The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is pleased to hear that the interim prime minister of Thailand, General Surayud Chulanont, on 23 February 2007 ordered the setting up of a “special committee to prosecute violations of human rights and extrajudicial killings” from 2001 to 2006, under the Ministry of Justice.
We expect that the special committee will begin its work with the cases in which it is in the strongest position to prosecute. Therefore, we suggest that your ministry begin by prosecuting six officers of the Royal Thai Army, as follows.
A. Three officers identified as responsible for ordering the killing of 28 persons:
1. General Pallop Pinmanee;
2. Colonel Manas Kongpan; and,
3. Lieutenant Colonel Tanaphat Nakchaiya.
In a postmortem inquest on application by the public prosecutor under section 150(5) of the Criminal Procedure Code of Thailand, the Pattani Provincial Court has already found these three officers to have ordered the killing of 28 men on 28 April 2004 (Mr. Sakareeya Yusoe & 31 others, Black No. Chor 4/2547, 28 November 2006). The court has obliged further investigation under section 150(11), whereupon the director-general of the public prosecution department can file a case against the three officers under section 143. No special committee or other arrangements are required for the case against these three officers to proceed without delay: all that is required is for the public prosecutor and police do their jobs properly. However, three months have passed since the court decision and there is as yet no evidence of progress in further inquiries. Therefore, this case should be the highest priority.
B. Three officers identified as responsible for the deaths of 78 persons:
1. Lietenant General Pisarn Wattanawongkiri;
2. Major General Sinchai Nutsathit; and,
3. Major General Chalermchai Wirunpeth.
These three officers were identified by an independent investigating committee appointed by the former prime minister as responsible for 78 of some 85 deaths after a protest at the front of Tak Bai District Police Station, Narathiwat province on 25 October 2004. In addition, hundreds of persons suffered permanent and non-permanent physical and psychological injuries. The three officers were found by the committee to have been derelict in duty, and to have taken no action against their subordinates when they were informed that persons in their custody had died, or to prevent further deaths. Although the committee concluded that they had not intentionally caused the deaths, this is a matter for a court of law to decide. And under any circumstances, in both domestic and international law the officers breached their duty of responsibility. Sections 157, 289(5), 290, 291, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298 and 299 of the Penal Code of Thailand stipulate punishment for an official wrongly exercising authority and for thereby causing death or injury, irrespective of whether or not there was intent.
The AHRC also notes that under section 59 of the Penal Code an act can be deemed intentional if the perpetrator “could have foreseen the effect of such doing”, regardless of an explicit intention to obtain a specific result. In this case, it is hard to imagine how the army officers concerned could not have “foreseen the effect” of piling hundreds of men one on top of another in army trucks and driving them around for hours, thereby causing 78 to suffocate to death–or as some survivors have alleged, to die from injuries sustained as they were loaded on to the vehicles. There is already a large body of evidence available to secure convictions against these three officers, and presumably much more could be found by committed and professional investigators. Therefore, this case should be the second-highest priority.
Articles 2, 6, 7 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Thailand is a party, also oblige the government of Thailand to prosecute these six officers, and any others found liable for the deaths on these two occasions: an obligation already noted by the UN Human Rights Committee in its consideration of Thailand’s compliance with the covenant in 2005 (CCPR/CO/84/THA).
We therefore look forward to the prompt, albeit belated, prosecutions of these six officers.
We also take this opportunity to note that the situation of human rights in Thailand remains a subject of grave concern internationally due to the continued application of the Emergency Decree BE 2548 (2005) over the southern provinces and Martial Law in over half of the country’s remaining provinces, and the continued authority that the Council for National Security exerts by virtue of its interim constitutional arrangement and institutional changes it is making to secure the long-term interest of the armed forces. We trust you will understand that the conditions in Thailand cannot be expected to improve overall until these laws and the council are brought to an end and a proper civilian administration is returned to power under a genuine constitutional mandate.
Yours sincerely
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
