One Year Later: Family of Missing Thai Lawyer Struggles for Accountability

Alert Issued: March 9, 2005

“What we are afraid of is fear. We don’t want to be so afraid that we do not think about the future, we don’t want to be so afraid that we cannot do anything. We are lucky that all of the children are strong and we will get through this period. I still believe this is the hardest part of our lives, one that only a few people must face. This will pass.”

– Angkhana Wongrachen,
   wife of missing lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit

Somchai’s wife, Angkhana Wongrachen, successfully fought for the right to call witnesses as a co-plaintiff in the case. Together with several Thai human rights organizations, she has pressed the Justice Ministry to have the case transferred from the police to the Department of Special Investigations without success.

Please call on Thailand’s Justice Minister and Prime Minister to see that the case is properly investigated by

• transferring the case to the Department of Special Investigations and

• cooperating fully with the Thai Senate committee
  investigating the case.

“Somchai did not attempt to make guilty people innocent. But he endeavored to ensure that all people accused of a crime had the opportunity to have a real examination in court. He wanted all accused people to be served justice.”

– Angkhana Wongrachen, wife of
  missing lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit

After receiving several death threats, Somchai Neelaphaijit made a practice of informing friends and colleagues of his whereabouts at all times. But friends lost contact with the 53-year-old lawyer on the night of March 12, 2004. Somchai was last seen at the Chaleena Hotel in the Ramkamhaeng area. His car was later found abandoned with a fresh dent in the back, suggesting it had been rammed from behind.

Somchai was chairman of the Muslim Lawyers Group and deputy chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Law Society of Thailand. He was representing several groups of men detained following violence in the southern region of Thailand. Just before his disappearance he had filed a complaint against the police for torturing his clients. Just two weeks earlier, Somchai delivered a speech on police torture and impunity that one journalist described as “a powerful, bitter, outraged speech.”


Investigation and Trial

Five police officers were arrested in April 2004, and later charged with assault, “coercion by threatening bodily harm or death" and "gang robbery." Four of them were immediately released on bail. Under current Thai law, the absence of a body is an obstacle to more serious charges such as kidnapping or forced disappearance. This loophole places an extra burden on investigators, and also points to the need for a new legal framework on forced disappearances.

Police officers investigating the crime scene are reported to have damaged important evidence, such as by sitting in the vehicle before it could be examined by forensic experts. The United States Department of State, in its 2004 human rights report, cited Thai prosecutors who said that the police were often an obstacle to the prosecution of members of the force, leading to a “climate of impunity that persisted in preventing any major change in police behavior.” Meanwhile a Senate inquiry, which might have shed light on the disappearance, has been hampered by lack of cooperation from police and senior government officials.

Hearings for witnesses for the plaintiffs, including some of Somchai’s clients, are scheduled for March 21 and 28. The third in the series of hearings was not scheduled until August. But in a positive development the Attorney General’s office recently asked the courts to move up the last hearing to March as well, although the trial itself will still begin in August. Trials in Thailand frequently last a year or more.

A source in the Attorney General’s office told the Thai press, ''Many southerners still do not understand why Somchai had disappeared without a trace. If the hearing dates are advanced it would send a positive note to the public that the government was not interfering in the case and it all depended on the courts.”

The Violence in the South

After a lull in separatist activity since the late 1980s, a new wave of violence in the southern states of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat began with a January 4, 2004 attack on an army depot. The resurgence of the long-simmering unrest among Thailand’s Muslim minority was met with a harsh military response, including the imposition of martial law. On April 28, local Muslim youths mounted a coordinated, if poorly armed, wave of attacks. Security forces, which by many accounts had advance knowledge of the attacks, responded with deadly force, killing more than 100 and suffering five fatalities themselves. On October 25, at a mass protest against the detention of six local men outside a police station in Narathiwat province, soldiers firing into the crowd killed six and wounded at least 20, while more than 1,000 people were arrested under martial law provisions.

The next day, authorities admitted that 78 detainees died of suffocation while bound and stacked horizontally in trucks on the five hour drive to Pattani. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra reportedly commented, "This is typical. It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them."

More than 500 police, teachers, officials, and Buddhist priests have been killed, many of them by unknown gunmen, in the 14 months of the conflict. The Thai authorities have characterized the worsening conflict in southern Thailand as a product of either criminal gangs or terrorism and have justified their actions as legitimate counterterrorism measures. Human rights activists like Somchai, who have sought to defend apparent victims of governmental repression, have been criticized as terrorist sympathizers. Just days before his disappearance, the lawyer was told he was on a “terrorist blacklist” maintained by security forces.

In August 2003, the Thai government adopted counterterrorism decrees that broadened the use of protracted detention without charge or trial. There is a real danger that the heavy-handed response to discontent in the south is only exacerbating the separatist feelings in the region and fueling more violence.


The Torture Case

Five of Somchai’s clients had been detained on February 23, 2004, on charges involving “national security, conspiracy to commit rebellion, to recruit people and gather arms to commit rebellion, to function as secret society and to act as criminal gang.” They were: Makata Harong (49), Sukri Maming (37), Manase Mama (25), Sudirueman Malae (23), and Abdullah Abukaree (20).

On March 4, Somchai Neelaphaijit sought a court order for the five to receive a physical examination for effects of torture. His application included the following remarks:

While under police custody and during the interrogation conducted at the provincial police station of Tanyong subdistrict, the 4th Suspect was blindfolded by police officer(s) and physically assaulted; strangled and choked, hand-tied behind his back and beaten with pieces of wood on the back and head, suffering some head wounds. In addition, he was also hanged from the toilet door with a piece of rope and was then electrocuted with a piece of fork charged with electrical currents, on the back of his torso and right shoulder. As a result, the Suspect had to make a confession.

CC: Mr. Pongthep Thepkanjana
Minister of Justice
Ministry of Justice Building, 22nd Floor
Chaeng Wattana Road
Pak Kret, Nonthaburi 11120
Thailand