Abduction case puts Thailand on trial
By Brian McCartan
BANGKOK- This week marked the five-year anniversary of the disappearance of
Thai human-rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaichit, who was pulled from his vehicle
on a Bangkok street, forced by a police official into another car and driven
away never to be seen again. How Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government
handles the case is being viewed widely as an important barometer of the
country's democratic direction.
Five policemen were arrested in April 2004, but charged only with coercion and
robbery rather the more serious crimes of abduction or murder. Four of the
officials were acquitted by a Thai court, but police Major Ngern Tongsuk was
found guilty of physically assaulting Somchai.
Ngern was later released on appeal and the police official was
later reported as dying in a landslide in 2008. There are contradictory reports
that he is alive and well on the Cambodian island of Koh Kong, near the Thai
border. Several hairs found in Somchai's car, which at least one witness said
was driven away by the abductors, were determined not to belong to his family
but have not been DNA-tested.
Somchai disappeared one day after he submitted a letter to the Thai Senate
accusing the police of torture and other abuses against five Muslim suspects he
represented who stood accused of raiding a Thai army camp in Narathiwat
province, one of Thailand's three insurgency hit southernmost provinces.
Somchai alleged in his report that police had kicked, electrocuted and urinated
on the men to exact their confessions. They later were found to be unconnected
to the raid.
Former and now exiled prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra stated the day after
the police official's trial that Somchai was dead. Thaksin had previously
dismissed Somchai's disappearance as due to marital problems.
Thailand has no laws to deal with enforced disappearances, but after five years
a person who has disappeared is considered legally dead. Local and
international human-rights organizations have been critical of the case's
handling, particularly the police's lack of efforts to prosecute the case. The
International Commission of Jurists, which has been closely following the case,
has criticized the police for a lack of investigative commitment and the
handling of forensic evidence.
Somchai's wife, Angkhana Neelapaijit, has led an international campaign for
justice. This week, her daughter read a statement she drafted to a meeting of
the United Nation's Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. In
Bangkok, Western embassies, including representatives from the United States
and Australia, have shown keen interest in the case.
Angkhana had repeatedly called on the police's Department of Special
Investigations (DSI) to pursue the case, but was rebuffed on three separate
occasions due to perceived problems with her application. The DSI finally took
up the case in January under pressure from Abhisit. But after a futile search
for bodily remains in a river where Somchai's body is believed to have been
dumped, officials said there was no new evidence to consider.
Righteous opportunity
The high-profile case represents an opportunity for Abhisit to assert his
stated commitment to upholding human rights and the rule of law, and bring the
country's runaway security forces to heel. Deputy Prime Minister Suthep
Thaungsuban, speaking on Abhisit's behalf at a meeting on March 11 to mark the
fifth anniversary of Somchai's disappearance, said the prime minister was
following the case personally and had attached great importance to its
resolution. He has also instructed the police and DSI to work together on the
case in a more serious manner.
Abhisit's statement on December 30 asserting that justice and human rights will
be integral to the resolution of the insurgency in the country's southern
regions gave a measure of hope to many that Thai security forces would under a
new administration be held more accountable for their actions. Those hopes were
tempered less than a month later by an Amnesty International report detailing
systematic torture by security forces in the south and reports of mistreatment
by naval officials of Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.
It's not clear to most analysts that Abhisit has complete command control over
his security forces, including in relation to Somchai's case. On January 19,
the Oxford-educated premier vowed to look into several outstanding human-rights
cases, many dating to Thaksin's administration. He followed this up by ordering
police to investigate various unresolved cases, including Somchai's
disappearance.
Yet Abhisit's stance has been consistently undermined by his own security
forces. On February 8, military and police raided the Pattani province offices
of Angkhana's non-governmental organization, the Working Group on Justice for
Peace (WGJP). Officials claimed to be hunting for insurgents, but, according to
Angkhana, concentrated instead on copying materials from her group's computers
and interrogating staff about who they had met and what they had discussed.
She said at a recent press briefing that the army was unhappy because local
people had become more outspoken in inquiring about their arrested relatives
held at army camps. The WGJP has chronicled and shared with international
organizations the growing list of torture, killings and disappearances
allegations against Thai security forces battling Muslim insurgents. The group
has essentially carried on and expanded on Somchai's original work of checking
and publicizing security force abuses.
The WGJP told Asia Times Online in November that there had been at least 30
disappearances between 2001 and 2008, resulting from both Thaksin's
controversial war on drugs campaign and counter-insurgency operations. United
States rights lobby Human Rights Watch noted in a press release that since
2004, when the Muslim insurgency re-ignited in the country's southern regions,
human-rights activists had been arrested, tortured, killed and disappeared by
security forces in the South.
The rights group noted that to date none of the perpetrators had been brought
to justice. Meanwhile, army cordon and search operations in recent months - in
what some have characterized as the Thai military's rendition of US's "surge"
in Iraq - has entailed increased arrests and mistreatment of suspects,
according to rights monitoring groups.
The WGJP raid followed a report by the Internal Security Operations Command
(ISOC) that some insurgents were masquerading as rights activists to incite
local hatred of government officials. The raid came only days after Angkhana
had met with Abhisit and deputy Democrat Party leader Kraisak Choonhavan, who
gave their assurances that progress would be made in her missing husband's
case. Kraisak referred to the raid at a recent meeting of journalists as
"embarrassing".
Extra-legal suppression
Security forces have often cited the Martial Law Act of 1914 and a 2005
Emergency Decree as the legal basis for detaining suspects in the south. Under
martial law, suspects can be arrested without a warrant and detained for seven
days without charge. The Emergency Decree allows detentions to be extended by a
further 30 days, with suspects denied access to family or legal counsel for the
first 72 hours.
The Emergency Decree also contains provisions that make it difficult, if not
impossible, to prosecute security personnel for rights abuses. Abhisit noted at
a meeting of foreign journalists on January 14 that the emergency decree had
been renewed 14 times since it was first invoked and indicated his intention to
eventually lift the decree and assert civilian control over the security
forces. Army commander General Anupong Paochinda balked and the issue is
believed for now to be off the table.
A Thai army official said in an interview that the laws were necessary because
Thailand's justice system moves too slowly and they allow authorities more time
to gather evidence against suspected insurgents. The army, he says, is seeking
to engage rights groups and the media to better explain the situation. One
possible sign of a change in tack is a meeting in Pattani province scheduled
for the end of March between the military and non-governmental organizations to
discuss the role of human rights and law in the southern insurgency.
Meanwhile, Abhisit has moved ahead with the creation of a Southern Cabinet,
aimed at increasing coordination among ministers with responsibility for the
restive region. Currently, the only agency with a mechanism for locals to lodge
complaints against officials is the Southern Border Provinces Administrative
Center (SBPAC), which was re-established after the 2006 coup in reaction to
Thaksin's dismantlement of the agency. However, critics say military
interference in the SBPAC's workings has hindered its abilities to function
independently.
The military first increased its presence in the south after the January 2004
attack on the army's Narathiwat camp and again in 2007 and 2008. News reports
in the local press said Abhisit authorized the deployment of an additional
4,000 troops, mostly Rangers, on Thursday. According to Kraisak, "Forty percent
of the army is in one area of the country with 3.1 million people".
The death toll in the south has now reached over 3,300 since 2004, according to
some estimates. "Somchai wanted to tell us this," said Kraisak, "exacting blood
is almost normal now ... Those with the most power are those with the most
means for violence."
The Thai army has accrued tremendous power through its operations in the south.
Its budget increased from US$2.3 billion prior to the 2006 military coup to
$4.2 billion in 2008. These figures do not include several billion dollars
being spent on development programs, such as the one million baht (US$27,682)
donations to individual villages or the $1.7 billion economic development zone
planned for the three violence-prone provinces.
Army sources say the south is a priority issue and the increased budget is
necessary to develop the economy of the three provinces and end the insurgency
as quickly as possible. On paper, Abhisit has it within his power to rein in
the military, both through command authority and potentially through cutting
budgets, and in his titular role as head of ISOC, the main military body
responsible for security in the south.
In reality, his position is compromised by the behind-the-scenes role senior
army officials allegedly played in cobbling together the coalition government
he now heads. Heavy-handed military policies have reportedly irked the prime
minister and a behind-the-scenes struggle for real administrative power is
believed to be underway.
Many believe the resolution of Somchai's case would go a long way in gaining
southern people's trust and confidence that Abhisit's government is serious
about bringing peace and justice to the area. Somchai's disappearance has been
held up by many in the south as an example of the culture of impunity
surrounding security forces; insurgents have claimed that their killings are in
retaliation for government abuses.
In an apparent insurgent attack on March 7, two people were killed and burned
with a tract left on the bodies warning government officials to stop harming
local Muslims. Unless Abhisit can show that he is serious about ending state
abuses, he risks more disaffected young southerners joining the ranks of the
insurgency, while leaving the rest of the country wondering whether the young
prime minister is really in control of his security forces.
Brian McCartan is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist. He may be
reached at brianpm@comcast.net.
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