread extrajudicial killings by the police
and other anti-drug officials. Leading
human-rights groups such as the New York-based
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and even the US
government condemned the Thaksin administration
for the excessive bloodshed in 2003.
"Throughout the war on drugs, the Thai
government at the highest levels encouraged
violence and discrimination against anyone
suspected of using or trafficking narcotic drugs,"
HRW declared in a subsequent report.
According to Somchai, there are enough
"eye-witness accounts to prove that the police did
it". And if, as the government said at the time,
the killings were the work of narcotics gangs, why
have the police not prosecuted a single suspect
for such an alleged crime, he asks. "The
authorities have a duty to protect life and must
bring the offenders to justice."
The
Thaksin administration, however, appeared
vindicated by the support it received from a wide
section of the country for cracking down on the
narcotics trade. This sentiment, say Thai
political analysts, was reflected during the
February general election, where Thaksin's Thai
Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party was re-elected by
a thumping majority.
A study published by
a group of Thai and foreign researchers last month
noted that the 2003 campaign's greatest impact was
felt among the country's heroin users,
particularly those living in the rural areas.
An estimated 70% of injecting drug users
admitted that "they stopped using heroin after the
campaign began", revealed a statement released by
the authors of the study, who were attached to the
Johns Hopkins University, in the United States,
and Thailand's Chiang Mai University.
"The
study found that the war on drugs had a greater
impact in rural communities, where drug users are
easier to identify, than their counterparts in
urban centers," it added. "Seventy-eight percent
of rural drug users said they quit injecting drugs
compared to 55% of urban users."
On April
11, as he launched the third phase of the
anti-drug campaign, Thaksin revealed just how far
he would go with his latest onslaught: "As long as
I am still the prime minister, I will not allow
narcotic drugs to return."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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