Amnesty International Gives Poor Marks To Thailand On Human Rights
PRAVIT ROJANAPHRUK
THE NATION
BANGKOK: - The death penalty, violence in the deep South, refugees, lese majeste law and the Computer Crimes Act were highlighted in the Thailand section of Amnesty International (AI)'s annual report on the State of the World Human Rights, released last week.
The London-based Amnesty said that insurgents in the deep South were increasingly targeting civilians and staging indiscriminate attacks in the area while security forces continued to torture and ill-treat detainees.
"No official or member of the Thai security forces in Thailand's three southernmost provinces was convicted of committing any offences involving human rights violations. This was due in part to Section 17 of the Emergency Decree… The decree provided immunity from prosecution to officials who commit such acts in the course of their duty," the report noted.
On the April-May 2010 bloody crackdown on the red shirts, AI noted that while the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) said it had concluded the security forces were responsible for at least 16 deaths, "no one was charged with those or any of the other 76 deaths".
On freedom of expression, AI considered most of those detained, charged and/or sentenced under the lese majeste law and Computer Crimes Act were "prisoners of conscience" and added that freedom of expression continued to be suppressed through the two laws. "Authorities continued to persecute those peacefully expressing their opinion, primarily through the use of lese majeste law and the Computer Crimes Act," the report stated.
On refugees and migrants, AI noted that for the fifth consecutive year, the Thai government did not activate its procedure for screening asylum-seekers, "so nearly half [of the 150,000] camp-based population was unregistered.
"Thai authorities also discouraged aid organisations from providing food and other humanitarian assistance to this population," the report stated. It said that asylum seekers continued to be arrested, detained indefinitely, and deported or repatriated to countries where they were at risk of persecution.
On the death penalty, although 40 death sentences were handed down in 2011, a modest drop from the average of one per week, death row prisoners continued to be shackled in leg irons throughout their detention, despite a 2009 court decision, still under appeal, declaring it illegal, the report said.
The Nation 2012-05-29
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