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Michael K. Connors Ambivalent about Rights: “Accidental” Killing Machines, Democracy and Coups D’etat Working Paper Series No. 102 November 2009 The Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC) of the City University of Hong Kong publishes SEARC Working Papers Series electronically ©Copyright is held by the author or authors each Working Paper. SEARC Working Papers cannot be republished, reprinted, or reproduced in any format without the permission of the papers author or authors. Note: The views expressed in each paper are those of the author or authors of the paper. They do not represent the views of the Southeast Asia Research Centre, its Management Committee, or the City University of Hong Kong. Southeast Asia Research Centre Management Committee Professor William Case, Director Dr Catherine Chiu Dr Nicholas Thomas Dr Bill Taylor Editor of the SEARC Working Paper Series Ms Jennifer Eagleton Southeast Asia Research Centre The City University of Hong Kong 83 Tat Chee Avenue Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR Tel: (852 3442 6106 Fax: (852) 3442 0103 http://www.cityu.edi.hk/searc AMBIVALENT ABOUT RIGHTS: “ACCIDENTAL” KILLING MACHINES, DEMOCRACY AND COUPS D’ETAT1 Michael K. Connors City University of Hong Kong School of Social Science, La Trobe University Human rights politics are typically marked by predictable scripts of violators and promoters, of observance and neglect, and of action and policy. But to speak of human rights in Thailand after the coup d’état of 2006 that overthrew the Thaksin government (2001-2006) is to step into an unpredictable political minefield of local conflict and discourse, exemplified by the political competition between “red shirt” (pro-Thaksin) and “yellow shirt” (anti-Thaksin) movements and the rival elite networks that have mapped on to them. The conflicting sides proclaim support for “rights” and democracy while playing a part in the violation of both, conceived liberally. The predictable transcript isn’t very helpful for Thailand. Rather than offer a comprehensive account of Thailand’s human rights situation, this chapter discusses human rights in relation to state form, democracy and the contest between liberal and authoritarian currents. The “War on Drugs” (WOD), during the tenure of the elected Thaksin government, is used as a case study to examine forces that combined to abuse human rights. To bring those events into the present post- coup discussion helps identify uncertainties surrounding Thailand’s future capacity for human rights protection, assuming the country will return to some form of stable electoral democracy (though this is by no means certain). The case study might have been the 2006-2007 coup regime’s suppression of free association, speech and movement, but then there is nothing profoundly difficult in understanding that military juntas, founded on repression, by definition and in practice violate basic human rights. Any number of themes might also have been chosen. There exists exhaustive documentation by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the 1 Work for this paper was enabled by research conducted under an ARC Discovery Grant. A version of this paper was presented at the “Human Rights in Asia” University of Melbourne, October 1-2, 2009. I wish to thank Michelle Ford especially, and other participants at the workshop, for very helpful comments. Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 102, 2009 1 Asian Human Rights Commission, and the Asian Legal Resources Centre on rights abuses against “hill-tribes”, the Muslim population in the “deep south”, convicts and suspects, refugees, human rights defenders seeking justice, and communities and groups in the midst of an environmental or resource conflict. These abuses have occurred under formally elected governments, but what marks the WOD for treatment here is its status as a national event. It was not a discrete abuse of group, time and place – such as the localized killings of over twenty human rights defenders in the last decade (National Human Rights Commission 2004) – but a nationally mobilized policy by an elected government. This paper’s principal concern then is with explaining in a broad sense, the facilitative conditions that allowed mass murder to occur during the WOD, as an entry point into understanding the generalized conditions that allow for the abuse of human rights in Thailand. Compromised and Rhetorical Thailand’s slide into overt authoritarianism in the last decade, under both elected and coup-appointed governments, has shocked observers who viewed the country as democracy’s beacon in Southeast Asia. From the 1980s onwards they imagined a jagged but progressive path to rights observance, but Thailand’s history never evinced a smooth path. The military has successfully overturned governments in ten coups d’etat since 1933.2 A number of attempted coups also dot the landscape. Large-scale political violence resulting in mass fatalities in 1973, 1976, 1992 (for which no agent has been indicted) demonstrated ruthlessness to stay in power, but also the willingness of democratic forces to challenge and expand political space. Thailand’s politics have swung between military authoritarian politics and civilian governments of various hues, but none untouched by corruption or abuse of power. In more recent times, after the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in May 1992 (following the 1991 coup d’état), for which the military issued itself an amnesty, the progress of democracy seemed inexorable. Having forced the military and their political party backers out of office in 1992, a coalition of reformers pushed for more fundamental reform. A product of relatively open public deliberation, the 1997 “people’s constitution” was promulgated (McCargo 2002). That constitution provided 2 The limited revolution that overthrew the absolute monarchy in June 1932 is not counted here. Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 102, 2009 2 mechanisms for a strong executive but this was to be balanced by newly established agencies such as Thailand’s first National Human Rights Commission, an Electoral Commission and Administrative and Constitutional courts. The liberalism of the constitution intended a trajectory different from past statist discourses and practices (Connors 1999). The 1997 liberal project gained little traction outside reformers’ circles. To many politicians it presented new obstacles in the pursuit of the spoils of office, to conservatives and statists it presented challenges to authoritarian concepts of order, in the areas of cultural production, free speech, and religious practice that were actively resisted (see Streckfuss and Templeton 2002). To the popular masses, the project was in some senses an abstraction, although new electoral laws, mandated by the constitution, led to greater policy articulation among parties. The distance between the reform project and popular need, in the context of high income inequality, was a populism waiting to happen. The forces of political liberalism would find their tentative victory challenged by Thaksin Shinawatra, and his Thai Rak Thai party (TRT), which won government by election in 2001 and 2005. In coming to power, Thaksin inherited a public culture of impunity for the phu yai (the “big people”) and of image above substance (Jackson 2004). And by virtue of a “social contract” (Hewison 2004) for limited redistribution of social and economic goods with Thailand’s long-alienated electorate, he secured support to challenge the emergent liberal order, a feat aided by winning over those political notables who had no commitment to the 1997 constitution. Thaksin’s regime (2001-2006), presided over gross violation of human rights, including over a thousand deaths in the War on Drugs (2003) and the Tak Bai killings of 85 unarmed Muslim protestors, 78 of whom died in custody en-route to an army camp (2004). Viewed as a threat to networks surrounding the monarchy (McCargo 2005) and to the liberal project, Thaksin was deposed in a September 2006 coup d’état that laid to rest hope for a liberal order in the short to medium term. By decree and judicial acquiesce, a junta assumed sovereign power (see Connors and Hewison 2008; Kasian 2006). Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 102, 2009 3 The political chaos from the coup to the present has been about fundamental questions of order – who gets to set the rules of the game – and in part about the place of rights. The period has been marked by severe political conflict and the trampling of rights, intensified application of lese majeste laws and obscenely long prison sentences (18 years and 10 years in two prominent cases), street violence by and directed against both the “red” and “yellow” shirted movements , paramilitary attacks on protests, and censorship (see Montesano 2009; Streckfuss forthcoming) Moreover, the quasi-judicial dismemberment of TRT based on retrospective law by an ad-hoc Constitutional Tribunal, and subsequently its successor party (People’s Power) on the basis of an article in the military backed constitution, indicates the politicized use of law (Connors 2008a). Oddly, many of the extensive rights contained in the 1997 “people’s constitution”, abrogated after the 2006 coup, reappeared in the military-backed 2007 constitution. Perhaps this highlights their ritualistic status, or the fact that liberal and statist elements pacted against Thaksin. “Independent organizations” remained intact in the 2007 constitution, but with stronger control over them granted