Font size:

Buddhist monks at Suan Methatham temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand, reported hearing shots in the vicinity this past week. Local residents also told officials they had seen flashlight illumination early in the evening, just before a large fire broke out in a protected forest area near the temple.

Villagers theorized that a local influential person, possibly facing business conflicts, might have been trying to “resurrect” the old Monk Supoj murder case – in other words, threatening violence against forest preservation activists like the deceased monk.

Monk Supoj, an environmental activist monk residing at the Suan Methatham religious center in Sansai, in the Fang district of Chiang Mai province, was stabbed to death on June 17, 2005. He and other monks had already been warned by loggers working illegally in the protected forest. “Just because you are monks don’t think you are safe,” they were told.

The brutal – and still unsolved – murder case was recently shamed further by Thailand’s illustrious Department of Special Investigations – the one that handles all lèse majesté cases – by a police claim that a sexual affair had been at the root of the killing. The new police claim was reportedly based on pubic hair and what is said to be semen, both collected two years after the murder.

Activists, members of the press and others are suggesting that the police stop making public announcements and submit the evidence to the court where proper determinations can be made. They also say the police should stop offering totally indefensible theories into what is widely regarded as another murder backed by an influential person.

In its record of the Phra Supoj murder case, the Asian Human Rights Commission says that Monk Supoj and two others had previously lodged a complaint against a local businessman and political interests that were trying to pressure the monks to leave the area. AHRC and police records show that the police refused to accept the monks’ complaint.

This kind of Thai police refusal is not unusual. When a monk at Watpa Salawan in Nakhonratchasima province filed a complaint with local police claiming he was physically assaulted, police initially told him he would have to leave the monkhood to file. Influential persons were behind the scenes, one of whom was a sponsor and supporter of the temple abbot who did not like the monk who was assaulted.

Thailand’s litany of unsolved murder cases – and perhaps worse, its record of cases that have been dropped because of “lack of evidence, reluctant witnesses and suddenly confused contradictory courtroom testimony” – is a telltale sign that something is wrong with the justice system, and in a wider context, with its social culture. While the country’s courts are said to be relatively neutral and fair, they are still subject to local influences and vested interests.

Next Wednesday, another unsolved Thai police investigation will be brought up at a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Bangkok – the case of missing lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit.

Somchai was kidnapped by a group of Thai policemen on March 12, 2004, and is believed to have been killed sometime afterward. A day or so after his disappearance Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra cavalierly indicated that Somchai had probably had a fight with his wife and would return home in a few days. Later Thaksin admitted that he thought the lawyer had been killed and that government officials were responsible.

Next week’s panel will include Somchai’s widow, Angkhana Neelaphaijit, and Dr. Kraisak Choonavan, former Thai Senate Foreign Relations Committee head. Kraisak is currently supporting the People’s Alliance for Democracy and is a frequent guest on TV programs to discuss human rights cases.

The panel discussion is certain to be interesting, but not likely to result in much satisfaction for the victims. Police, although clearly involved in the kidnapping, are relatively immune from honest prosecution.

The fact that this case and literally dozens of others, like that of Phra Supoj, have remained unsolved, are usually dropped, and only reopened after urgent public demand, indicates that this situation of Thai police inactivity will continue for some time, perhaps decades. That is, there will be more unsolved murders, more human rights abuses, more police involvement and destruction of evidence and the killing or intimidation of witnesses.

But Thai police have a new top priority issue these days – lèse majesté. They are busy prosecuting both Thais and foreigners deemed to have insulted the monarchy, and are heavily engaged with the Thai army to make sure that Thai subjects throughout the kingdom don’t speak out of turn.

That was one of lawyer Somchai’s mistakes – speaking out of turn and making it appear as if Thai officials were indeed biased, incompetent and corrupt. He paid grievously for the error.

--

(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com – he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)