On June 6, the deputy director of Thailand’s Central Institute of Forensic Science, Porntip Rojanasunan, was told by senior government officials that the police force has been given the go-ahead to establish the country’s proposed missing-persons centre. This is despite the fact that the proposal for the centre came from Porntip herself, that she has lobbied and worked for it over some eight years, and that the justice minister had assured her that she had the prime minister’s backing to establish it. On two previous occasions the police did not even bother to attend meetings with the justice minister and Porntip on setting it up.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) earlier warned that the Royal Thai Police would aim to sabotage the missing-persons centre before it is even begun. This latest move to take control over the proposed centre is a blatant attempt to defeat its very purpose, which must be strongly resisted from all quarters. There is no doubt that Thailand is greatly in need of an independent missing-persons centre, for the same reason that it needs an enhanced forensic science institute. The Central Institute of Forensic Science, which has only rudimentary coverage of four out of Thailand’s 76 provinces, annually receives the remains of some 200 unidentified persons alone. Its staff gets little or no help from the police in investigating these cases: many of which involve foul play where police are suspected of involvement. Giving the police control over the proposed missing-persons centre would do nothing towards the reliable and credible identifying of human remains and tracing of criminal perpetrators in Thailand.
To understand the effect that would be had if the Thai police force runs the proposed missing-persons centre, one need look no further than the prominent case of forcibly disappeared human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit. Despite over a year of promises by the prime minister, former justice minister and their subordinates that the case would be resolved, the government has now declared the matter closed with only five relatively low-ranked police being taken to court on charges related to his abduction. Meanwhile, it is widely acknowledged that someone senior in the government or police was behind his disappearance. Although the AHRC and others have expressed appreciation that the U.N. Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances has taken up the case, few expect that the true perpetrators will ever be brought to justice, or that the full truth will come out. The investigation has remained in the hands of the police from start to finish.
Thailand’s progressive 1997 Constitution established the principle that independent or quasi-independent agencies should be built up to counterbalance the power of the police and other dominant authorities. The Central Institute of Forensic Science was among those initiated. In recent days we have been reminded of the importance for Thailand of having an independent specialist agency for forensic inquiries. In two cases ruled suicides by the police, its staff found that the victims had multiple gunshot wounds: one with two bullets in his brain; the other, four in his chest and one in his brain. In both cases the bodies had apparently been moved after the killings; in the latter case, the ‘suicide’ had come at the end of a stand off with police. Without independent qualified investigators, it is unlikely that the details of such killings would have been made public. Certainly the aggrieved families of the victims would have had nowhere to turn for help. In each of these cases, the prospect of justice still remains a long way off, but cause for hope exists due to the possibility of outside intervention.
Murders, extrajudicial killings, torture and forced disappearances in Thailand go uninvestigated and unaddressed either because the police do not care about them or because they are the perpetrators. The Thai police have neither the skill nor inclination to do the difficult and highly technical work required for effective investigations into such cases, many of which they are also keen to cover-up. At this time, the trend in legal reform in Thailand is rightly towards removing powers from the police and placing them under autonomous civilian agencies. It is essential that the missing-persons centre follow this trend. The interim proposal that the centre be initiated under the Central Institute of Forensic Science deserves widespread public support. It must be viewed and discussed as part of a wider comprehensive strategy to set up a system that will make forensic evidence and hard facts the core criteria upon which criminal investigations are conducted and cases concluded, rather than witness testimonies and loose allegations. To do this will take much time and effort. Human rights groups in Thailand especially must be prepared to commit themselves and their resources to this objective. The effectiveness of their future work depends very much upon the development of a well-funded and independently functioning nationwide forensic science institute and missing-persons centre. For anyone concerned by the situation of human rights in Thailand the importance of these agencies cannot be underestimated.
