THAILAND TORN BY DEADLY DRUG BUST

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- They were armed, they were angry and they had
hostages. They were also surrounded.

Dozens of Thai police sharpshooters crouching behind squad cars or in the
rice fields outside had their weapons trained on the wood and tin shack
where six drug traffickers were holding a rival and his family after a deal
went bad.

It was a standoff. So the police summoned Gen. Salang Bunnag, the man known
as the toughest cop in the Royal Thai Police.

A short while later, the six drug dealers were dead.

And there things might have ended, in the old Thailand. But the old Thailand
is under siege, and Salang suddenly finds himself symbolizing a struggle
between those trying to lead the country into the ranks of modern
democracies, and those bent on keeping it shackled by a feudal culture of
unpunished lawlessness.

Like South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, this nation of 61 million has
made impressive strides toward democracy since the Cold War ended. After
all, it's only seven years since unarmed political protesters were being
shot dead in the streets of Bangkok or rotting in prison for being
"communists." Today it has elections and peaceful changes of government.

But just as the 1997 collapse of Thailand's booming economy showed that
there are no shortcuts to prosperity, so the case of Gen. Salang
demonstrates that the road to democracy and the rule of law runs through a
minefield.

The "Suphanburi massacre," as it is now known, happened in November 1996.
Thailand then was in the grip of an amphetamine hysteria. The drug was
flooding the country. Schoolchildren, factory hands and office workers were
addicted. The nightly news frequently broadcast accounts of hopped-up speed
freaks snapping and killing anyone who got in their way.

Now, the pill plague had come to Suphanburi, a clean and prosperous city in
the heart of Thailand's rice bowl, 60 miles north of Bangkok. Suphanburi is
the fiefdom of former Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa. During his recent
term of office, Banharn had declared war on amphetamines, increasing the
penalty for dealing to death. And there in his own hometown, whose name
means golden city, dealers with assault weapons were taking hostages.

Something had to be done.

Negotiations between the gang and the police went nowhere. As the siege
dragged on into the sweltering night, the lawmen realized help was needed.

As dawn broke, the rice stalks swayed under the swirling winds of a
descending helicopter. More rifle-toting policemen jumped out. Behind them
strode Salang.

Salang was no ordinary officer. The deputy commissioner of the national
police force had a reputation for using deadly force. When the dealers
realized they were up against Salang, their will to fight evaporated. After
a last round of negotiations, they threw out their weapons, raised their
hands and sloshed across the paddy to be handcuffed.

But they never went to jail.

Instead, in full view of reporters, some broadcasting live, the officers
marched the six back across the rice field and into the shack. As they
disappeared, still handcuffed, behind its rusty, corrugated walls, a voice
crackled over the police radio, giving a Buddhist funeral incantation
equivalent to ``rest in peace.''

The gunshots pierced the moist, monsoon-season air in slow, deliberate
intervals. After a haunting silence, police carried out six bodies wrapped
in bloodstained white sheets, while Salang turned his pockmarked face to the
cameras, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"These people were not saints," he said. They all had long criminal records,
the justice system was slow and, he said, the courts had failed to put them
in prison where they belonged.

"Today, we have closed all their cases," he said.

Many Thais applauded Salang. The dealers, they said, had gotten what they
deserved. Others were appalled. Such killings by the Thai police are not
uncommon, according to a U.S. State Department report. They just aren't
carried out on national television. Local and international human rights
groups demanded government action. Nothing happened.

Then the government changed.

In November 1997, with the economy in meltdown and the public clamoring for
reform, Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai of the Democrat Party took office.
Chuan vowed, among other things, to clean up the police. His interior
minister began an investigation of the Suphanburi killings. Salang denounced
the minister and refused to cooperate. The minister, Sanan Kachornprasart,
hit back by retiring him.

If Salang is indicted, that would be extraordinary, because in Thailand, the
rich and powerful are almost never prosecuted.

The ex-dictators who ordered demonstrators shot are still honored by the
country's wealthy elite and sit on the boards of blue-chip corporations.

High-ranking soldiers and policemen caught trafficking in drugs are
transferred to inactive posts with no responsibilities and keep their
government paychecks and pensions.

And despite a report from a government-appointed commission citing criminal
wrongdoing by central bank executives and several politicians, no one has
been prosecuted for wrecking Thailand's economy and triggering a crisis that
shook markets around the world.

