Thailand - A Quick Fix –

COMM: The police in the Thai city of Chiang Mai have a deadline to meet.Thailand’s Prime Minister has promised the King a birthday present – the eradication of all drugs from the country by December. And it’s up to the police to deliver

PTC: There are over 240 policemen – some of them are in plain clothes. They’re going to be looking at raiding three particular places looking for drugs.

COMM: Under government orders, the police are rounding up anyone suspected of drug use and forcing them into rehabilitation camps.Tens of thousands of people have been plucked from the streets since the offensive began in February. Every local police force has been set a target of arrests to meet. In Chiang Mai they were on course – and determined to keep it that way. The Thai government says its winning a great victory. But with over 2000 unsolved murders at what cost?

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COMM: Chiang Mai is close to Thailand’s border with Burma.The Thai government blames Burmese war lords for smuggling in the methamphetamines that feed the country’s drug epidemic.

PTC: We got a call from the army early this morning from the army saying that they’d had a successful dawn ambush. So we’re heading up there. It’s north east of Chiang Mai. It’s about 150 kilometres from where we are now. We’re being accompanied by the army to the place where this all happened.

COMM: It’s through these mountains that over 600 million tablets of methamphetamine are smuggled in every year. Out of a population of some sixty million, three million Thais now use drugs. The government says the country is in crisis.

PTC: There’s quite a lot of activity going on.
PTC: There’s one body over there. He’s covered in flies. It looks like they’ve already buried quite a few there. What the army are saying is that they actually planted mines or bombs into the ground and they detonated them when they saw them all coming. So this man wasn’t actually shot dead but there are eight other dead bodies.

COMM: The ambush had taken weeks of planning.

PTC: (from translation) They basically set up a sting operation. It’s like an undercover operation where they sent one of their people in to pretend to be wanting to buy drugs from these people so they knew where they were going to be.

COMM: They told me just across the valley, in Burma , the drug cartels had set up mobile factories to make the methamphetamine tablets

PTC: The border between Burma and Thailand is 2000 kilometres long. It’s impossible to patrol the whole area.

COMM: The soldiers here use lethal force against suspected smugglers. Since the start of the year and the war on drugs the army says its killed scores of traffickers.

PTC: How many buried here? Another two fresh graves down there.

PTC: They found half a million pills on these people – on these nine people. That’s enough evidence for them to know that they are drug dealers. He says that they can’t do anything else with the bodies. They have to just literally bury them on the spot. And they don’t know who the families are in Burma so what can they do with the bodies. They can just leave them here.

COMM: I was told it was time to go. Not all the smugglers had been captured – and those that had escaped were armed.

PTC: They’re worried about the ones that did get away that they might come back to the scene at some point today so we need to get out of here pretty quickly.

COMM: But killing smugglers does nothing to lessen Thailand’s craving for the drug.In the villages close to the border methamphetamine addiction has become a curse. Here they call it yaba – crazy medicine.

PTC: This whole region is hill tribe region. There are a lot of villages scattered around. Now the area that we’re going to is called Mae Rim and it’s the Hmong tribe that live there.

COMM: But in Mae Sa Mai I wouldn’t meet a single Yaba addict. I was about to encounter more of the effects of the government’s war on drugs I found I’d arrived in a village of children. Hardly an adult was to be seen.They told me the police had taken away their parents.Eventually the former village chief , Sawat Tanomrungrang arrivedHe said the children’s parents had used Yaba, and the police had taken them off for forcible rehabilitation.One couple suspected of selling the drug were mysteriously shot dead. Sawat had been left to look after the children.

SYNC: Amongst the Hmong tribe that live in this area, in these villages there are 1700 people and he’s saying that of those 200 people are addicted to yaba and of those 200 roughly ten per cent are children so relatively in quite a small population yaba here is a problem.

SYNC: I asked him about the couple that were shot dead. He said he can’t guarantee that they weren’t dealers. There were rumours flying around the village but he can’t say for sure whether they were or they weren’t. He’s saying generally yes dealers do deserve to die but there needs to be a fair trial. There are always rumours about who’s dealing and who’s not but everyone deserves to go through a fair process.

COMM: In Chiang Mai the King’s face dominates the streets.The Prime minister’s promise to such a revered figure, to cleanse the country of drugs, is something he has to deliver.His methods mean many drug users have fled their homes, terrified of arrest - or worse.

COMM: In town there’s a drop-in centre where until recently addicts came voluntarily for support. The place was almost empty.Just one addict lay comatose on the floor

SYNC: He’s saying that there is a great fear amongst kids here as well that they’re scared of being seen here and they’re finding it hard to get access to yaba as well

SYNC: He says that there’s pressure by the police to try and clean up this whole Chiang Mai area and there’s also pressure being put on the kids by the police for them to act as informants to give away names of other kids that they know are dealers and users.

