BANGKOK - Thailand has declared a fresh war on drugs, vowing to send dealers
and smugglers to "hell", despite complaints by human-rights groups that a
similar crackdown last year left 2,500 people dead, mostly in unsolved murders.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched the campaign on Monday by declaring
that "drug dealers and traffickers are heartless and wicked". In his speech
announcing the fresh campaign, "The War on Addictive Drugs", he pushed for
harsh new measures to stop the traffickers, who "ruin lives" and "damage the
country".
"All of them must be sent to meet the 'Guardian of Hell', so that there will
not be any drugs in the country," he demanded, referring to a fanged demon who
metes out eternal punishment to sinners, according to Thailand's mix of
Buddhist and animist beliefs.
Senator Thongbai Thongpao scolded Thaksin for
the comment: "It seems that he is sending a clear message to encourage anyone to
freely silence those suspected of being involved in drugs," Thongbai said,
according to the Bangkok Post.
The new crackdown aims to destroy drug networks and seize the assets of more
than 1,000 influential dealers and 28,000 smaller-scale peddlers, the
government said in a statement. It is due to run until next September and will
focus on communities along the borders with Myanmar and Malaysia.
Last year Thaksin declared the country free of drugs after a 10-month operation
that sparked immense criticism from international and local human-rights groups
who castigated the prime minister for the unexplained deaths of about 2,500
people. Activists claimed many of them fell victim to extrajudicial executions
by police competing to fill quotas under pressure to perform or lose their
jobs. Complaints also focused on allegedly innocent people who were fingered by
enemies, bribe-seeking officials, or sloppy investigations, and later found
dead.
Police and officials said most of the deaths resulted from warfare between drug
gangs who killed one another to silence potential informers and decimate
rivals. When only a handful of the 2,500 cases were investigated, critics then
insisted that the government focus on the shocking number of unsolved murders
instead of harping on drugs.
The new campaign will start by cracking down on Bangkok's squalid Klong Toey
slum along the Chao Phraya River where entire families consume - and sell -
methamphetamines and other drugs to one another in a worsening spiral of
addiction and misery. Police were told to nab and frisk motorcyclists because
they often transport drugs through the slum's narrow, winding alleys.
Despite an earlier "war on drugs" campaign that Thaksin claimed had removed
drugs from the country, methamphetamines and other types of narcotics are once
again flooding into Thailand.
"Ecstasy has been smuggled from Malaysia, while cocaine has been flown in by
Africans," Thaksin, a former police officer, announced at the meeting on
Monday.
Relatively high prices for ecstasy and cocaine - popular at indoor discos and
"raves" on beaches - have resulted in dealers targeting middle- and upper-class
customers, causing alarm among the nation's elite.
"Ketamine has been brought in via Cambodia, where it is not considered a drug,"
the prime minister said. Ketamine hydrochloride was created as a "dissociative"
anesthetic to separate perception from sensation, but high doses depress
breathing and can cause death.
Thailand itself is a source of drugs such as marijuana. Much of Thailand's
cheap illegal weed grows in the arid, impoverished northeast and is often used
by lower-class laborers, and increasingly teenagers living in the cities.
"Marijuana is now popular among Bangkok teenagers. It is not as dangerous as
other kinds of drugs, but it can directly lead to harmful ones," Thaksin said.
The prime minister also warned against heroin, which originates mostly in
neighboring Myanmar, where rebels dominate opium-growing zones and turn the
poppies' thick sap into a white powder that is injected, snorted or smoked.
Thailand's biggest problem, however, is methamphetamines because the
inexpensive tablets are gobbled by students, slum dwellers and others, cutting
across socio-economic classes and addicting countless youngsters and adults.
As the crackdown begins to heat up, foreign tourists, including elderly
visitors, have expressed outrage at being forced to take urine tests while
visiting upscale bars and nightclubs during occasional police raids in Bangkok
and elsewhere. During these raids, police lock the premises' doors for hours
while medical staff use chemical kits to examine specimens at the site to catch
Thai and foreign users, despite concerns that the raids will backfire on the
tourism industry.
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco. He
has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of Hello My Big
Big Honey!, a non-fiction book of investigative journalism. He received his
master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
