DEATHS MOUNT IN THAI DRUG CRACKDOWN

BANGKOK, Feb. 16 - Two weeks: 350 dead. But this is only the beginning of a
crackdown in which Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has vowed to eliminate
Thailand's drug problems, once and for all, within three months.

The police assert that they are responsible for only a dozen of the deaths,
and that all of those were in self-defense.

Human rights advocates say they find it difficult to accept the
government's assertion that all the other killings were the work of drug
dealers determined to eliminate informers.

"Bandits killing bandits" is how the prime minister put it.

Thailand has been ravaged in recent years by an epidemic of drug abuse,
mostly involving methamphetamine pills. Apart from the voices of a few
human rights advocates there seems, initially at least, to be a mood here
of silent consent for any measures that might combat it.

"I think human rights activists shouldn't worry too much about these
traffickers' lives," said the interior minister, Wan Noor Muhammad Noor Matha.

He has put police chiefs and provincial governors on notice that he is
watching their progress with the campaign, and counting, and that their
jobs are on the line if they fall short.

So far, he said, only one of the country's 72 provinces, Chonburi, has met
his standards, with 82 arrests. It has had 30 killings.

He chastised other provinces that have begun public drug awareness
campaigns and drug testing programs. "Window dressing," he said. "We want
real action."

The statistics have come pouring in, many of them conflicting and
contradictory, all of them demonstrating the eagerness of public officials
to show that they are meeting their unofficial quotas.

The report of 350 dead came directly from Mr. Thaksin on Saturday - 25
killings a day since the campaign began on Feb. 1.

According to other reports in recent days, more than 9,000 people around
the country have been arrested, more than four million methamphetamine
pills have been seized and more than $350 million in drug-related cash and
assets has been confiscated.

One of the most telling figures so far was a government report on Tuesday
that 70,000 people had turned themselves in to the police.

"We went in fear for our lives," one woman in the northern city of
Chiangmai told local reporters. "Officials came to our villages and told us
to go to the police because we had been involved in drugs."

Most villagers are convinced that the police are behind the killings, said
Somchai Homlaor, who heads a local human rights group called Forum Asia.

He noted that despite the government's assertion that hundreds of drug
runners were killing one another, not one arrest had been made on murder
charges.

Srirak Plipat, the director of the Thai branch of the human rights group
Amnesty International, said the Thai phrase "ying ting" was echoing around
the country these days - "kill and throw away."

"People are afraid of being ying ting," he said.

Officials estimate that more than 700,000 pills are smuggled into Thailand
every year, mostly through the Golden Triangle from Myanmar. They permeate
society, from campuses to offices to villages, even to working elephants.

An estimated three million people in Thailand take the drugs, of whom half
a million are counted as addicts.

There has been little public outcry over the wave of killings and for the
most part, newspapers duly pass on the official reports of the killings
without comment. Here are three samples from one article in the Bangkok Post.:

PThree bullet-riddled bodies found in the province of Nakhon Ratchasima.
"Police believe they could have been murdered by another dealer, as they
were on a police blacklist."

PA man shot dead in a bar in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. "Police think
the killing might have resulted from a turf war involving the region's drug
gangs."

PA man shot dead while driving a pickup truck in Ratchaburi Province.
"Police believe the man was killed by professional hit men hired by drug
dealers."

A police spokesman, Maj. Gen. Pongsapat Pongcharoen, presented the official
position. "The police want to arrest them alive," he said, "but drug
dealers are concerned that more information will be leaked to the police,
so they decide to kill them."

A senator, Sak Korsaengrueng, voiced emerging public doubts. "The way
things are going now, many people are getting uncomfortable with the rising
death toll of suspected drug dealers," he said. "It is wrong for the police
to take matters into their own hands and kill drug suspects, who must be
guaranteed due process of the law."

Mr. Thaksin seems to have little time for such niceties.

"Put things into perspective," he said. "How many police officers have been
killed by drug dealers? Do our critics consider the wretched lives of drug
dealers more precious than those of our police officers?"

This is war, said Mr. Wan Noor, the interior minister. There is no room for
slackers or softies.

"Any provincial governor or police chief who continues to take it easy,
waking up at 8 o'clock in the morning, sipping their coffee in the office,
instead of actively going after drug traffickers, is weighing down the
government's war on drugs," he said.

They should check out the history books, he said, to see how the great King
Naresuan treated laggardly generals. "The king had all of them beheaded."