"Experts" must beware of joining an exercise that will be biased and has no legal basis
Professor G J Knoops - an international war crimes expert - should think twice before joining the half-baked legal team under the payroll of Thailand's fugitive former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.
On Monday, Thaksin's legal team in Bangkok issued a statement saying Knoops will be part of a team that will investigate the recent violent clashes between government troops and red-shirt demonstrators. The statement has not been independently confirmed by Knoops, a Dutch academic who has reportedly worked on a number of high-profile cases including in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
But if Thaksin's new legal mouthpiece Robert Amsterdam - a lobbyist who calls himself an international legal expert - is to be believed, then Knoops should reconsider whether being associated with a convicted criminal, much less becoming part of his payroll, is a wise decision.
This is not to say that The Nation is against a full and independent investigation, or even the possibility of foreign mediation in the investigation into the clashes between the reds and the government troops. But an investigation that is being launched and paid for by a stakeholder - not to mention the fact that this stakeholder has been charged with being the mastermind behind the violence - is not exactly credible or neutral.
Furthermore, we need to ask ourselves if the state mechanism - namely our legal system - is in such a state of shambles that a foreign mediator is needed at all?
If the answer is no, then Amsterdam and the other hired legal hands should invest their time and energy elsewhere.
Look at the genocide tribunal being held in Cambodia to investigate the murderous Khmer Rogue regime. Last we heard, it hasn't been going well because the current government in Phnom Penh is resisting the tribunal's effort to go after more suspects in the genocide of some 1.7 million people.
And if Thaksin and his team love Thailand so much, how about investigating the deaths of the Tak Bai demonstrators in October 2004? About the same number of Thai citizens suffocated to death in one day while in the custody of the security forces, as died in the three-month-long red-shirt seizure of central Bangkok. They were all unarmed, so there should be no dispute about who was culpable in that case.
Or how about the 2,500 alleged drug-dealers killed extrajudicially in just a few months in 2003 and 2004 under Thaksin's "war on drugs". Both of these incidents happened while he was the country's prime minister.
According to a statement posted on his website, Amsterdam said he and Knoops have collaborated over many years, and in 2006 published an article on Russia as a dual state. He said Knoops "is a world authority on war crimes and international criminal law and is critical to this investigation".
According to the site, Thaksin has hired Amsterdam "to investigate the killings and government breaches of international human rights and laws".
Nobody in Bangkok, until very recently, had ever heard of Amsterdam or Knoops, or their work. Furthermore, Thaksin's hiring of a lawyer (or a team of lawyers) to gather evidence to support his own case is one thing. Even the most evil person has that right. But it's a bit far-fetched to think that the public will take this as an honest and fair gathering of evidence and opinion.
If Knoops is what Amsterdam says he is, then the Dutch lawyer should know the difference between "lobby" and "legality". If he wants to become a lobbyist for Thaksin, then that's fine. But he should have the integrity to say so and not hide behind another profession just to hoodwink the public.