Coast guards have been struggling to take control of an abandoned cargo ship heading for the Thai coast on automatic pilot. The ship is thought to be carrying hundreds, if not thousands, of unregistered human rights violations. International maritime authorities believe that the ship and its desperate cargo have been left to their fate by unscrupulous National Human Rights Commissioners.
It is not clear how long it will take to get these human rights violations under control. The 49-year-old vessel, flying the flag of land-locked Kazakhstan and normally used to carry second-hand clothing, recycled petro-dollars and sacrificial haj sheep between the Arabian Sea and Southeast Asia, is thought to have only a few hours of fuel left. Conditions at sea have been described as ‘extremely bad’, with rescue efforts hampered by high winds caused by martial law and heavy seas due to persistent dictatorial government.
Foreign countries and the UN Commission on Human Rights have offered expert assistance, but this has been rejected by the Thai authorities who claim to have sufficient experience in such matters. ‘We have a strong track record in human rights violations,’ said a spokesperson for the military government in a statement that could have been better phrased.
When asked by the media what Thailand intends to do with this new batch of human rights violations, coming after waves of previous cases, the spokesperson commented ‘Human rights are internal matter for the Thai government to deal with as outlined in the ASEAN Charter on Human Rights.’
One representative of the foreign media noted that, as a signatory to numerous international human rights agreements and under international law, Thailand had a duty of care towards human rights violations. At this point, the spokesperson was pushed aside by an agitated senior military officer who said that human rights was not a problem in Thailand because of the National Human Rights Commission.
‘Under martial law, which the NHRC has never objected to, human rights have been unavoidably restricted, so this means that violations would also be automatically reduced,’ he explained. ‘If we don’t give you any rights, then they can’t be violated.’
The foreign reporter was escorted from the venue by unidentified men in plain clothes and military crew-cuts. It was later announced that he had voluntarily agreed to have his attitude adjusted at a military base.
At a later press conference to celebrate the government’s latest PR campaign in support of the 12 Thai values (namely fare discounts on public transport for any passenger who can recite all 12 values), Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-ocha was predictably distracted by questions on the crisis of abandoned human rights violations.
Seemingly irritated by the questions, Gen Prayut dumbfounded his audience by blaming the entire episode on the International Criminal Court. He said that the National Human Rights Commission would never have abandoned its responsibilities and would have safely guided all these cases into the nearest port of oblivion as normal if it had not been publicly humiliated by the ICC, which had no mandate for its actions.
‘This would never have happened if these foreigners hadn’t started meddling in Thailand’s independent agencies, which is my job, not theirs,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘The NHRC must have been so disheartened by this loss of international face that they felt incapable of carrying out their duties, and since I know that some of them have backgrounds in the military, police and judiciary, I can understand how their feelings must have been hurt.’
The General was apparently confusing the International Criminal Court with the International Coordinating Committee on National Human Rights Institutions which uses the same acronym. The International Coordinating Committee’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation recently downgraded the status of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand from A to B.
Attempts by members of the media and the Prime Minister’s entourage to clarify the situation only served to frustrate the General further. He eventually blamed both organizations for deliberately confusing him and vowed that in retaliation he would have Thailand cancel its ratification of the Rome Statute and withdraw from the International Criminal Court. This seemed to satisfy the coup leader, despite the fact that Thailand has in fact never ratified the Rome Statute.
Meanwhile, out on the high seas, the drama continued to unfold. A Thai Navy officer however seemed confident that they had a solution. ‘If we can get close enough, we’ll just nudge it onto a different course. It will then sail off into the big blue yonder,’ he explained.
When asked if this represented a genuine solution to the problem, the officer shrugged his shoulders. ‘It works with the Rohingyas,’ he said.
About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).
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