Published on May 05, 2005
Thai human rights activists have conceded that political and psychological factors militate against attempts to arouse greater interest in society at large in condemning torture of detainees and abductions of suspects by authorities.
Boonthan Tansuthepvera-wongse, acting director of Amnesty International Thailand, said that in the past two years the human rights group had waged a fruitless campaign to bring pressure to bear on
the government to ratify the 1984 UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman Treatment or Punishment. “Both the Foreign and Justice ministries have already been convinced [of the need to ratify the treaty], but we’ve run into considerable obstacles with police,” Boonthan told a gathering of fellow human rights activists last week during a meeting called to come up with solutions to break the deadlock. “Our work isn’t succeeding because people have been cowed to the point where they accept that torture is a common tool employed by authorities [to extract confessions],” he added. He went on to fault the mass media for generally neglecting to deem it newsworthy to highlight allegations of rampant torture by police. “[Journalists] tend to portray incidents of torture as everyday occurrences and not as the immoral and inhuman acts that they in fact are.” Because of this blinkered attitude, he said, “a ‘little’ torture is seen as no torture at all”. Boonthan then proceeded to explain that even stepped-up public pressure could well be unsuccessful without an overhaul of detention and interrogation practices by police. He proposed the establishment of “torment-free zones” at police stations – contrary to the current practice of allowing police to run “safe houses”, where officers can interrogate suspects in any manner they see fit. Yet Boonthan conceded that anti-torture activists like him were facing an uphill struggle in Thailand. Often even relatives of torture victims prefer to “live with it”, rather than try and bring torturers to justice, he said. He recalled asking the mother of a victim of alleged police torture why she had decided to accept her son’s fate without a word of protest. “She told me, ‘What if something happens to us too? Who will look after my grandchildren then?’” Law associations are often not much help either, human rights activists charged. Bringing a case of alleged torture through legal channels such as the Law Society of Thailand, which offers free assistance, can be a drawn-out affair – with no guaranteed results – that many victims and their relatives would prefer to avoid. Pravit Rojanaphruk The Nation
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