COMM: I was told this 19 year had been in hiding, but had risked a return to his old haunt.The crackdown has made Yaba hard to find. Addicts deprived of the stimulant struggle to stay awake. When he woke up he agreed to talk to me – provided we hid his face.

COMM: He told me that he took his first yaba pill at the age of ten

SYNC: He started taking 5 tablets a day but at the moment he’s taking on average one a day and sometimes he doesn’t take it at all.

SYNC: He says his friend who’s 19 was shot dead by the police only a month ago. His friend was an addict and also a dealer.

SYNC: He says that taking yaba has affected him. Physically he’s thin – he doesn’t want to eat. His sleeping patterns are erratic – he has to smoke dope to get a good night’s sleep and mentally he has hallucinations and feels paranoid. So of course, yes he wants to stop taking it.

COMM: And the Government wants him to stop taking it. They’ve set up a network of rehabilitation centres where drug users who are arrested are forced into treatment. We arranged to visit one.

PTC: We’re just coming up to one of the biggest rehab centres in the north. It takes patients from all over the north of Thailand.

COMM: The use of yaba exploded after 1997 when the Thai economy collapsed. The stimulant allowed people to work the crucifying hours needed to survive. The recession has gone, but the drugs have stayed.

PTC: It’s just gone 5.30. The patients have just had their wake-up call. There are 33 patients in this small block here. They get their wake-up call in the morning and their day is very structured. It’s all very coordinated.

COMM: Prime Minster Thaksin Shinawatra says these centres will shame and frighten the tens of thousands of people being pushed through them into renouncing drugs.“We must remain honest” is the mantra they recite

PTC: This is bascially self-rule by the patients themselves. There’s only one nurse here to look after all the patients. Basically it’s up to the patients themselves to orchestrate day-to-day running.

SYNC: Among the patients was a fourteen year old addict, Pornchai Siri-intont. Unlike most, he’d been able to avoid the shame of arrest. He was brought here by his teacher who realised that he had a problem with yaba when he was going to school. He was quite happy to come here because he realised it was time to quit and that he couldn’t carry on doing the amount of pills that he was doing.

COMM: Pornchai was given his first tablet at the age of ten by his uncle, a drugs dealer.

SYNC: I asked him how realistic he was being if he was going back to the same place with the same friends and with his uncle still around – how realistic he thought he was being in staying off drugs and he said that if his friends suggested taking up drugs again he probably would.

COMM: And that’s the potential flaw in the Government’s strategy.

SYNC: That’s you - These are just a few photos that Pornchai is allowed to have in here. One of them is when his classmates came to visit him and his teacher. There’s one before he was brought here – at a time when he was still taking the drug. He says that looking through these photographs makes him feel sad. He remembers his friends and he remembers what it was like before he came to the centre. And he misses his friends.

PTC: We’ve just been told this morning that four people have been shot dead in the market area. And half a million yaba tablets have been found. I don’t have any more information than that so we’re just heading into the market.

COMM: The government says it’s giving drug users a second chance. It’s not an opportunity available to everyoneSince the Government campaign began, suspected drug dealers have been dying at the rate of up to twenty five a day.

PTC: There are three bodies here. We were told that there were four. But there only seem to be three. There are weapons, obviously got a stash of yaba – what looks like yaba in the back as well.
COMM: The police say they only shoot in self defence

PTC: This bloke was obviously shot in the head. He’s armed. The other two – it looks like they were possibly trying to run away.

PTC: This is a police vehicle. It’s obviously not marked – it’s one of their undercover vehicles. It looks like there’s a bullethole in the windscreen there.

SYNC: Have any police officers been hurt?No.Just the vehicle?So you decided to take ..in self-defence?In self-defence you shot these three people dead?Yes

PTC: Compared to what we saw at the border there seems to be a more meticulous investigation. They’ve called forensics in. There are a lot of police hanging around and army hanging around as well.

COMM: It was a perfect photo opportunity for General Sant, the head of Thailand’s police, tangible proof the war on drugs was being won. All year, he’s faced accusations that in the rush to meet the Prime Minister’s deadline the Police have killed innocent people – as well as drug dealers.

SYNC: Swadeeka sir. I’m a British journalist from London. Can I just ask you a few questions if that’s OK. Do you think that in this war on drugs innocent people have died?He says that this is a war. We won’t shoot at people until they shoot at us first. We don’t want to kill people. We just want to gather information. Our aim isn’t to kill people.

COMM: Since the government crackdown began over two thousand people suspected of being drug users or dealers have been killed. The police claim they’re responsible for only around forty of these deaths. The rest they say is down to drug gangs killing each other.But the government funded National Human Rights Commission says the police have been executing suspects, many of them innocent, without trial. A recent opinion poll showed forty per cent of Thais fear false accusations, thirty per cent are afraid of being killed.

COMM: The people most frightened are those on what the police call their blacklists - lists of alleged drug dealers and users who are required to report to police stations.

PTC: We’re going to see the editor of a local magazine here in Chiang Rai who says that his name appeared on the blacklist even though he’s never had anything to do with drugs at all.

