FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 23, 2006
AS-152-2006
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission on the International Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors, June 26, 2006
THAILAND: Failure to ratify UN Convention against Torture damaging Thailand’s international reputation as well as the lives of victims
Remember Ekkawat Srimanata?
Ekkawat was arrested on November 2, 2004 by officers in Ayutthaya province, just north of Bangkok, on allegations of robbery. Officers at Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Provincial Police Station took him into detention where they allegedly covered his head with a hood and beat him all over his body to force him to confess to robbery. Then they transferred him to the Uthai District Police Station, where officers allegedly electrocuted him on his penis and testicles. Unusually, he was released shortly after, and rushed to hospital by friends.
Media reports and images showed Ekkawat with burns all over his testicles, penis, groin, and on his toes. He had injuries from beatings all over his body, including the marks of combat boots on his back, swollen thighs, swollen cheeks, face and throat, and blood in his eyes. He was visited at the hospital by a string of senior police and government officials. Two police officers were assigned to protect him for thirty days.
The twenty-three officers recorded on the case record were transferred to Bangkok while investigations were opened. The regional commander stated on November 9 that criminal proceedings would follow, and the case was transferred to the Department of Special Investigation on November 29. But no officer is known to have faced criminal charges, despite these commitments and the overwhelming circumstantial evidence. All the accused police have retained their posts.
Many human rights and legal groups were involved in the case. Ekkawat spoke at a seminar on torture organised by the National Human Rights Commission. He was represented by the Lawyers Council of Thailand.
Despite the case receiving enormous publicity and being classified as “special”, Ekkawat is not known to have received any long-term special protection measures. Finally, he withdrew his lawsuit against the police prior to the case opening in the Ayutthaya Provincial Court on 11 November 2005, without informing his lawyer. Almost a year passed between the time of the incident and the time of trial. After media and public attention moved elsewhere, the defendants had apparently coerced and threatened the victim to withdraw his case. Unprotected, Ekkawat was an easy target.
Thailand has failed Ekkawat, and an unknown number of others like him. It has not introduced any domestic law to prosecute alleged perpetrators of torture or cruel and inhuman treatment, despite the fact that these acts are prohibited under section 31 of the country’s 1997 Constitution. Nor have its authorities ever been able to cite a single case of a law-enforcement officer facing any form of criminal action in a court of law over allegations of torture.
Thailand has still not ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This is despite a growing chorus of calls from inside and outside the country pressing for ratification as a matter of urgency, and greater recognition of the damage to Thailand’s international reputation being caused by its non-ratification.
No cogent reason has been given for the failure to ratify the treaty. Notwithstanding repeated assurances from some quarters that ratification is imminent, it is clear that some powerful agencies or persons are working against it. This comes as no surprise. Any agreement to comply with an international law against torture and cruel or inhuman treatment will be a challenge to law-enforcement agencies that have been accustomed to using violence as a means of extracting confessions and punishing “bad people”. That is why state security officers do not have the authority to make decisions about signing up to international laws. That authority lies with the government, and with the cabinet, especially with the prime minister, justice minister and interior minister. The responsibility for ratification rests with them, as does the blame for Thailand’s failure to ratify after years of procrastination.
It has been openly acknowledged that one of the main reasons for Thailand’s failure to get elected to the new UN Human Rights Council was its failure to ratify the Convention against Torture. And rightly so: any country that has failed to subscribe to this key international prohibition on torture does not deserve a seat on the council. The government has already expressed its intention to try to get elected when a number of seats fall vacant in 2007. There is little chance of this happening if Thailand does not come on board the anti-torture treaty.
The Asian Human Rights Commission has said before and will say again that Thailand’s candidacy to the council must be contingent upon it ratifying the Convention against Torture. On this, the 2006 International Day in Support of Torture Victims and survivors the AHRC calls upon the government of Thailand to make a firm commitment to joining the convention within the shortest possible period. The time for mealy-mouthed expressions of intent–such as that “Thailand is considering becoming party to the Convention against Torture”–is over. There is, nor has there been, any justification for the persistent failure to ratify.
This is not a decision for the police, army or other parts of the security establishment; it is a decision for which the senior-most members of government must themselves take responsibility. Consultations and discussions with a view to ratifying and introducing laws are welcome and necessary. But they cannot be used as a means to exercise undue influence on the decision-making process by persons and agencies that are outside of it.
If the government of Thailand at last makes this commitment to ratify the Convention against Torture then it will earn a great deal of goodwill both at home and abroad, which will go a long way towards other human rights objectives. And who knows, it may even earn the respect of victims such as Ekkawat Srimanta, who up until now have been bereft of hope that their complaints might ever be answered.
