Pubdate: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 Source: Nation, The (Thailand) Copyright: 2004 Nation Multimedia Group Contact: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1963 Author: Attayuth Butrsriphum GOVT RIGHTS RECORD SLAMMED The Thaksin Shinawatra government might go down in history as the gravest human-rights violator of all Thai administrations, leading academics said yesterday. Thammasat University's political science lecturer Kasien Tejapeera submitted as evidence the reported 15 deaths of village leaders and human-rights activists, and the more than 3,000 people killed during the government's 11-month war on drugs, which has been widely condemned by human-rights advocates. "These cases represent human-rights violations at the gravest scale unmatched by any administration, even when compared to the times of student uprisings in 1973, and 1976, and the May bloodshed in 1992," Kasien told the seminar at Chulalongkorn University yesterday. As the government has failed in case after case to protect the civil and political rights and social rights of individual people and civil movements, it has lost its political justification to remain in power, he said. "From the disappearance of civil rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit to the murder of civil rights activist Charoen Wat-aksorn, no one in this government has ever shown any responsibility. This government is indeed suffering from moral deficiency," said Kasien. He added that as the government has failed to protect human rights, this duty should be given over to the international or the local community. Businesses that violate human-rights norms should also be boycotted and human rights should rank high on the political agenda, he said. Another lecturer, Chiang Mai University's Attajak Sattayanurak, agreed that the strength of the Thaksin administration in terms of economic performance had become shattered as more people have questioned the government's moral conscience. In a related event, Thaksin yesterday said he had ordered Justice Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana to consider the possibility of having the Special Investigation Department's officials co-investigate the murder of Charoen with the police. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake