Pubdate: Sun, 02 Mar 2003
Source: Nation, The (Thailand)
Copyright: 2003 Nation Multimedia Group
Contact:  http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1963
Author: Sopon Onkgara

COLD-BLOODED MURDER AS GOVERNMENT POLICY

Overkill takes it toll. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has obviously 
begun to feel the heat of a public uproar over excessive extrajudicial 
executions of drug dealers all over the nation. The latest body count shows 
the figure rising to more than 1,400, and a lot more are still expected to 
die from bullets.

What has gone wrong in this fair land? Many people with troubled 
consciences have been asking themselves this, for they have not received an 
appropriate response from the powers that be, who show satisfaction in the 
rising number of dead drug dealers.

Of course, Prime Minister Thaksin will go down in the country's history for 
the shoot-to-kill policy.

Human-rights groups have been raising a hue and cry over the extrajudicial 
killings. When the death toll was still in the hundreds, the chief and 
Interior Minister Wan Mohamad Noor Matha professed to be unperturbed. They 
even scoffed and sarcastically hit out at critics. Thai Rak Thai Party 
members regard human-rights groups as sympathisers with drug dealers.

Obviously, things got out of control. Drug dealers died by extrajudicial 
killing or just plain murder in droves, thus attracting the attention of 
Amnesty International and the UN High Commission for Human Rights, which is 
expected to debate Thailand's case in Geneva later this month.

By that time, nobody knows how many dead will lie at the doors of the 
perpetrators of the shoot-to-kill policy.

Of course, Thailand has never experienced a situation when wholesale 
slaughter was permitted or ignored by law-enforcement authorities. The 
police have taken things in their stride as dead bodies fall like tenpins 
in a hail of bullets. The one-time highest score was six villagers slain in 
a pickup in Chiang Rai province on Friday.

Those murders took place after the prime minister set up two committees to 
monitor the war against drug dealers.

The funny thing is that there have not been any big fish caught, let alone 
murdered, despite repeated claims of drug-dealer blacklists by the police 
and the Interior Ministry. If they indeed have such lists, they should 
contain all the big-timers and not just the small fry who have died every 
day with the blessing of the authorities.

Drug addicts deserve punishment, of course, but not by getting killed. 
Children of prominent political and social figures are known to have been 
addicted or still to be addicted to drugs, and their names should be on the 
blacklists. Those names are generally known among people who keep 
themselves up to date. But those delinquents will never be killed, owing to 
the protection of their parents.

The government, particularly the prime minister, is in a dilemma. If the 
rate of extrajudicial executions or murders drops sharply, it means that 
someone in the government signalled to the executioners that they should 
slow down their killings. If the high rate continues, it means that drug 
dealers have been responsible for the executions, and the government must 
be pressured to go after the killers with reasonable enthusiasm.

The reluctance on the part of government leaders to monitor the killings 
may not be because there is too much blood on their hands. They are a bit 
worried about the public backlash following "collateral damage" in which 
children were also among the victims of murder in cold blood.

What will be the ultimate result of the war against drug traders? The big 
fish will get away. They have plenty of money.

The "mad drug" is getting expensive, the price per tablet having risen a 
bit over Bt100 to somewhere between Bt300 and Bt500. This is ridiculous 
indeed. What the public should fear most is speculation that the drug 
traders will pool their vast financial resources and strike back to protect 
the profitable but illegal trade.

Who knows? They may take bold steps, offer an attractive price on the heads 
of whoever have had the nerve to mess with them. That is something nobody 
wants to see happen. It would be a defeat for the country and its future 
generations.

In the meantime, let's hope that Thailand is not to be condemned by the 
international community for the blatant violation of human rights. That 
would cause incalculable damage to the country's export trade and 
investment. Such is the fruit of the arrogance of power and the quest for a 
quick victory in an unwinnable war.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom