Thailand has yet to face the SKELETONS IN ITS CLOSET

Judging by the content in the CCPR report that was recently submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee, one has to wonder why Thailand became a signatory to such an important covenant in the first place. 

Besides the normal rhetoric about how “Thailand attaches importance to the legal proceedings of cases involving significant human rights violations” and how independent courts “shall render justice to all parties equally”, the overall argument and the content of the report is disturbing because much of it is misleading.

Items that the UN had specifically asked about, like the disappearance of Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, were left out. Somchai is presumed dead. A police officer was convicted of abducting him but somehow disappeared. 

Angkhana, Somchai’s wife and one of the original authors of the report, is not only disappointed by the fact that her husband’s case was not included in the report, she is also upset over how the report treated the Tak Bai massacre and the killings at the Krue Se mosque. Both incidents took place in 2004 and put Thailand in an unwanted spotlight and drew criticism from major human rights groups and the international community. 

So misleading is the report that Angkhana decided to disown it and distance herself from it. 

For Thailand, the CCPR is an event that comes up once every four years. It is an opportunity for the Thai Ministry of Justice to explain to the United Nations the progress it has made and measures the government has taken to address various developments and incidents that pertain to Thailand’s civil and political rights. 

But judging by the new CCPR report, it has become an opportunity to whitewash the country’s recent past. 

In the case of the Tak Bai massacre, an incident that continues to haunt Thailand, the report cited a court ruling that said “78 individuals died of suffocation while in the custody of state offi

 cials who were performing their duties”.

“The Court therefore ruled that the exercise of state authority in the dispersal, the detention of demonstrators and the transportation of those held in custody was conducted in conformity with their duties based on the difficult and constrained situation. After considering the outcome of the post-mortem inquest, the public prosecutor ordered a suspension of the inquiry,” the report said.

Hiding behind the court’s finding will not free those responsible for the incident. It’s appalling that the report did not mention the seven demonstrators who were shot dead by security officials at the scene. 

Like the rest of the demonstrators, the victims were unarmed and had water behind them; they had nowhere to run. 

And after the demonstration was dispersed by force, they were put on military transport trucks, one on top of another. Footage of the event shows security officers kicking and beating them as they were forced to crawl to the trucks.

Several hours later, on a trip that should have taken no more than two hours, the vehicles reached the Army camp in Pattani. Seventy-eight men had suffocated to death.

The incident radicalised a generation of insurgents who are bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces. 

Today, a decade later and after more than 6,000 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence, Thai officials are still trying to convince the world that no mistakes were made in the Tak Bai massacre and that the conduct of the security officers was in line with standard operating procedures. 

In most free societies, a monument would have been built to commemorate the victims of such an atrocity. That’s how a nation moves forward and turns the page; admit mistakes, don’t whitewash them in an international forum. 

But in Thailand, we keep putting on a brave face hoping somehow this will just go away. What we don’t realise or don’t want to acknowledge is that for the Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces, the pain will not go away.