Editorial: Thailand’s Culture of Impunity

By Mark Fenn

For years, security officials in Thailand appear to have been able to commit violence with impunity.

During Thailand’s “war on drugs” in 2003, a young man from the Lisu tribe was killed by police in the northern province of Chiang Mai. He had been shot while trying to escape arrest, police told his family.

But when his niece went to identify the body, she saw that he had been shot in the head at point-blank range. She is convinced that her uncle was executed in cold blood – one of the many victims of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s bloody crackdown on the trade in methamphetamines. Her uncle was involved with drugs, she says, but in no way deserved to die for his petty crimes.

To this day, no one has been held to account for her uncle’s death, and her anger has not dissipated. Now a human rights activist, she asked not to be named in this article, citing fears for her personal safety under the current regime.

But she believes that Thailand’s culture of impunity – the ease with which the wealthy, powerful and uniformed can literally get away with murder – is a stain on the country that has blighted the lives of many innocent families. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat