The Bangkok Post (23 May 2009: “Police charged over drug war”) reports the good news that some advances have been made on the long avoided human rights abuses that occurred during the so-called war on drugs.
Under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the government engaged in a popular but deadly campaign against drug trafficking that eventually led to the alleged extra-judicial killings of some 2000-3000 persons. None of the alleged killings has led to charges until now.
Hopefully the investigations of this highly flawed policy and reprehensible actions do not become politicised and that responsibility is eventually allocated to all levels and not just to lower level police.
The following is quoted from HRW as background on the war on drugs:
Thailand’s “war on drugs” began in February 2003 for the official reason of responding to a boom in methamphetamines, locally known as ya baa or “crazy pills.” … Between 1993 and 2001, methamphetamine use in Thailand rose an estimated 1,000 percent and, according to government estimates, overtook heroin as the drug of choice in the country. Most ya baa was produced and smuggled from neighboring Burma and, to a lesser extent, Laos. By 2002, an estimated 2.4 percent of Thais aged twelve to sixty-five, including 4.5 percent of males, were using methamphetamines.
In December 2002, Thailand’s revered constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, called on the government to bring the “methamphetamine problem” under control. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra seized the opportunity, announcing on January 28, 2003, that a “war on drugs” would be waged on drug dealers. The use of the term “war” was apt: over the next three months more than 2,000 people in Thailand were killed as the government effectively declared “open season” on those accused of involvement in the drug trade. The crackdown saw rampant human rights violations, including government promotion of violence against drug suspects, extrajudicial executions, blacklisting of drug suspects without due process, intimidation of human rights defenders, and violence and other breaches of due process by the Royal Thai Police.
Background information is available from Global Security and in the paper by T. Kerr et al. “Health and Human Rights in the Midst of a Drug War,” in C. Beyer & H. Pizer (eds), Public Health and Human Rights, Baltimore: JHU Press, 2007, pp. 11-32 (available at Google Books).
Other useful reading includes Somsak Jeamteerasakul’s note and news reports by Mathaba and Xinhua.
