COLD-BLOODED MURDER AS GOVERNMENT POLICY

Overkill takes it toll. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has obviously
begun to feel the heat of a public uproar over excessive extrajudicial
executions of drug dealers all over the nation. The latest body count shows
the figure rising to more than 1,400, and a lot more are still expected to
die from bullets.

What has gone wrong in this fair land? Many people with troubled
consciences have been asking themselves this, for they have not received an
appropriate response from the powers that be, who show satisfaction in the
rising number of dead drug dealers.

Of course, Prime Minister Thaksin will go down in the country's history for
the shoot-to-kill policy.

Human-rights groups have been raising a hue and cry over the extrajudicial
killings. When the death toll was still in the hundreds, the chief and
Interior Minister Wan Mohamad Noor Matha professed to be unperturbed. They
even scoffed and sarcastically hit out at critics. Thai Rak Thai Party
members regard human-rights groups as sympathisers with drug dealers.

Obviously, things got out of control. Drug dealers died by extrajudicial
killing or just plain murder in droves, thus attracting the attention of
Amnesty International and the UN High Commission for Human Rights, which is
expected to debate Thailand's case in Geneva later this month.

By that time, nobody knows how many dead will lie at the doors of the
perpetrators of the shoot-to-kill policy.

Of course, Thailand has never experienced a situation when wholesale
slaughter was permitted or ignored by law-enforcement authorities. The
police have taken things in their stride as dead bodies fall like tenpins
in a hail of bullets. The one-time highest score was six villagers slain in
a pickup in Chiang Rai province on Friday.

Those murders took place after the prime minister set up two committees to
monitor the war against drug dealers.

The funny thing is that there have not been any big fish caught, let alone
murdered, despite repeated claims of drug-dealer blacklists by the police
and the Interior Ministry. If they indeed have such lists, they should
contain all the big-timers and not just the small fry who have died every
day with the blessing of the authorities.

Drug addicts deserve punishment, of course, but not by getting killed.
Children of prominent political and social figures are known to have been
addicted or still to be addicted to drugs, and their names should be on the
blacklists. Those names are generally known among people who keep
themselves up to date. But those delinquents will never be killed, owing to
the protection of their parents.

The government, particularly the prime minister, is in a dilemma. If the
rate of extrajudicial executions or murders drops sharply, it means that
someone in the government signalled to the executioners that they should
slow down their killings. If the high rate continues, it means that drug
dealers have been responsible for the executions, and the government must
be pressured to go after the killers with reasonable enthusiasm.

The reluctance on the part of government leaders to monitor the killings
may not be because there is too much blood on their hands. They are a bit
worried about the public backlash following "collateral damage" in which
children were also among the victims of murder in cold blood.

What will be the ultimate result of the war against drug traders? The big
fish will get away. They have plenty of money.

The "mad drug" is getting expensive, the price per tablet having risen a
bit over Bt100 to somewhere between Bt300 and Bt500. This is ridiculous
indeed. What the public should fear most is speculation that the drug
traders will pool their vast financial resources and strike back to protect
the profitable but illegal trade.

Who knows? They may take bold steps, offer an attractive price on the heads
of whoever have had the nerve to mess with them. That is something nobody
wants to see happen. It would be a defeat for the country and its future
generations.

In the meantime, let's hope that Thailand is not to be condemned by the
international community for the blatant violation of human rights. That
would cause incalculable damage to the country's export trade and
investment. Such is the fruit of the arrogance of power and the quest for a
quick victory in an unwinnable war.