Torture is taught and learned

Sadly, we acknowledge PPT’s anniversary – 16 years – with another post on torture.

Almost a decade ago, a Prachatai post reported on how torture and enforced disappearances remain almost standard procedure for Thailand’s police and military. It set out how officials use a range of torture methods, usually to extract confessions. These include:

strangling hands with rope, choking, face dunking, kicking, punching, beating in the stomach, beating with cloth wrapped wooden bat, head-butting against the wall, and electric shock. Some methods do not leave [a] trace: using a black bag to cover the detainees’ head, detainees are exposed to extremely high or low temperature or light to darkness for extended periods of time, death threats, threats to harm detainees’ family members, forced feeding or injecting substances which leads to loss of consciousness.

Several of these methods may be applied to a single detainee or suspect.

It continues. The current kerfuffle about police torture demonstrates how torture is learned by police officers (and the same applies to the military). The Bangkok Post reports that:

Two police officers at the Aranyaprathet police station in Sa Kaeo province tortured an alcoholic man into falsely confessing that he killed his wife, according to a preliminary fact-finding investigation by the Royal Thai Police.

The woman was in fact killed by a group of teenagers aged 13 to 16, police said. Two of the attackers were reported to be sons of policemen.

Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn, a deputy national police chief, said that Panya Khongsaenkham, the 54-year-old husband of the victim, had correctly identified the officer who forced him to strip in a cold, air-conditioned room and the one who wrapped a black plastic rubbish bag over his head.

Previous reporting of police torture (and murder) makes it clear that suffocation is probably a standard procedure. Police officers probably learn how to do this on the job.

It is not just us saying this. Some time ago, a Bangkok Post editorial noted:

Shortly after it was appointed by the new military regime in 2014, the National Legislative Assembly proposed a law that would criminalise torture and the government murders known as “enforced disappearances”.

But almost 5 years later, this legislation was being buried. The Post commented that torture is standard practice in Thailand:

The refusal to ban abuses and murders that are illegal in most countries and by international law is a shameful blot. Both the regime and its appointed parliament share that shame.

The editorial It also notes that another horrendous practice – enforced disappearance – has also been widely used:

Thailand has never had a law against torture. It has never legislated against the detestable crime of disappearing — murdering and hiding the bodies — critics and activists who have not broken the law.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights has also pointed to impunity and torture. There is a “culture of torture.” The legislature finally “outlawed” torture and enforced disappearance. As Amnesty International reported on 22 February 2023:

Today, more than 15 years after Thailand became a State Party to the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), its long-delayed Act on Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance comes into effect. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and Amnesty International welcome the law’s entry into force. Both organizations urge the authorities to follow this positive step with measures both to enforce the law and to make further international human rights commitments protecting against torture and ill-treatment and enforced disappearance.

Yet the culture of torture remains. And, of course, what we have called lese majeste torture continues and deepens.

 

Updated: HRW on the conservative coalition

Human Rights Watch has released its annual World Report 2024 on human rights.  The Thailand country report is worth reading in its entirety. We reproduce here the press release associated with the Thailand report:

The Pheu Thai Party-led government, which took office in Thailand in August 2023, has not undertaken serious human rights reforms or reversed past injustices, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2024. Conservative institutions, including the Senate appointed by the 2014 military coup makers, blocked the reformist Move Forward Party, which won the most votes in the May election, from forming a government.

“The new prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, should demonstrate that he’s breaking from Thailand’s abusive past by adopting real human rights reforms and ending politically motivated prosecutions,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Thai authorities should drop the charges against peaceful protesters and those accused of ‘insulting the monarchy’ brought by the previous Prayut government since 2021.”

In the 740-page World Report 2024, its 34th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In her introductory essay, Executive Director Tirana Hassan says that 2023 was a consequential year not only for human rights suppression and wartime atrocities but also for selective government outrage and transactional diplomacy that carried profound costs for the rights of those not in on the deal. But she says there were also signs of hope, showing the possibility of a different path, and calls on governments to consistently uphold their human rights obligations.

