KLONG TOEY TARGET OF NEW WAR ON DRUGS

'Brutal Measures' Vow Raises Rights Concerns

The second war on drugs will focus on Klong Toey slum communities, which
must be made free of drugs, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday.

Mr Thaksin opened the second six-month phase of Palang Phandin Ruam
Kwadlang Yaseptid (the war on addictive drugs) yesterday at the Police
Society in Bang Khen.

He instructed the police to be serious in combating the drug trade,
especially the transportation of cocaine by motorcycles. The new
metropolitan police commissioner and anti-drug chief should launch at least
one more crackdown on drugs in the Klong Toey area where there were always
drugs and anti-drug volunteers must remain on guard.

The prime minister wanted the Education Ministry and the city to sort out
school students addicted to drugs or solvents and send them for
rehabilitation so they would not grow up as drug dealers.

"Now, I know drugs have gradually made a comeback though at a much
different degree than before. Ketamine has been brought in via Cambodia
where it is not considered a drug.

"Ecstasy has been smuggled from Malaysia while cocaine has been flown in by
Africans. But for heroin, Burma is very strict. Marijuana is now popular
among Bangkok teenagers. It is not as dangerous as other kinds of drugs but
it can directly lead to harmful ones," he said.

Mr Thaksin also ordered agencies to protect school drop-outs and the
unemployed from drugs by locating drug sources in all communities and
villages and sending addicts for rehabilitation. "For drug rehabilitation
and special training there will be no budget limits," he said.

At the end of the meeting he signed the second war on drugs declaration and
wrote down: "I will never let drugs destroy the future of our children."

Opposition politicians, senators and human rights activists warned that the
prime minister's promise of "brutal measures" against drug dealers would
result in more people being killed.

Mr Thaksin said on Sunday that all drug traffickers and dealers would be
sent to "meet the guardian of hell".

Thavorn Senniam, deputy secretary-general of the Democrat party and
chairman of the House committee on justice and human rights, said people
should prepare to once again hear Mr Thaksin's claims that dealers were
being silenced by drug gangsters, not by government agencies _ as he had
claimed so many times when the first drug war was launched in April last year.

"The eye-for-an-eye policy, without compassion or humanitarian principle,
means more people will be killed, just as those 2,500 people were killed in
the first anti-drug war," Mr Thavorn said.

The first war had succeeded in a certain level, but the drug situation
later returned to normal. The war would not solve the drug problem
permanently, even though thousands of drugs traffickers and dealers would
be killed in the future.

The people's willing participation was essential if the drug problem was to
be eradicated.

Senator Thongbai Thongpao said the prime minister's new anti-drugs war
showed the government had failed to overcome the drugs problem.

"The prime minister should not have said he will send drug traffickers and
dealers to meet the guardian of hell," he said. "It seems that he is
sending a clear message to encourage anyone to freely silence those
suspected of being involved in drugs.

Jaran Dittha-aphichai, a human rights commissioner, said the anti-drugs war
was just another populist policy. The government was campaigning for votes
in the February general election.