The political police expand and threaten

The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has been effectively made into a political police force under the Abhisit Vejjajiva regime. Hence, it should be especially worrying for all that the DSI is being expanded in size and reach. In the past, DSI had bureaus that handled fraud, drugs and human trafficking and, the area that became highly politicized, “special cases assigned by the DSI chief…”.

The Bangkok Post reports that the DSI has “created 300 positions and two new bureaus to take up terrorist and special criminal cases in the provinces.” These posts are mainly to be filled by “officers from other agencies such as the military and police…”. The link with the military is important in making the DSI part of regime maintenance. It is also not unique to Thailand.

DSI chief Tharit Pengdit said “only those in specialist fields were considered for the new posts.” These are specialist spies, snoopers, censors and the ideologically sound. They are to deal with “national security cases and the investigation of special criminal cases in the North, Northeast, East and lower South.” New bureaus have been created for “cases which constitute major threats to national security including terrorism.” For all but the deep south, read this as being policing and spying on red shirts, republicans and other opponents of the regime. This is beginning to sound a lot like Department A.

It is reported that “DSI figures show the department handled 1,059 cases in 2004. The DSI has concluded investigation of 596 of them.” Given that thousands of red shirts were arrested, killed, wounded and investigated in 2010, PPT guesses that the DSI’s main role is as an ant-red shirt agency.

It proclaims one of its big cases for 2011 to be the pursuit of “the prosecution of an online group as part of its platform to ‘Stop Lese Majeste’. The group uploaded audio files and visual images and messages offensive to the monarchy.”

Such an expansion of an already political police to protect a royalist regime should be of concern to all those who are interested in political freedom in Thailand. This expansion fits the model of an authoritarian regime embedding itself.