Thai authorities use Criminal Code article 112 on lèse-majesté (insulting the monarchy), which includes punishments of up to 15 years in prison for each offense. In 2023, the authorities prosecuted at least 258 people on lèse-majesté charges for various activities at pro-democracy demonstrations or for comments on social media.

The previous government adopted the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance law, which went into effect on February 22, but the authorities have yet to effectively enforce the law or resolve outstanding cases.

Thailand has numerous, unresolved cases of enforced disappearance, with 76 cases reported to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances since 1980. Since 2017, at least nine Thai dissidents who fled to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were forcibly disappeared in those countries. The Working Group and civil society organizations pointed to Thailand’s forcible returns of asylum seekers and refugees back to these and other rights-violating countries. The incidents highlighted an apparent growing trend of transnational repression by the region’s authoritarian governments.

Increased fighting in Myanmar has also contributed to higher numbers of Myanmar asylum seekers reaching Thailand, many of whom have been forced back at the border.

Update: When we posted, PPT had some reservations regarding the cases of lese majeste reported from 2023. We went off and checked, and we think HRW is in error. Their source for the data in the Thailand report is a post by Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. That post is in English as well, although the number there for 112 cases is 259 rather than 258. Whatever the figure, it is made clear by TLHR, the data is “from 18 July 2020 until 30 September 2023.”

Two more brave women v ISOC

Teeranai Charuvastra has a useful report at The Nation on “civil rights activists Angkhana Neejapaijit and Anchana Heemmina” who have been “hounded by online trolls” for years because of their efforts to promote human rights, call out torture, demand state responses on enforced disappearances and more. Most of all, the trolls wanted to discredit “their call for transparency in southern border provinces.”

It was clear that the trolls’ accounts were “manufactured” to discredit:

… among the faceless social media accounts, one stuck out: a website called Pulony, which purportedly “tells the truth” about the Deep South. In reality, as the two women told the press recently, the site has engaged in smear campaigns against Angkhana and Anchana for years, casting them as paid agents, provocateurs and sympathisers of insurgents out to undermine the military’s peace-building efforts.

Interestingly, in a 2020 parliamentary debate, opposition MPs “were grilling the authorities for what they described as internal documents within the Internal Security Operation Command (Isoc) seeking funding for its propaganda campaigns. One of the investors was the Pulony website.”

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand, Anchana said:

“We are just two women who work for human rights…. Yet we watched a government agency ask the government to cover the cost of its attacks on us. That’s just wrong.”

Teeranai observes that “the IO targeting them was not run by any political groups or politicians seeking to win votes, but the state itself.”

Their response was to file “a lawsuit with the Civil Court in November 2020 seeking damages from Isoc. They named the quasi-military counter-insurgency agency as being at the heart of the disinformation warfare wielded by Pulony.”

Revealingly, the “website appeared to have stopped operating soon after the lawsuit was filed but remains accessible to this day.” What remains deals in conspiracy theories and global extreme right propaganda:

In one of its last entries, the website rehashed a common conspiracy theory claiming that human rights activists in the deep South, environmentalists, digital privacy advocates, and the news outlet Prachatai – where I work – are really part of the same network paid by George Soros and other external influences to sabotage Thailand.

“This is the model of sabotage that’s influenced by foreign money to devastate [Thailand’s] economy, politics and society, in order to seek interest on behalf of global politics,” the post said. “And some Thais who have no morals have agreed to be the tools of foreign powers to murder their own country.”

ISOC has gone Sgt Schulz and “denied any responsibility….[offering] I”an incredibly lame defence.”

I know nothing

Both Facebook and Twitter closed hundreds of accounts linked to the military.

But the regime’s people still have the judiciary in their pocket:

The verdict on Pulony was returned earlier this week, much to the disappointment of Angkhana and Anchana.

