The United States slammed Thailand's human-rights record yesterday, pointing to the use of excessive force by police, poor conditions in prisons, arbitrary arrests, intimidation of the press, violence against female victims of trafficking, discrimination against hilltribe people and other minorities, and mistreatment of foreign, migrant workers.

The annual report on human rights around the world said "[Thai] security forces continued to use excessive, lethal force against criminal suspects and committed or were connected to numerous extrajudicial, arbitrary, and unlawful killings".

The State Department report highlighted the stabbing to death last June of Phra Supoj Suwajano, an environmental advocate who exposed a log-poaching network in Chiang Mai. It noted allegations from non-government organisations (NGOs) that police had ignored a number of leads in the case and possible connections to a government official.

The report also highlighted the deaths of Satopa Yushoh, an imam in Narathiwat's Ban Lahan, and three ethnic Karen drug suspects who were found hanging by their shoelaces in their jail cell in Chiang Mai. Police ruled the three deaths suicides, although NGOs argued it would have been physically impossible for the three to have hanged themselves in the manner in which they were found.

Procedures for investigating suspicious deaths, including those occurring in police custody, often were not followed and families of the victims rarely filed lawsuits against police officers for alleged violations of criminal law, the report said.

Hilltribe people continued to face forced evictions, even from land they had been farming for decades, the report noted.

It also pointed to an earlier plan to deport about 6,500 Hmong who had gathered in Phetchabun, some of whom appeared to have valid refugee claims. The whereabouts of 27 Hmong minors, who were reportedly picked up by Thai police for straying outside of the shelter area, remain unknown.

The report cited complaints by legal organisations about police torturing suspects and beating some to obtain confessions.

"A Thai senator, testifying as a character witness at the trial of four Muslim suspects accused of membership in Jemaah Islamiya, said that while in police custody bags were put over the suspects' heads, and they were beaten on the back and the abdomen," the report said.

The four were acquitted by the Criminal Court in June and released. Police began an internal investigation but no criminal charges had been filed as of the end of last year.

On October 15, in Tak Province, a police officer forced his way into a home, threatened and beat an older woman. He is also alleged to have  tried to rape an 18-year-old Burmese migrant worker.