Thailand's Impunity is Nothing to Celebrate
I thought it would be worthwhile to point toward a recent editorial published in The Nation commenting on our preparations to submit a report before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on behalf of the Red Shirts and other victims of political violence in April and May of 2010. Firstly, it is unfortunate to note that the authors have apparently not bothered to read our Preliminary Report to the ICC, which is available to the public in English as well as in Thai, and specifically answers many of the questions raised in the article. Secondly, it is disappointing but perhaps not surprising that the authors appear to "celebrate" the state's ongoing impunity rather than condemn it, while attempting to rationalize the killings with various shades of ambiguity.
The political crisis in Thailand has become so overwhelmingly distorted that observers have lost their sense of what constitutes a crime, and, at the most extreme, the value of a human life. The Nation article doesn't just attempt to brush off accountability before international law, it also implies that it's OK for the Thai Royal Army to kill citizens without consequence, just because it has been done before. Take, for example, the state's treatment of the deaths of journalists who were not affiliated with any political faction. There was Hiro Muramoto, whose death was captured on CCTV that the government refuses to share, or Fabio Polenghi, whose family has been insulted and mocked by the state's obdurate refusal to provide any facts about the events leading up to his death.
It's hard to think of any other country in the world today where some 90 citizens can be murdered in cold blood on the streets of its capital, while its government provides not one statement or report to hold even a single individual accountable, and then the media obediently praises their criminal negligence. The closest parable to come to mind are the recent events in Tunisia, where the regime sent the army into the streets to kill some 78 protesters, resulting in a massive public outcry which forced President Ben Ali to resign and flee to hide in Saudi Arabia. The outcome in Thailand has been rather different, with Abhisit and the Democrats preparing to steal another unfree and unfair election.
What separates our claim before the ICC and the laundry list of other instances of violence listed in The Nation article is the careful collection and presentation of evidence, which is historically unprecedented. The events of April and May 2010 bear strong similarities with well-known incidents of violence that have taken place over the past four decades. In none of these previous instances — October 14, 1973, October 6, 1976, and "Black May" 1992 — has anyone responsible for the deaths of dozens of demonstrators faced any form of accountability. None of those involved in the 1973 massacre were ever investigated or prosecuted, while both the 1976 and 1992 incidents were whitewashed by decrees that granted amnesty to everyone involved. Given how these instances were treated, no reasonable person can expect that a fair and complete investigation into the most recent killings would ever be allowed to take place in Thailand. Unfortunately there are people in Thailand who want this entrenched system of impunity to continue, and fail to see the extraordinary damage these kinds of cases inflict upon the country's legal system and its society. We don't expect to erase impunity and bring accountability to Thailand overnight, but rather take the initial steps forward in this long process.
The Nation article opens the discussion on whether or not the Red Shirts will achieve "victory" in the ICC. But what they fail to realize is that simply by filing this claim, and finally bringing all the facts and evidence of these murders to light before the public and before the international community for the first time, we have already won. Simply by airing these facts in a comprehensive legal brief and contributing thousands of hours of work to this petition, the Red Shirts have shown themselves more responsible to all Thais than a junta caught in a cover up.
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