The court ruled that the plaintiff could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Isoc was indeed operating the website, citing the lack of technical evidence like web traffic data – something Angkhana and Anchana said is near impossible for them to obtain.

Of course, this standard of evidence does not apply in lese majeste and computer crimes cases.

The two women are not deterred. “Anchana said the lawsuit already achieved its goal of raising public awareness about the existence of IOs and the attempts to hold them accountable, especially those engineered by state entities.”

The virus and political prisoners

Several times it has been pointed out that political prisoners detained by the junta have become ill in prison. The regime couldn’t care less as these are people they prefer to torture.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights reports on this cruel treatment, determining that at least “30 political prisoners have tested positive for Covid-19 in the prison while being held in custody” since late March 2021. It must be remembered that “[a]ll of them are ‘innocent people’ who have been detained pending the trial.”

Some have been bailed, but the regime won’t release the rest until they plead guilty or agree to stringent and repressive bail conditions.

Some of the detainees have been reinfected while in the prison, including the Panupong Jadnok and Sam Samet.

Sakchai “Hia Song” Tangchitsadudi “was only allowed to post bail when the virus had penetrated his lungs after having tested positive for Covid-19 due to his comorbidity. As a result, he had to received treatment in ICU in a hospital outside the prison.”

This is an inhumane regime.

Police and impunity

A few days ago, PPT asked about Pol Col Thitisan “Joe” Uttanapol or “Joe Ferrari,” caught on camera suffocating a man to death. We asked: Whatever happened to that case?

As if by magic, there’s a new report. It says that the “former Muang Nakhon Sawan police chief testified before the Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases on Wednesday during a court trial.”

Pol Col Thitisan testified that “he used the plastic bag to intimidate the suspect and did not wrap it too tightly.” He’s angling to get out of this. That he’s not on trial fro murder suggests that some think he can get away with murder.

Clipped from https://www.goodymy.com/mind55103460

In reading this we were reminded of a book PPT read some time ago about Patani. It makes clear that the “methods” used in the 1940s are similar to those used today. In other words, Joe did as he was trained: torture, murder, corruption, impunity. Here’s some quotes from the book:

With the police, a criminal who was caught could with case be safe and free if he gave them a bribe…. [W]hen a Malay was accused of friendship with bad elements, he was immediately arrested by the Siamese police, taken to a lonely place, and beaten before he was taken to the place of detention. This also happened to Malays accused of taking part in political movements critical of the government. They were always threatened and slandered in various ways by the Siamese police, arrested, or simply beaten without bothering to take die matter to court.

Siamese police went to this village to arrest Malay youths and proceeded to torture them in various ways in order to find out who among them was the murderer.

On 26 September 1947 Miss Barbara Wittingham-Jones, an English reporter, visited Patani for the first time since the end of the war. She traveled through 250 miles of the country in order to study and observe the condition of the 700,000 Malays under the oppression of the Kingdom of Siam.

In her words “Wherever I went, I found principles of oppression applied in an organized manner and an intentional movement launched to Siamize die subjects of the country.”

“Every level of Siamese officials take bribes…”.

“Malays are often summarily shot without further investigation or mysteriously disappear without leaving a trace or further reports.”

Nothing much has changed.

Lawless cops

In a post a day or so ago, PPT in discussing another unusual court ruling, we referred to Chapter III of the 2017 Constitution where the Rights and Liberties of Thais are set out. In commenting we noted that ” the regime is arguably in breach of almost all of the provisions in that chapter.”

A reader asked us for an example. Rather than going through past cases, we thought it better to refer to a case we had yet to comment on.

Prachatai reports on the arrest of two people “during a candle vigil for a dead protester at Din Daeng Police Station…”. The claim to have been subject to “beatings and death threats” in police custody. In other words, they were tortured.

Arguably, this arrest and torture breaches Articles 28, 29 and 30 of the Constitution.

