UN concern at emergency decree abuse
Students from Ban Kuching Reupah School in Narathiwat visit their comatose teacher Juling Pangamoon in Hat Yai yesterday.
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The United Nations yesterday called on Thailand to repeal provisions of the controversial emergency decree for the deep South that violate international covenants on human rights.
"The emergency decree makes it possible for soldiers and police officers to get away with murder," said Philip Alston, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Under international human-rights law "the use of lethal force is prohibited unless strictly necessary to protect life, regardless of an officer's good faith or reasonableness", he said. The state of emergency, which later became the Emergency Law, was declared in July 2005 and extended this week. Under the law, soldiers and police officers may not be prosecuted or disciplined, even for otherwise illegal killings, if they are acting reasonably. "Impunity for violence committed by the security forces has been an ongoing problem in Thailand, but the emergency decree has gone even further and makes impunity look like the official policy," Alston said. Meanwhile, in Yala, two unidentified merchants were shot dead in Banang Sata district yesterday as Army chief General Sonthi Boonyaratklin travelled to the region for talks with Muslim leaders. Witnesses reportedly heard the attackers yell "no one can guarantee the safety of anybody cooperating with the authorities", before speeding away. Prior to his departure for the South, Sonthi downplayed a controversial proposal from Narathiwat Governor Pracha Therat that Islamic tutorial schools, known as Tadekas, be combined with public schools. Pracha has accused a number of Tadekas of promoting separatist ideology and sheltering militants.
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