The
Thaksin Shinawatra government will never fully
recover from the crushing assault to its name
for waging a war on drugs, and this government
must think carefully before launching a new drugs
offensive. At the cost of 2,500-plus lives, the
2003 campaign was trumpeted by supporters who
said it had pulled down the floodgates on the
torrents of drugs flowing into, through and throughout
the country. In the process, it splatteed blood
on the country's human rights record, as some
human rights advocates have phrased it.
Five years on and the new government is all fired
up with plans to form a national centre with the
prime minister as chairman to flush out illicit
drugs. This is ominously familiar. Justice Minister
Sompong Amornwiwat hammered home the pressing
need to put drugs suppression on the national
agenda and said he is consulting Prime Minister
Samak Sundaravej on the best day to convene the
first meeting of concerned ministries to finalise
the centre's priority missions. The centre is
eerily reminiscent of when Mr Thaksin inaugurated
his drugs war campaign made sensational by the
deadlines handed down for "cleansing"
the drugs networks. Interior Minister Chalerm
Yubamrung instantly jumped on the Sompong bandwagon
to offer his services by promising to coax drugs
barons into giving up their billions from the
illegal trade and switch to agricultural farming.
It sounds as though the ruling People Power party
is acting on its election promise that there will
be a sequel to the 2003 war on drugs. But the
best advice for the government right now is to
hold its horses and exercise some restraint. Unless
the justice minister can assure people the government's
anti-drugs initiative will not be a repeat of
the 2003 drugs war, and back it up with an unequivocal
definition of the term 'suppression', he should
steer away from the issue which could potentially
bring the government to its knees. The drugs fight
launched in phases by the Thaksin administration
was slammed by opponents as a propagandistic vehicle
to purport the government's firm-handedness in
dealing with drugs problems. The policy operated
on a rather simplistic and frightening assumption
that availability of state resources and actions
to 'expedite justice' would culminate in the decimation
of drugs traders and traffickers. But the equation
represented a blatant disrespect of the judicial
process because more than 2,500 people finger-pointed
as drugs traders or those connected with them
were allegedly killed by authorities on sight.
Extra-judicial killings are a travesty of justice
which any society must not tolerate. Many suspects
were judged guilty the moment they were tallied
up on the blacklist and the warrants signed for
their arrest were essentially licences for them
to be executed, families of many of the victims
have charged. Often 'secret' intelligence reports
were referred to in implicating the suspects in
drugs syndicates and there were perceived patterns
to label most of them as someone high up the gang
hierarchy. Another popular theory was that many
of the murdered suspects were actually insiders
silenced by their bosses to keep police from getting
any higher up the chain of command of these gangs.
Any piece of 'intelligence' appeared to have been
enough to warrant the taking of these suspects'
lives when it should have been presented to the
court so the accused could be tried and allowed
their rightful opportunity to defend the allegations
against them. Mr Thaksin, hounded by allegations
of corruption and power abuse, should understand,
more so now than ever, the importance of being
accorded legal protection and a proper defence
in court. The war on drugs in principle came across
as a cause worthy of support. But the means of
policy delivery had clearly jeopardised the ends
- and the mistake has cost the country far too
dearly to be repeated.
So, when Mr Sompong uttered 'suppression' and
the forthcoming establishment of a national anti-narcotic
centre in the same sentence, he has re-awakened
the dread of many people fearful of renewed carnage
on our streets. The justice minister should first
accept that the 2003 drugs war was a glaring policy
error. He has yet to give everyone his word the
national anti-drugs centre will see to it that
the drugs suspects are captured alive and brought
to court and that extra-judicial killings are
not to be the mantra of the new campaign.
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