But, as we know, the regime and its minions don’t give a fig about law and constitution, while the police are thugs, torturers and murderers. In this case, one of the men was arrested on 29 October. He was beaten and threatened:

… he and another protester were taken inside the police station where he was subjected to beatings in an effort to obtain information that he said he did not know. The police reportedly told him that if he died during the beatings, they would make his death look like an accident.

“A police officer senior to the others said ‘Let me have him. I want this one.’ Then he started the beating, asking me if I knew the shooter. I said I didn’t but he kept on hitting me.”

“They beat me a lot. They kicked me.  They punched me. They smacked my head into a wooden chair. They use a baton on to hit the ribs on my right  side. Then, they choked me to get my phone password… I told them but it was wrong.  I couldn’t remember. They squeezed my neck so hard that I almost fainted.”

He was released on 02.30.  Afterwards, he was subject to normal investigation procedures and charged with participating in a gathering and causing public disorder.

Another man who was arrested and beaten. He was

… taken to a solitary room and stripped down to his pants. Interrogators stomped on his genitals and stubbed out cigarettes on his lower stomach.

“It was very bad. I had to brace myself all the time because I didn’t know when they were going to hit me again…”.

All of this is now standard police practice.

Police vs. the people

The regime’s political “strategy” for controlling anti-government and monarchy reform movements involves repression and arrests, with the latter involving jail time.

Police Maj Gen Jirasan Kaewsangek, the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Bureau, recently stated that “since July 2020, 683 anti-government protests have been held in Bangkok, and 366 of the cases are still under investigation.” Independent sources have the figure topping 800. Not a few of them are children.

Many scores of these protesters are being kept in detention.

The regime couples these mass arrests with targeted harassment of those they think are leaders. Thai Enquirer reports that the most recent student leader to face “a flurry of legal charges for his political activism” is Hudsawat ‘Bike’ Rattanakachen, 22, a critic studying political science at Ubon Ratchathani University. He is “facing multiple charges from the police including the violation of the Emergency Situations Act and violation of the Communicable Disease Act.”

He says: “I think the government charged me because they want to slow down the pace of our movement and make things more difficult…”.

The impact for him and others facing charges is that become entangled in time-consuming legal actions and responses.

He went on to explain that the regime “is raising the bar when it comes to suppressing regional movements like his in Ubon Ratchathani. He fears the authorities are increasing their level of surveillance.”

Academic Titipol Phakdeewanich “agrees that the state is exercising a dangerous campaign of legal harassment, one that clearly violates the rights of students.” He added that “there are a significant number of cases like this where ordinary people, villagers, rural people, people defined by the government as opposition, have told me stories that they’ve been monitored or followed as well…”.

Titipol observes that the regime “hang these cases over them indefinitely as a way to control students…”.

Hudsawat explains the sad fact that “we live in a society where the process of law or justice in Thailand is not normal,” adding, “anyone can be accused of having a different opinion from the government’s and then it’s decided that they pose a security threat to the state.”

Another facing charges is Sitanun Satsaksit, the sister of missing activist in exile Wanchalearm Satsaksit. She’s now “charged with violation of the Emergency Decree for giving a speech at a protest on 5 September 2021 at the Asoke Intersection.”

She’s one of a dozen now “charged with violation of the Emergency Decree for participating in the same protest…”. Her case is tragic:

Sitanun said that she feels hopeless that not only are the Thai authorities not helping her find her brother and bring the perpetrators to justice, they are also trying to silence her by filing charges against her, even though she is fighting for the rights of her brother and other victims of enforced disappearance.

She adds:

Is it such a threat to national security that I join the campaign for the Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance bill that you have to file charges to silence a victim? I am just calling for justice for someone in my family, but the government sees me as an enemy….

The regime protects the monarchy and its own position for fear that even individual protesters can bring the whole corrupt system down. Both police and military are now little more than the regime’s political police. THe enemies are the people, democracy, and proposer representation.

The rotten system II

The smell from the rotten system is overpowering.

