Hej
Och om dom är beväpnade med automatvapen och liknande vilket inte är ovanligt, vad gör man då?
Mvh Isan Lover
Det har nu gått sju år och du har fortfarande inte förstått någonting av kritiken mot War on drugs, inte någonting. Eller spelar du bara dum för att provocera? Här kommer en liten text från den här rapporten. Läs den om du vågar.
At a meeting of government officials in mid-January, Thaksin spoke of the necessity
of eradicating drug traffickers as matters of national security. Provincial governors
would be responsible for coordinating the effort and failure to do so would result in
removal from office. Nicholas Cheesman (2003: 30), from the Asian Legal Resource
Centre, noted that financial incentives for the capture of drug suspects included
rights to a proportion of seized property of drug traffickers by arresting officers, and
this applied even if suspects were killed. Operating agencies were required to
produce lists of suspects (effectively blacklists) to be used to measure efficiency in
reaching targets formulated by the Ministry of Interior (Cheesman 29-31). Provincial
governors were set targets of 25 percent, 50 percent and 75 percent (originally 100
percent) in February, March and April respectively.
Exactly what targets? Officials were to report that action had been taken against suspects listed. Accounts differ,
but it seems that over 70,000 names appeared on competing lists (the police and
government departments had different lists). Actions to be reported included arrest,
warning, communication to users and rehabilitation. But as the war got under way it
became obvious that results were being tallied in grotesque ways, with officials
reporting the number of deaths, not only to the government but to the press.
In mid-February, the National Center for Combating Drugs, within the Interior
Ministry, specified that in order to delete the name of drug traffickers, users and
producers from lists (that, is reach targets) the following criteria could be taken into
account: “arrest, extrajudicial execution or death (for whatever reason)” (see National
Human Rights Commission 2003: 13).
The Interior Ministry was informing officials in
precise terms that the names of those being murdered could be struck off the list. By
default, death as a measure of efficiency was being given official sanction.
Initially, officials and the government gleefully reported the mounting death toll of
“drug traffickers” it said were being killed by drug networks in order to silence them
the so called cutting the link killings (khaa-tat-ton). Concern about deaths was
casually brushed aside, by various political and bureaucratic spokespersons, with
reprimands not to care about the deaths of anti-social elements (Krungthepthurakit
2003a).
Towards the end of February, in response to critics, the government sought
to limit the publication of death tolls, perhaps fearful that its operational policy of
counting deaths would potentially implicate it in human rights crimes in the future
(Matichon 2003a). But targets remained in use. As the February deadline for targets
approached, one newspaper columnist pithily advised travelers to steer clear of
provinces that had performed poorly, for he expected a killing spree to make up the
shortfall (Krungthepthurakit 2003b).
Estimates of deaths during the war on drugs range between 1200-4000. Ambiguity
and uncertainly continued for several years because the Thaksin government
refused to deliberate and investigate the matter. In early 2008 the Independent
Committee for the Investigation, Study and Analysis of the Formulation and
Implementation of Narcotic Suppression Policy (ICID 2008) issued a Preliminary Report.
It noted the extraordinary rise in murder cases during the war on drugs.
During the three months of the war’s duration, the rate of murder increased by 88
percent. The ICID found that of the 2559 cases totaling 2873 deaths (2559 cases)
from February to April, drug related cases accounted for 1187 totaling 1370 murders.
In 29 cases suspects had been arrested, while 47 suspects were at large. Of the
remaining 1111 cases, no perpetrators had been identified. In the remaining 1372
non-narcotic related cases totaling 1449 deaths, 791 suspects had been identified or
arrested, demonstrating that few resources were allocated to “drug” murders. The
ICID reported that of the extra-judicial executions in this period 41 were drug related
and 11 were as yet for unidentified causes.4
Many observers suspected collusion between corrupt police officers and mafia
elements in the killing spree because “blacklists” were leaked and deaths were often
reported after suspects departed police stations. Even the government recognized
that names on the blacklist may have appeared inappropriately as a result of
defamation, misunderstanding or negligence (Thai Post 2003a). A failure to properly
investigate the deaths was also common. In some instances, ill equipped and trained
doctors with no skills in autopsy were required to certify cause of death with physical
evidence compromised (Thai Post 2003b). As reported by Meryam Dabhoiwala
(2003: 9),
According to Amnesty International, “Authorities are not permitting
pathologists to perform autopsies and bullets are reportedly being removed
from the corpses.” And according to Dr Pornthip Rojanasunan, acting
director of the Forensic Science Institute, in more than half of the cases
seen by her the drugs appeared to have been planted on the victims after
their deaths—jammed in pockets at unnatural angles.