By D. Arul Rajoo, Bernama
Bangkok : Resentment over human rights abuses by Thai authorities is fuelling brutal insurgency in the restive southern provinces, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday.
“Muslims in southern Thailand have told us the government’s failure to solve “disappearances” leave them with the perception that justice for them is disappearing as well,” said Brad Adams, HRW Asia director.
He said the New York-based HRW wants Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and Thai authorities to take appropriate steps to stop the practice of enforced disappearances including for specific criminal offences.
In addition, the Thai authorities must ensure people detained by law enforcers and security forces are held at recognised places of detention, and are not subjected to torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, while the detainees’ whereabouts are made known to their families and lawyers, HRW said.
Separatist militants, seeking independence for the Muslim-majority provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, had launched deadly attacks — shooting, bombing, hacking and arson — over the past four years that had claimed more than 2,900 lives. About 95 per cent of the victims were civilians.
On the fourth anniversary of the enforced disappearance and presumed murder of prominent Muslim human rights lawyer Somchai Neelappaijit, Adams asked the Thai authorities to ensure the police officers responsible for these crimes to be brought to justice.
On March 12, 2004, the chairman of the Thailand’s Muslim Lawyers’ Association and vice-chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Lawyers’ Council of Thailand was pulled out from his car in Bangkok, allegedly by five policemen, and was never seen again.
Then, Somchai was involved in a lawsuit alleging widespread police torture of Muslims in the conflict-ridden southern border provinces.
Although five policemen were charged with coercion and robbery, none have been charged with more serious crimes of abduction or other offences connected to enforced disappearances.
Adams said that over the past four years, two prime ministers — Thaksin Shinawatra and General Surayud Chulanont — had acknowledged that government officials were involved in Somchai’s abduction and killing, but did not pressed the Royal Thai Police and the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation to answer basic questions on who ordered the abduction and killing of Somchai and who obstructed justice.
“Somchai’s case is a clear test for the new Thai government. Successive governments have engaged in a cover-up to hide the identities of the authors of this heinous crime.
“Four years later, no steps have been taken to hold these officials accountable,” he said.
There were at least 22 cases of unresolved “disappearances”, with incriminating evidence that policemen and soldiers were responsible, but no action was taken in any of these cases, he added.