Remember the case of Gen Prawit Wongsuwan and his two dozen luxury watches? He said he had borrowed the watches from a former classmate, Patthawat Suksriwong, who was dead, but that he had returned them. Remember how the National Anti-Corruption Commission exonerated him on unexplained – some might say, bogus – grounds?

That smelly story is back. Thai PBS reports that the “The Central Administrative Court has ordered Thailand’s anti-graft watchdog, the … NACC…, to reveal its findings from an investigation into the expensive wristwatches seen being worn in public by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit…”.

The court seems to recognize that the NACC is so politically-biased that it is widely viewed as a regime tool when it “ruled that, the disclosure of the findings…, including witness testimonies and Gen Prawit’s own testimonies, will demonstrate the transparency and accountability of the NACC and will enhance public trust and confidence in the agency.”

The NACC says it is considering what to do. We might guess that it is seeking advice from the likes of regime legal fixer Wissanu Krea-ngam and Gen Prawit himself.

Remember Pol Col Thitisan Uttanapol or “Joe Ferrari,” recently caught on camera suffocating a man to death with plastic bags while “interrogating” a suspect and trying to extort money? You might think that Joe learned his plastic bag trick from watching gangster movies. But it seems he may have been trained by the police. Prachatai reports on “the case of Somsak Chuenchit and his 12-year effort to bring the police officers who tortured his son by beating and suffocating him with plastic bags during an interrogation.” The report states:

On 28 January 2009, Ritthirong ‘Shop’ Chuenchit ,18, was returning from a cinema in Prachinburi Province with a friend when he was stopped by the police. His clothing and motorcycle helmet reportedly fit the description given to police by a woman who had earlier been the victim of a gold necklace-snatching.

At the police station, the woman identified Ritthirong as the person who had taken her necklace. Ignoring his assertion of innocence, the interrogating officers beat the handcuffed youth and then suffocated him in a bid to determine where the necklace was hidden. Whenever Ritthirong chewed holes in the plastic bags to breathe, more were placed over his head.

Chuenchit survived but was framed and traumatized.

Remember the activists kept in jail for months when arrested and refused bail? Prachatai reports that the Court of Appeal granted bail to activists Phromsorn Weerathamjaree, Parit Chiwarak, Panupong Jadnok, Thatchapong Kaedam, and Nutchanon Pairoj on 15 September, after having been denied bail several times. Several other activists continue to be detained without bail, including Arnon Nampa and Jatuphat Boonpattararaksa. A rotten regime prefers that its opponents remain in jail, face never-ending repression and under threat.

The regime is rotten, the system is rotten.

HRW on Thailand’s human rights decline

When you are near the bottom, going deeper requires particular skills in dark arts.

Human Rights Watch has recently released its World Report 2021. The summary on Thailand makes for depressing reading, even after more than six years of military junta and now a barely distinguishable post-junta regime.

The full report on Thailand begins:

Thailand faced a serious human rights crisis in 2020. Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha’s government imposed restrictions on civil and political rights, particularly freedom of expression, arbitrarily arrested democracy activists, engineered the dissolution of a major opposition political party on politically motivated grounds, and enforced a nationwide state of emergency, using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext.

And the rest of the report is pretty much a litany of repression. There’s discussion of the State of Emergency, restrictions on freedom of expression, torture, enforced disappearance, impunity on state-sponsored rights violations, the persecution of human rights defenders, a continuation of human rights violations in the south, mistreatment of migrants and refugees, and more. Surprisingly, there’s only a paragraph on lese majeste, which is now the regime’s main weapon in silencing dissent.

Readers of PPT will know all of the sordid details of the regime’s efforts to stifle criticism, but read the report to be reminded of how dark things have remained despite the rigged election and the existence of a parliament. The latter has, in 2020, been pretty much supine as the regime has used its ill-gotten majority and its unelected Senate to stifle the parliaments scrutiny of the regime.

Royalist military failures

There are an article and an op-ed that deserve attention because they speak the truth on Thailand’s military.

