Cadet’s death must prompt course correction in military

The Thai Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School (AFAPS) will have to do more than just transfer two senior military officers to quell growing anger following the death of a teenage cadet.
Phakhapong “Meay” Tanyakan died on October 17 from injuries sustained in a punishment that many said was part of a long-standing violent tradition of hazing in the military prep school.
It was reported that Phakhapong, a freshman, had been walking in areas reserved by tradition for elder students.
The official autopsy by the military-owned Phramongkutklao Hospital said the cadet died of acute heart failure. Instead of coming clean on his death that generated an angry public debate about the outdated tradition, authorities tried hard to duck the issue.
Making the situation even worse was the statement from Thailand’s security chief, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, who said the young man’s death was caused by physical illness, not from any beating.
Even Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha appeared to be indifferent to the allegation, even if Phakhapong had died from punishment inflicted by older students. They said they had experienced such treatment while they were students.
“When I was a student there, I also received punishment and lost consciousness because of that. Anyway, I’ve survived,” Prawit said.
Needless to say, Prawit shot himself in the foot with that insensitive remark and expectedly came under criticism from the public.
Defence Ministry spokesman Lt-General Kongcheep Tantravanich, in the government’s attempt to control the damage, urged all sides to wait until the investigating committee concluded its findings.
He suggested that Prawit was speaking in general terms but unfortunately for him and the ministry, nobody sees it that way.
In fact, the Royal Thai Armed Forces would not even admit that the transfer of the two senior military officers from AFAPS was related to Phakhapong’s death. 
People have grounds to suspect that there was foul play in his death. They pointed to an incident in August when the young man was punished by senior students at AFAPS.
Kongcheep called the August incident an excessive punishment carried out by senior students and that the school had already penalised those students.
Phakhapong’s family has every right to know the truth. They chose not to go after the institution itself and instead stated that any doubt over Phakhapong’s death should be directed at specific people at the school, not the institution itself.
But the public wants to dig deeper with the hope of getting to the bottom of this awful tradition. There is a growing call in the social media to look into this long-standing tradition of punishment inflicted on younger cadets by their seniors. There is a crisis of confidence that goes beyond the death of a cadet.
Since the statement, Prawit has apologised to the victim’s family in a statement to the media. But no one believes the military’s investigation of one of their own will be free and fair.
There needs to be an independent inquiry into the death and severe punishment for the wrongdoers, including the possibility of removing them from the civil servant system entirely.
Such a policy needs to be applied to conscripted soldiers as well, not just at the cadet school.
Setting up a mechanism for lower-ranking students and soldiers to file complaints should be considered,  followed by a regulation that meets international norms and conventions, such as the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
In the final analysis, the military needs to accept that violent hazing does nothing to strengthen the morale of its students; it only shames the institution and the school that prepares them for a career in the service.