No justice for families of victims in the deep South

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No justice for families of victims in the deep South
By The Nation
2011-03-17

The disappearance of human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit remains unsolved and the apparent impunity of state officials is an ongoing travesty

Seven years after Muslim human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit went missing, allegedly at the hands of five police officers, the world is still wondering if and when justice will be rendered to his family and his alleged abductors.

From the look of it, we are sad to say, that day might never come.

Last Friday the Court of Appeals read out the verdict on the case brought against the five police officers accused of abducting Somchai. The court reasoned that the alleged offence against Somchai took place during the evening and visibility was limited and therefore the witnesses could presumably not get a clear sighting of the defendants. With that, the court acquitted key suspect Police Major Ngern Thongsuk, overturning a lower court verdict for kidnapping and assault.

Some see the problem as having more to do with law enforcement, not so much a matter of evidence and reasoning in the court.

"To restore trust in the justice process, the government must reform the whole justice system, particularly at the inquiry official and public prosecutor levels, to address the impunity enjoyed by state officials," said Somchai Hom-laor, president of the Cross Cultural Foundation, an NGO working to improve justice and legal assistance in Thailand.

He also called on the government to become a signatory to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, under which such disappearances would be further developed as an offence under Thai criminal law.

The Thai state is also urged to abide by international obligations in order to meet universal standards of legal and judicial administration and to make possible effective witness protection, to enhance efforts to end enforced disappearances in Thailand.

But all of these conventions are not worth the paper they are written on if those at the inquiry official and public prosecutor level do not do more to change the perception that law enforcement officers enjoy impunity, especially when it involves the ongoing insurgency in the Malay-speaking South, where more than 4,300 people have been killed since January 2004.

The region is not short of controversial incidents and related legal procedures. Such cases include a group of soldiers arrested for the beating death of a village imam, Yapa Kaseng, in 2005. The then Army chief General Anupong Paochinda vowed to get to bottom of that case. But today, the case remains lost somewhere in the legal "pipeline". Then there was the ruling that cleared all security officials from any wrongdoing in the deaths of 78 Malay Muslim men who died of suffocation in the back of military trucks, which set off a chain of violent reprisal attacks by the insurgents.

Just as bad, it promotes the notion that the people of the deep South will never get the kind of justice they believe they deserve. The state's handling of these sensitive cases reinforces the perception that they are a second-class people and no matter how much money is poured into the region - most of which goes to security and military-run development projects anyway - the southern Malays will always see themselves as colonial subjects. The message to them has always been that they shouldn't bite the hand that feeds.

But they do and they will, especially the insurgents who have taken up arms. And the fact that they do puzzles the hell out of Thai policy-makers and political leaders, including this administration, which thinks that chicken-feed handouts - small change that slips through the fingers of the military - are going to win the hearts and minds of the Malays. They don't seem to understand that the fault is within their own nation-state construct - a mindset and policy that leaves virtually no room for the Malays of the deep South who embrace an entirely different cultural and historical narrative from that of the Thai State.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva often asks the international community not to legitimise the insurgents. But he should be more concerned about the fact that their own people give them the legitimacy they need. Why else would they turn a blind eye to the insurgents' activities? It takes a lot longer then a few seconds to bury roadside bombs directed against soldiers and police, not to mention the obstructive measures taken to prevent or slow down the authorities' pursuit of insurgents following an ambush.

Until this issue of the legitimacy of the Thai state is addressed - not to mention that of social mobility, justice and equality for the Malay people of the deep South - one can forget about closing this violent chapter for good and moving on as a nation.