The first is by Choltanutkun Tun-atiruj at Thisrupt. and is on the topic of impunity, something PPT has posted on many times over the years.

This article refers to the “arrest,” interrogation, torture and then the murder of one of two brothers accused of drug dealing in Nakhon Phanom on 17 April. 33-year-old Yutthana Saisa died and 29-year-old Natthapong Saisa was badly beaten after being “taken into custody by a group of military men.”

Drug allegations are common in cases where the military murders civilians. Torture is commonly used to extract “confessions.”

At “Yutthana’s funeral, a military representative came to pay respect on behalf of the military and offered the family 10,000 baht.” Generous of them, huh? One life is valued at a paltry 10,000 baht. You can see why the military has a history of murdering civilians; it just does not value them. And, as this brazen bribery shows, the military brass is remarkably arrogant.

The military representative also offered further assistance and requested that the military have one night to host the funeral ceremony.” The military has admitted to the deaths and promised an “investigation.” It is likely that will go nowhere.

The question arises as to what the hell the murderous soldiers were doing when they involved themselves in civilian investigations. Well, of course, during the military junta and now since the virus “crisis,” Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha issued orders that “gives the military broad powers to conduct a search or arrest of people accused of drug-related offenses, without a warrant.” This has meant that, for almost six years, the military has official permission to essentially get away with murder.

Contemplating the military’s role, Zachary Abuza has an op-ed on Thailand’s military at BenarNews. He is a professor at the National War College and Georgetown University.

He summarizes recent history:

From Ugly Thailand

There’s shockingly little pushback to the Royal Thai Armed Forces’ self-serving actions. Coup d’etats in 2006 and 2014 were met with resignation. The electorate showed up to vote in referendums to approve army-drafted constitutions, accepting that it was the best they was going to get. Elections were rigged. Parties that won elections did not get to rule, other parties were dissolved. Military-backed governments have mishandled the economy, hampering growth.

The military continues to see its budgets rise, even as the economy underperforms, despite the absence of threats. The armed forces’ budget increased from 115 billion baht (U.S. $3.55 billion) in 2006 to 233 billion baht ($719 billion) in 2020, a 103-percent hike.

While the military lashes out at corrupt politicians, it doesn’t even begin to try to address the unexplained wealth of senior officers….

And so to the culture of impunity.

Thais are inured to conscription, though it is unpopular. The Army has defended conscription saying that it is essential for national security. Yet there is ubiquitous use of conscripts as house boys for officers. And the regularity of young soldiers dying from hazing has caused a public backlash.

Thais have put up with the unexplained death of insurgent suspects while in military detention, and the wrongful deaths of people the Army at first claimed to be suspected militants, but later acknowledged they were not. More recently a soldier tortured a suspected drug seller to death and beat his brother. The military, again in the spotlight, has announced that it may press charges.

It may, or it may not. Or the case might just slide away, as they usually do. As Abuja puts it:

Under immediate public pressure, the military always states its commitment to investigate these actions. But in time, the investigations grind to a halt, and charges are dropped. Even in the rare cases where security forces are charged with wrongdoing and convicted, they are invariably freed on appeals. The culture of military impunity is deep and grating.

He points out how things fade away. Remember the “most lethal mass shooting in Thai history, with 29 dead and nearly 60 wounded in Nakhon Ratchasima?”  As ever, “Army chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong would not take responsibility for the shooting, reinforcing the view that the military is beyond accountability.” Nor would he do anything tangible about the Army-owned boxing ring where a bout was held against official advice and a cluster of virus cases soon followed.

Clipped from Khaosod

It is, Abuja affirms, the “defense of the monarchy …[that is] the central justification for the military’s incessant meddling in politics.”

Indeed, most of the military brass has made it to the top by slithering to the monarchy and doing the crown’s bidding while enriching themselves.

The military leadership that extends high into civilian ranks is demonstrably hopeless and getting worse. It is also becoming more dangerous.