Kanit na Nakhon, head of the panel looking for truth and reconciliation, said yesterday it was necessary to look for the root causes of the political conflict instead of just bringing wrongdoers to justice.
On Tuesday, the Cabinet approved the eight names proposed by Kanit, but human-rights lawyers Somchai Homla-or, Prairoj Polphet and law academic Surasak Likkhasitwatanakul did not show up yesterday. Kanit said the absentees were all set to work with the committee and had no intention of withdrawing.
Kanit, a former state prosecutor, said his committee would find the truth behind the political violence, violation of human rights, casualties and damage to property during the April-May military crackdown.
The committee would dig deeply into the root causes of conflict between different groups of people over the past several years, he said.
Kanit promised to release every finding straight to the public instead of waiting for a final report as he had done previously when looking into the May 1992 bloodshed and former PM Thaksin Shinawatra's war on drugs.
He said the committee's sole purpose was to give the public nothing but the truth so the government had no chance of covering it up.
The panel will also use the concept of "restorative justice" to prevent a recurrence of violence, he said.
"Let's look at the cause of the violence, not each particular incident. We could go back to 1997 and look into the so-called people's constitution and political reform to find out why it led to a military coup [in 2006]", he said.