Thailand's War on Drug-Peddlers a Very Selective Affair Reeking of Human Rights Abuses by Phairath Khampha 19 February 2003 Thailand's war on drugs, launched on February 1, 2003, quickly produced the desired effect. Bodies piled up. Self-confessed drug-peddlers by the thousands turned themselves in while thousands more were put behind bars as drug suspects. And millions of methamphetamine tablets were seized and put on display. Well, if one does not call the campaign a success, how else could one describe it? After all, everyone from Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra down to the national police chief General Sant Sarutanonda was convinced that the figures spoke for everything. And they did not give a damn if others did not agree with them, even when those being killed by extra-judicial death squads were mere suspects on the flimsiest of evidence and while the real heavy players--the corrupt politicians and police and military officers involved in the drugs trade--were being left alone. The killings went from being referred to as "extrajudicial killings" to "preemptive killings" in order to make them sound more palatable. For one thing, the bloody anti-drug crusade was not something for the faint-hearted or those who would believe in human rights. One was not even supposed to sympathise with the families of those gunned down by police on mere suspicion or flimsy evidence and hearsay that they were drug dealers. Prime Minister Thaksin made it clear that as Thai citizens their sympathy should lie with the parents of young drug addicts--not with drug traffickers. It was great rhetoric that seemed to have struck the right chord among people yearning for a tough approach to the drug problem. Sant, who as chief of the police force lead the front-line battle against drug trafficking, dutifully echoed Thaksin's new dictum by declaring during a TV interview that "people should stop worrying about what happens to drug traffickers". His blunt statement was supposed to be a rebuttal of a chorus of concern voiced by human-rights advocates. Indeed, slain drug suspects were being treated as nothing more than a tally measuring what the government was claiming to be unprecedented success in the fight against drugs. The killing of alleged traffickers in fact became a routine news item that went alongside those on traffic incidents. But police no longer called them "extrajudicial killings". That much-dreaded term has given way to a newly coined phrase which makes the whole affair more palatable to the public. Most of the slayings were now referred to as "pre-emptive killings" among drug traffickers. What police meant by "pre-emptive killing" was that drug traffickers had supposedly resorted to double-crossing each other to save their own necks. The victims, according to police analyses, were those who were about to spill the beans. Hard to believe and more or less a lame excuse. The killings in fact were being carried out by police and military death squads. The broadcast media in particular found the theory so convincing that they had no qualms about trumpeting the daily "pre-emptive killings" as a shining example of the success of Thaksin's war on drugs. This was a typical lead-in for the nightly news item on the anti-drug campaign during the first 10 days of February: "The government's policy to clamp down on drugs is so successful that traffickers are feeling the heat and have resorted to pre-emptive killing to silence potential turncoats." If the traffickers started killing each other as claimed by the police, who were the Thais or anyone to feel sympathetic towards them? No one is even supposed to fault the police, corrupt and dishonest as it is--because officially their hands were far from being bloodied. They do not even want "credit" for the daily deaths of drug traffickers. Well, the Thais were being made to believe that the lives of those victims of "pre-emptive killing" were so worthless that they did not even warrant an autopsy or an investigation to determine the cause of their deaths. Once they were branded "drug traffickers" they deserved to die. The police do not care who pulls the trigger as long as their deaths add to the body count. And some people were being killed for reasons that had nothing to do with drugs as the case in Lopburi province of a policeman who killed another man who was wooing the woman whom the policeman wanted to marry. The murdered man was branded a drug trafficker and the case was closed. As for Prime Minister Thaksin, he does not care either how many innocent people lose their lives. He revelled in the "tough-guy" image deriving from the campaign as his main concern was to make sure he would be able to win the next election. The war on drugs had only just begun. The police claimed they had blacklisted all those found involved in trafficking and were closing in on them. Therefore, everyone should be prepared for more blood-letting--by whatever name. However, one cannot but wonder whether any of the "big fish"--the hundreds of corrupt politicians and military and police officers known to be involved in the drugs trade--had been netted in the campaign so far. It looked like all of those gunned down to date were just petty drug-peddlers, many of whom were indeed ready to turn coat--to reveal those very same corrupt politicians and military and police officers involved in the drugs trade. After all everyone in Thailand knows all too well that the burgeoning drug trade would not have been possible without the connivance--and direct collusion--of corrupt authorities, especially those in the police force. So far no one has not heard of any "double-crossing" among them yet. If Prime Minister Thaksin was really convinced that a bloody war was the best solution to the drug problem, how about encouraging a round of "pre-emptive killing" among his cronies and among those in uniform who were hiding behind the small fish?