Speaking in Bangkok on June 2, Stephen Toope, chairman of the U.N. Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances, said that the Working Group has taken up the case of Thai human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, who has been missing since he was abducted on March 12, 2004. He said that the Working Group has informed the government of Thailand that it is looking into the case and that it would “enter into continuing dialogue” with the government and wife of the victim, who herself has been subjected to threats from government officials for pursuing the case.
The news that the U.N. Working Group has taken up the case is most welcome, as over a year since Somchai was abducted, despite tremendous public outcry within Thailand and abroad the authorities have failed to address adequately the many questions that remain over his disappearance. In fact, the responses of senior officials have been plagued with inconsistencies and contradictions that suggest a cover-up. Although five relatively junior police officers are on trial charged with offences related to Somchai’s disappearance, persons close to the case have publicly stated that they believe these officers were acting on the orders of someone powerful behind the scenes. No attempt has been made to deny this allegation or charge the persons making these accusations under Thailand’s onerous defamation laws.
The Working Group’s announcement coincided with a court decision the day earlier acquitting four of Somchai’s former clients who were charged with having planned bombing attacks in Thailand. In reaching its verdict, the Bangkok Criminal Court found that the prosecution case had relied only on witness testimony and was bereft of hard evidence. Among the four acquitted, at least one has said that he was brutally tortured to extract a confession. Meanwhile, one of the police officers implicated in Somchai’s disappearance has been identified in court as having been among officers who tortured others among his former clients.
The case of Somchai Neelaphaijit is critical to the development of an effective human rights regime in Thailand because in it the nexus between cases of heinous torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings is made explicit. While the government expresses its intention to ratify the U.N. Convention against Torture and introduce it into domestic law, anyone publicly raising cases of torture in Thailand, as Somchai did, continues to be exposed to a range of sanctions and threats from criminal defamation to abduction and murder. Under these circumstances, even prominent human rights defenders like Somchai have little or no protection, let alone ordinary persons who fall prey to the police without knowing anything about the law or constitutional rights.
Thailand needs a comprehensive plan to address the widespread torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings by its police and security forces. This must include ratifying the Convention against Torture and introducing it into domestic law, and establishing an independent agency to receive, investigate and prosecute complaints of torture. It must include introducing a law to prohibit forced disappearance in accordance with international standards, together with a centre for missing-persons as envisaged and proposed by the Central Institute of Forensic Science. It must also include an independent agency to receive, investigate and prosecute complaints against the police, together with other reforms to reduce the extensive powers the police continue to exert over all areas of criminal investigation in Thailand. Additionally, it should include amendments to the law to give people the right to petition directly to the higher courts in cases where their constitutional rights have been violated and no relief is forthcoming for want of effective remedies.
For all of these things to happen demands widespread public discussion on the nexus between forced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings and the defective policing system in Thailand. Only through vigorous talk will cases like those of Somchai Neelaphaijit and his clients be explored and understood so that the deep systemic problems allowing persistent violations of human rights in Thailand be brought into the open and addressed as they should.
