Thai activists charged over report on torture in south

By Max Constant

BANGKOK

An international rights group called on Thai authorities Tuesday to drop charges against three human rights defenders charged for publishing a report on cases of alleged torture in military camps in the country’s insurgency-plagued Muslim south.

In a 120-page report published in February, the Cross Cultural Foundation, the Duay Jai group and the Patani Human Rights Network called the use of torture to obtain confessions in the area "systematic", underlining that it is "regular, widespread and intentional”.

Champa Patel, Amnesty International’s senior researcher for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement Tuesday that “Thai authorities must immediately drop all charges” against Somchai Homlaor, Anchana Heemmina and Pornpen Khongkachonkiet.

“The true injustice is that these three brave human rights activists are being punished for reporting on torture, while the soldiers who perpetrated these horrendous acts are being shielded from accountability,” she stressed.

The three activists reported Tuesday to a police station in southern Pattani province and were formally charged for “defamation” and “computer crime” over the report, titled Torture Situation and Inhumane, Cruel and Degrading Treatments in Southern Bordering Provinces.

“The objective of the use of torture and inhumane treatments by security forces, be they police or military, is to obtain confessions from the detained suspects,” according to the introduction of the report, which is based on testimonies of alleged torture victims.

In May, the military took legal action against the three authors, arguing that their refusal to provide the names of the alleged torture victims who contributed was proof of their “ill intentions”.

Col. Pramote Promin, Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) spokesman for the south, had earlier told the Bangkok Post that their “lack of cooperation” was regarded “as an intention to conceal information and to use the alleged victims as a tool to produce the report”.

“The publishing of this report without proper fact-checking could lead to a misunderstanding in society that affects operative officers,” he said.

Khongkachonkiet had told Anadolu Agency that they could not supply the military with the names of those interviewed “without the consent of the victims”.

“It is due to the way the military investigates. Actually, they are not trying to find the perpetrators of torture, but they only go to see the victims and intimidate them by asking ‘did you really said this to these organizations?’” she had said.

The research for the report was based on interviews with 54 victims of torture by security forces between 2004 and 2015.

It shows a steep increase in torture cases since 2014, the same year the Thai military overthrew the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra in a coup and seized power.

According to the report, there were 17 alleged torture cases in 2014 and 15 in 2015, compared to seven in 2013 and none in 2012 -- incidents inflicted at the time of the arrest, during the transportation to the military camp and during detention in the camp.

No Thai military, paramilitary or police officer has ever been sentenced by a criminal court in alleged torture cases.

The closest any has come to being penalized was in the case of 25-year-old Ashari Sama-ae, who died in detention without charge in 2007.

Last August, the country's Supreme Administrative Court ordered the government to pay $28,000 dollars as financial compensation to his mother.

The southern insurgency is rooted in a century-old ethno-cultural conflict between Malay Muslims living in the southern region and the Thai central state where Buddhism is considered the de-facto national religion.

Armed groups were formed in the 1960s after the then-military dictatorship tried to interfere in Islamic schools, but the insurgency faded in the 1990s.

In 2004, a rejuvenated armed movement -- composed of numerous local cells of fighters loosely grouped around a rebel group called the National Revolutionary Front -- emerged.

The confrontation, which has killed 6,400 people and injured over 11,000 since 2004, is one of the deadliest low-intensity conflicts on the planet.