DRUG WAR - Victory at what price?

Chula Professor Says Body Count Is No Yardstick Of Final Success

Is Thailand ready to declare victory in its war on drugs the day after
tomorrow? "Perhaps, yes, if we don't think human rights is a problem,"
said Nualnoi Treerat, professor of political economy at Chulalongkorn
University, referring to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's plan to
declare the government's victory in its war on drugs on Tuesday.

Police say that about 2,500 people were gunned down by drug mafia
figures themselves during the first phase of the government war on
drugs between February and April. They say these were "silent
killings" carried out to keep people from naming their criminal
bosses. Only one-fifth of the murderers were arrested while the rest
of the death cases have not been resolved by police.

Nevertheless, several public-opinion polls conducted this year suggest
that the majority of people surveyed supported the government's harsh
measures in its war on drugs, Nualnoi said.

"We may have to call this 'populist justice'," she
said.

Nualnoi, who spent years studying the drugs problem and the
underground economy, said methamphetamine pills seemed to have mostly
disappeared from the country after the government started suppressing
the trade with its harsh measures in February.

"Now it is very difficult to find speed tablets where they used to be
on sale," she said. "Those who have some may have already buried or
destroyed them out of fear [of violent measures by the state]. If any
are still available, the prices have risen from Bt50-Bt60 to
Bt400-Bt500 apiece now."

Inflows of methamphetamine pills over the Burmese border have also
fallen because of the serious suppression measures, she said. There
has been an increase in fighting between the Thai authorities and the
drug-smugglers on the border. Further, the traders know they will be
killed even if they give themselves up, she added.

More important questions to be asked if this war can be called a
victory are: "Will the problem return or will other kinds of drugs
emerge? And what will the government do after Tuesday?" said Nualnoi.

"If this [war] was easy, the problem would already have vanished in
the United States, as it started drug suppression in the 1980s," she
said.

Studies from the United States and elsewhere suggest that drug
problems rapidly return, especially when the state uses violent means
to suppress them, she said.

Nualnoi spoke yesterday at the opening of a two-day year-end
conference on "Human Security" organised by the Thailand Development
Research Institute. The economist was on the panel on "External
Threats to Human Security" along with other experts, who talked about
terrorism, trade in women and children and immigrant labour.

"To tackle the drugs problem is supposedly to increase human security.
But if the means are not just, they could create an atmosphere of
fear, and such fear of violence could in return become a threat to
human security," she said.

National Human Rights Commissioner Jaran Ditthapichai added that
investigations by the commission found that many of those killed
during the government war on drugs were innocent people who had
nothing to do with either the drugs trade or consumption.

"On the other hand I am against such killings anyway, even if the
people may be guilty", Jaran said. "This country has the rule of law
to deal with criminals."