GOVT RIGHTS RECORD SLAMMED

The Thaksin Shinawatra government might go down in history as the
gravest human-rights violator of all Thai administrations, leading
academics said yesterday.

Thammasat University's political science lecturer Kasien Tejapeera
submitted as evidence the reported 15 deaths of village leaders and
human-rights activists, and the more than 3,000 people killed during
the government's 11-month war on drugs, which has been widely
condemned by human-rights advocates.

"These cases represent human-rights violations at the gravest scale
unmatched by any administration, even when compared to the times of
student uprisings in 1973, and 1976, and the May bloodshed in 1992,"
Kasien told the seminar at Chulalongkorn University yesterday.

As the government has failed in case after case to protect the civil
and political rights and social rights of individual people and civil
movements, it has lost its political justification to remain in power,
he said.

"From the disappearance of civil rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit to
the murder of civil rights activist Charoen Wat-aksorn, no one in this
government has ever shown any responsibility. This government is
indeed suffering from moral deficiency," said Kasien.

He added that as the government has failed to protect human rights,
this duty should be given over to the international or the local
community. Businesses that violate human-rights norms should also be
boycotted and human rights should rank high on the political agenda,
he said.

Another lecturer, Chiang Mai University's Attajak Sattayanurak, agreed
that the strength of the Thaksin administration in terms of economic
performance had become shattered as more people have questioned the
government's moral conscience.

In a related event, Thaksin yesterday said he had ordered Justice
Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana to consider the possibility of having
the Special Investigation Department's officials co-investigate the
murder of Charoen with the police.