The Hong Kong-based AHRC said Surakiart's candidacy was a threat to the global human rights movement.

It has denounced the Thai government's support for Surakiart's campaign as "immoral and dishonest" following a UN report that the government's granting of immunity for security forces engaged in "counter-insurgency" efforts in southern Thailand violates the government's obligations under international human rights law

In an open letter to the candidate, Basil Fernando, executive director of the AHRC, asked, "What are your qualifications to be UN Secretary-General, Deputy Prime Minister?

Basil pointed out that since Surakiart had become foreign minister in 2001 and deputy prime minister in 2005 his government had failed to join a key international rights treaty despite saying it would do so, failed to implement the suggestions of a treaty body on human rights and failed to cooperate with UN rights experts.

On the other hand, it noted that Surakiart had "chastised journalists in Thailand for reporting on gross abuses" there which might undermine his candidacy.

"You would have to admit that for someone trying to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations this record of involvement with the UN and its agencies is not very good, is it?" Basil Fernando, executive director of the AHRC, said in the letter.

"In fact, it is better characterised as persistent non-involvement and deliberate negligence," Fernando said.

The AHRC pointed out that Thailand's worsening rights record had led it to unsuccessfully seek a seat on the new UN Human Rights Council.

"This man has had direct responsibility, through his capacity as the country's leading diplomat, for dealing with the UN and seeing that Thailand would become a more active member of the international human rights community," Fernando commented regarding the open letter.

"But his government has treated UN rights treaties, bodies and experts with disdain," Fernando added.

"He has remained silent and inert on all key rights issues affecting his own country and indeed those of the Asian region, and we expect that were he to become secretary general this silence would almost certainly continue and spread," he said.

The AHRC said that it felt "compelled" to speak out against Surakiart's candidacy lest it be forced to share the blame from people in other parts of the world were he to be elected to the UN post and "make a misery of the lives of people in other countries in addition to his own".

The current secretary general, Kofi Annan, is due to step down in December.

The Nation