Pratubjit Neelapaijit, daughter of disappeared lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit
The Justice for Peace Foundation (JPF) prepared a report on the issue of disappearances as a systematic pattern of extra-legal policing. The JPF has found cases of disappearances in every region in Thailand and has personally documented 40 incidents of disappearances involving 59 people. Twelve people were disappeared in the North, five from the West, seven from the northeast, and 33 from the Deep South.
Disappearances are not a new problem as information exists on cases as early as 1952. Indeed, there are numerous cases of disappearances from such periods of history involving victims such as suspected communists in the early 1970s, northern farmers in the late 1970s, and victims of 1992 military crackdown of protesters. Research conducted by the JPF found that in the last decade, two government policies have contributed directly to the increased cases of enforced disappearances in Thailand: the highly militarized counter-insurgency approach adopted by the government; and the war on narcotic drugs during 2002-03.
In addition, the JPF has found that there are particular categories of people who are vulnerable to enforced disappearances throughout Thailand. Firstly people that have conflicts with officials and secondly, activists engaged in human rights, political or anti-corruption activism; thirdly, the witnesses of human rights violations; lastly, men from the ethnic minority groups. It is their communities that are mostly targeted in enforced disappearances.
In the cases documented by the JPF, 94 percent of victims were men while 86 percent of them are from ethnic minority groups in Thailand. Enforced disappearance in Thailand take place within the broader context of state violence and is used to silence dissenting views, and to eliminate suspected criminals outside the rule of law. Enforced disappearances are part of the systematic pattern of extra-legal policing employed by the security forces, which, because of impunity their illegal actions are condoned by the state, and thus the likelihood of legal action against them is extremely low.
These are the patterns that the JPF has found in Thailand. The most serious is the taking of people from public locations by uniformed or non-uniformed security personnel. To-date the JPF still receives complaints from the relatives of the disappeared. We have also recently received a complaint from a person regarding the enforced disappearance during the protest of the ‘red-shirts’.
Our report also shares some updates on the case of Mr. Somchai Nilaphajit which is used as an emblematic case.
In 2009, the civil court announced that Mr. Somchai Nilaphajit is a ‘missing person’ according to civil court; a fact that everybody already knew.
In 2011, the court of appeals rendered a judgment absolving five police officers of any criminal responsibility of the disappearance of Mr. Somchai Nilaphajit, and did not allow the family to be the plaintiff. The Supreme Court only allowed the family to be the coplaintiff in the case. And now the case of murder of Mr. Somchai Nilaphajit is now under the Department of Special Investigation (DSI).
But unfortunately the DSI appears to have done very little, if anything in the way of investigation. In the middle of 2012, Khun Angkhana (Somchai’s wife) asked the Minister of Justice about the progress of its investigation. Later Khun Angkhana received a one page summary prepared by the DSI indicating that there is no progress in the investigation of the case. This is despite the fact that earlier the DSI had verbally reported to Khun Angkhana about what had happened to Mr. Somchai they did not document anything on this case. So the JPF highlights the failure of the work of the DSI.
We believe that some of the officers might know something, but they didn’t make any progress. The viewpoints of the JPF and the family of Mr. Somchai are that the present defendants in this case are police officers. One person is missing and the remaining persons have changed their names so that the people would not recognize them.
The second points, which is very important in the context of Thai society, is that at present a retired high-ranking officer against whom complaints were filed alleging his involvement in torture in many cases in southern Thailand, and who may have been involved in the disappearance of Khun Somchai is now in a very high ranking position in Thailand as Assistant Deputy Secretary to the Prime Minister. So this highlights the context of Thailand society again after it signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
In terms of remedy, the JPF believes that this is the most pressing issue, as it seldom happens in Thailand. The same situation occurs with compensation. In November 2012, only the cases that occurred in the southern border provinces have been provided with some compensation. But that was only in 29 cases. For compensation payment, some are paid higher amounts than others because this is based on the evidence linking that state officers alleged to have been involved in the disappearance.
The JPF continues to help the families with the aim at ensuring that the relatives are sufficiently and fully compensated, not only in the deep south of Thailand, but also we try to campaign on behalf of victims from other countries. However, there is no progress in other important areas. There were also no attempts by the government to investigate cases of past disappearances, even the disappearance of two young men which happened as recently as 2011 in the deep south. The case has not been investigated and the whereabouts of these men remains unknown. Even if the security sector admits verbally that they are the perpetrators, there is no action against them.
In 2012, we tried to do more in our campaigns in Thailand and expand them in regional campaigns by involving in the case of Mr. Sombath Somphone we believe that Thais, not directly, but indirectly would be willing to get involved in many developments which happened in Laos. So, we believe that in this way we can do more in our campaigns, not only in the case of Mr. Somchai.
With regard to international mechanisms, we have just submitted 25 more cases of enforced disappearance in Thailand. These were for families that wanted to submit their cases to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances from the north, south and Northeastern part of the country. We also used the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism. Also the JPF and other alliance organisations in Thailand have just organised a meeting on drafting legislation for the criminalisation of enforced disappearance in Thailand.
We believe that Thailand is no different from any other country, but the important context that we looked into is that: firstly, the context of impunity among the security sector in Thailand; and secondly the protracted conflict that is happening in the deep south of Thailand.
These are the contexts that challenged our work a great deal because we heard more cases that the separatists were using enforced disappearances to eliminate their opponents.
(Editor’s note: This is the transcript of a statement by Pratubjit Neelapaijit, daughter of Somchai Nilaphajit, given during a dialogue with officials from the Government of Thailand in Bangkok, Thailand in July 2013. Somchai, who was the lawyer for torture victims, disappeared after he was abducted in March 2004. Article 2 was present during the dialogue)
