Same same, but different: Thailand's second war on drugs
"We will pursue a supression campaign rigorously. There will be consequneces...I will not set target for how many people should die."
In a public speech last February, Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej made no secret of plans to revive yet another chapter of Thailand’s controversial 2003 antidrugs campaign. Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said the new campaign would go ahead, even if thousands should die. The new national drug policy was officially launched on 2 April. Martina Melis.
In February 2003, the government of Thailand, under then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, launched an unprecedented ‘war on drugs’ resulting in up to 2,800 killings, arbitrary arrests of thousands more and endorsement of extreme violence by government officials at the highest levels.
In the first three weeks of the ‘war’ alone, the National Human Rights Commission received 123 complaints.
On the streets of Thailand, the new climate of fear forced many drug users into hiding. Others were arrested and many were coerced into military-style drills in hastily established treatment ‘boot camps’. Outside of so-called ‘treatment’, drug users shared accounts of discrimination in hospitals and other public institutions and exclusion from government-sponsored HIV/AIDS treatment programmes.
This is not surprising. Simplistic and populist ‘tough on’ campaigns almost inevitably rely on the marketing of one single concept and result in the stereotyping and demonisation of the campaign target. Prime Minister Shinawatra’s Order stated: “If a person is charged with a drug offence, that person will be regarded as a dangerous person who is threatening social and national security.”
But mere drug use is hardly a national security threat, and the question on whether it should be a crime is still very much debated. Ironically, through its war on drugs, the Thai government effectively conflated drug use with petty dealing and big-time trafficking. Largely failing to intercept and prosecute the real traffickers, it attacked the fringes – drug users and small-time dealers – and chose to respond to a very complex problem with the simplest of all solutions – that of arbitrary death sentences.
Four years later, in November 2007, the Thai Office of the Narcotics Control Board released information that some 1,400 of the people killed during the 2003 war on drugs – that is over 50 per cent – had no relation to drugs at all and were in fact classified as innocent people by the Royal Thai Police.
Thousands of deaths were not the only result. A number of other disastrous failures stemmed from the 2003 campaign.
For a start, it resulted in gross misdirection of treatment resources. Facilities became filled with people whodid not have drug problems, while those with problems were too scared to access them. Arrested drug users frequently spent time in pre-trial detention where heroin was available and syringe sharing was rampant, but where drug rehabilitation and HIV prevention programmes were wholly inadequate.
By exclusively focusing on repression through law enforcement, the government missed the opportunity to develop and invest in demand and harm reduction strategies, indispensable components of any credible, sustainable and cost-effective drug strategy. And while methamphetamine trafficking might have suffered a temporary halt during 2003, it remains a strong and healthy business today. An estimated three million people (five per cent of the population) still use drugs in Thailand.
The 2003 Thai war on drugs highlights that any control approach relying principally on terror is ineffective, unsustainable and fundamentally a crime. The 2008 announcement by the current Thai Prime Minister of another ‘war’ based on the same principles, means and rationale is therefore recidivism at its worst. As the Thai say, “Same same, but different”.
In 2008, Thailand remains a member of the United Nations and is a signatory to the UN Charter and a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
As such, it has obligations to respect the rights of all those within its jurisdiction, including drug users. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights specifies that “[t]he obligation to respect [the right to health] requires States to refrain from interfering directly or indirectly with the enjoyment of the right to health”.
The Thai government’s indiscriminate and extrajudicial killings, use of fear tactics to deter drug activity and failure to provide drug services was clearly a failure to protect drug users’ rights to the highest attainable standard of health and a violation of its obligations under the ICESCR.
A number of recommendations by NGOs were presented to the United Nations at the conclusion of the 2003 war. These included:
a demand for UN action to forcefully and publicly oppose the use of any methods resulting in human rights violation, irrespective of objective or target
ongoing monitoring of human rights violations
commissioning an independent evaluation of the health impact of Thailand’s war on drugs, conducted by individuals with expertise in HIV/ AIDS epidemiology, drug demand reduction and harm reduction
- inclusion by donors, of human rights requirements in the provision of financial assistance to Thailand, including redirecting programmes from Thai government agencies to non-governmental organisations in some cases of non-compliance.
Paradoxically, five years later, these recommendations still stand – same same, but different.
The difference today is urgency.
Watch the video clip Thailand's License to Kill