COMM: Hundreds of people on the police blacklists have been mysteriously murdered. I’d been told Thanapat Waennan was living in fear of his life. Like many others, he says his name was handed to the police by someone who bore a grudge against him.

SYNC: This is the actual letter he received. It says that his name is on a list of known drug dealers and that he has to report to the local district office. If he doesn’t then they will take it very seriously and the consequences will be grave.

SYNC: So once he’d received the letter he said that for weeks he was petrified to leave the house. He’d heard reports both here locally in Chiang Rai and nationally of people being shot dead. He calls them the silent killings – they were extrajudicial shootings and he was worried that the same would happen to him as well.

It was only by enlisting the help of a human rights organisation that he was able to avoid arrest or murder

SYNC: When he went down to the local district office to clear his name from the blacklist he was told by an official there that there are only three way that you can have your name cleared. One is that you die of natural causes, secondly you are arrested and imprisoned for drug related offences or thirdly you are shot dead in an extrajudicial killing.

COMM: We travelled south to the capital Bangkok.When the war on drugs began there wasoverwhelming public support.Now that support is waning.A turning point was the killing of a nine year old boy Chakkapan Srisa-ard, known as Fluke .I visited his grandmother and uncle.

SYNC: On the picture of Fluke that they have in their living room they’ve actually had to cover up the date of his death. Fluke’s grandfather is very unwell at the moment and he hasn’t even been told that his grandson is dead.

COMM: Fluke’s uncle, Somchai, took me to the spot where his nephew was shot.Somachai said Fluke’s father made the mistake of selling Yaba to undercover officers.

SYNC: Fluke’s father was arrested here while his wife and his child were sat in the car just off the street there. When Fluke’s mother saw what was going on with her husband she drove up past here and her son was shot in the back of the car a couple of times just as they were speeding off. She collided into the side of the street near the cinema and then fled into the market just up here.

COMM: Fluke died instantly. His father is now in prison. His mother hasn’t been since the shooting.

SYNC: Fluke was an only child and his mother absolutely doted on him.

COMM: The police insist they didn’t kill Fluke. They blame unidentified gunmen.

SYNC: There is an investigation going on into Fluke’s death. Three police officers have been arrested. Now they admit that they did aim at the vehicle but not at Fluke’s body. They’re saying that the ammunition found in Fluke’s body doesn’t match the ammunition fired from their weapons. Somchai is convinced that this whole thing is just a big cover-up

COMM: Very few of the thousands of killings have been properly investigated.

PTC: I’m at the Ministry of Justice to see the head of the Forensic Science Institute.
Dr Porntip Rojanasunan is one of the Government’s most senior forensic scientists.

PTC: For a forensic scientist she seems like quite a flamboyant person

COMM: She’s constantly protested that obstacles have been put in her way when she has tried to gather evidence about the killings.

SYNC: Do you think the police were responsible for the death of that particular boy? Yeah. The Prime Minister let us investigate this case. But only to look around the car and see the direction of the bullets. We’ve got no bullets and no gun. So you haven’t been given access to the bullets that were found in the body? No So you can’t match them to see if they belong to the police or somebody else?This exhibit was sent to the police department so we cannot do the second examination

COMM: She says in the war against drugs the police have killed with impunity

SYNC: Are you satisfied with the investigations that have happened into these murders as to who has been responsible?No. Because I saw many cases that the police they didn’t care about the scientific evidence.So you think that in a lot of these casesThe police have got away with murder?(She nods)There have been few investigations Yes (She nods)

COMM: But that’s not something that worries the Government. As far as they’re concerned they’re well on their way to achieving their objective: a drugs free Thailand in time for the King’s birthday in December.And this is their evidence: 13 000 graduates of the Government’s rehabilitation programme had gathered to express their gratitude to the Prime Minister.

PTC: There’s a sign up there saying that we welcome good people back to society.

PTC: It feels like the Olympics for ex drug dealers and ex drug users

COMM: It was impossible to know how many of these people were drug users and dealers and how many were innocent people who’d found their names on the blacklists.But to get their freedom they needed to go through the ritual

SYNC: These two have been through the military camp system and giving a very public show of gratitude to the Prime Minister.

COMM: They swore an oath of allegiance to the King and to Thailand Drug experts are sceptical about how many of these people will keep clear of drugs once they’re released. Prime Minister Thaksin had a warning for potential relapsers.

SYNC: The Prime Minister is saying to these 13000 people here today that you’ve been given a second chance. Don’t abuse it. You will not be given any more chances. Drug dealers are a threat to the nation and if any of you fight us we will shoot you. It’s a fairly straightforward message.

COMM: Encouraged by the Prime Minister’s claims that he can achieve a drugs free Thailand, neighbouring countries are adopting certain aspects of the Thai experiment. But they’re proceeding with caution. For them the deaths of 2000 people is too high a price to pay in the war against drugs.