BANGKOK, Sept 15 – Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung on Thursday promised that the Thai government’s recently-launched campaign against narcotics will follow the rule of law and that any operations by law-enforcing officials will not be against the law.
Mr Chalerm gave assurances in response to concern expressed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Regional Centre for the East Asia and the Pacific which feared that the Yingluck government’s anti-drug campaign might lead to human rights violations or to extra-judicial killings by the police.
“The government will implement the policy in a decisive manner but will neither violate human rights nor any law,” according to Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm, who has been assigned to head the anti-drug operation.
Abhisit Vejjajiva, opposition Democrat Party leader, cautioned that all parties concerned must learn about the past and would not repeat the experience of extra-judicial killings, regarding which Mr Thaksin himself admitted to be a mistake.
The UNODC reservations expressed referred to the war on drugs initiated between 2003-2004 by then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, elder brother of current prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a campaign which led to the deaths of more than 2,500 people.
Thaksin’s war against drugs drew heavy criticism from human rights groups at home and abroad.
The UN also expressed concern about the heavy-handed measures amid claims of extra-judicial killings in which police and security forces were accused of murdering drugs suspects.
However, the Thaksin administration defended its anti-drug measures, insisting that they were needed to stamp out drug dealers and that most deaths were the result of killings among drug gangs.