While the international community has praised Chuan's government for
instituting economic and legal reforms, those accused of looting banks and
squandering foreign reserves still sit in parliament or executive suites,
safe from any threat of legal action, free to vie for power once again.
Salang himself remains a senator.

This contempt for the law troubles many Thais.

"There must be some punishment. Otherwise, how will we teach the next
generation what is right, and what is wrong?" said Adul Khewboriboon, whose
son was killed while demonstrating for democracy in 1992.

Salang says the investigation is a vendetta. The Democrats, he says, want
revenge for charges he filed against some of them in 1995 over a land
scandal that led to the collapse of Chuan's first government.

"Any time police try to bring a case against a politician, they themselves
face charges," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

So what really happened in Suphanburi? "I want to tell you," he said, "but I
can't. My men are in trouble, and I have to worry about them."

The 60-year-old general lives in a ranch-style house in suburban Bangkok,
where he runs a foundation to save Thailand's elephants, endangered wildlife
and vanishing forests. His handshake is delicate. His gentle, refined
mannerisms identify him as a member of the elite. The Bunnags have been one
of Thailand's most prominent families for more than 300 years.

What he's best known for, however, is the Thammasat massacre.

On the morning of Oct. 6, 1976, at Thammasat University in Bangkok,
Thailand's equivalent of Yale, students were peacefully rallying for broader
democratic reforms when thousands of paramilitary vigilantes turned up. They
had been falsely led to believe that the students were demanding the
abolition of Thailand's revered monarchy.

Then the riot police arrived. Their commander was Salang.

Hundreds of students were shot, hanged or beaten to death in a field before
the glittering spires of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the country's
paramount symbol of unity and peace.

Salang then handed Seni Pramoj, the democratically elected prime minister, a
letter of resignation. Seni signed and Thailand descended under
authoritarian rule.

No one was ever tried for the massacre, and Salang denies his men fired
first. But ever since, he has been viewed by some as an enforcer for the
darker powers still struggling to keep Thailand in their grip.

He has done little to dispel that image with what appears to have been
selective investigations of members of the Democrat Party.

Chuan's Democrats undeniably have corrupt members. But polls show most Thais
believe other parties are more corrupt. Salang acknowledges he has never
brought charges against any of those other parties' members.

"General Salang is a good policeman. He is not dirty," says Yangyuen
Thanmabutr, a businessman friend and supporter. "But maybe he was just too
tough."

Thongbai Thongpao, a prominent human rights lawyer, works out of a shabby
office overlooking an avenue clogged with Bangkok's notorious traffic. Small
though it is, it's a vast improvement over the tiny cell where he spent nine
years without a trial, accused of being a communist.

Despite his own harsh experiences, Thongbai recognizes that many Thais are
sick of bureaucratic governance and admire the quick, decisive action of men
such as Salang.

But there are dangers, he says, in condoning such methods.

In the 1990s, farm organizers have been shot in the back by police and
labeled marijuana smugglers. Labor organizers have reported being threatened
by policemen. Activists trying to rescue children from brothels say they
fear some police as much as the traffickers.

Thongbai points to a current scandal in which army generals and police
officers are accused of working for one of the country's amphetamine
kingpins. It's not the first of its kind.

"We're talking about generals. It's these kind of people who go unpunished
by our system. It's usually the small guys, no names, who get killed and
their death means nothing to anybody," Thongbai says. "How do we know the
alleged drug traffickers in Suphanburi weren't killed in order to prevent
them from talking?"

Little evidence has emerged to support those suspicions. Police
investigators say much of the evidence was destroyed. Even the shack was razed.

And now, the slow justice system that Salang decried in Suphanburi seems to
be working in his favor. In February, relatives of the slain men, who were
suing Salang for damages, fired their lawyers and withdrew their suit.

A prosecutor speaking on condition of anonymity says they were bought off.

"I wasn't offered any money," said Sawai Phohom, a poor rice farmer and
father of one of the victims. "But I'd take it if they did. I'm fed up with
coming to court every week."

Prosecutors say the investigation will take another year. Then the attorney
general will decide what charges, if any, should be filed.

Thongbai said the case is critical to strengthening the rule of law and the
institutions that oversee it.

"Salang Bunnag is not the law," Thongbai says.