Prachatai here presents an unofficial translation of the preliminary report of the Independent Committee for the Investigation, Study and Analysis of the Formulation and Implementation of the Narcotic Suppression Policy. This body was set up by the Surayud Chulalond government to look into the so-called ‘War on Drugs' of the Thaksin Shinawatra administration in early 2003. During a 3-month period, 2,873 deaths occurred, almost doubling the normal murder rate. In a small fraction of these cases (54 deaths), the police claimed to have killed as part of their duty. For most of the remaining murders, the perpetrators are unknown.

The War on Drugs caused outrage among human rights defenders both in Thailand and internationally and remains a blot on Thailand's reputation. Perhaps for this reason, but perhaps even more because the War was closely identified with former Prime Minister Thaksin, the government installed by the coup that ousted Thaksin set up an investigation headed by respected legal expert Khanit na Nakhon.

The committee was unable to complete its work before the Surayud government was replaced by the elected pro-Thaksin government headed by Samak Sundaravej at the beginning of the year. (This failing is understandable since one of the Committee's findings is that the police investigation of most drug-related deaths was perfunctory at best; there was precious little evidence to go on.) It was therefore decided to produce a report that is incomplete, especially with regard to finding the facts behind individual cases and identifying crimes, either by the persons killed or their killers. Presumably it is better to have half a report made public than a complete report suppressed.

The report's strengths are its analysis of policy formulation and plans for its implementation and its evaluation of the War on Drugs as a crime against humanity under the definitions of international law.

The report concludes that ‘the country's leader [Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra] instilled among law enforcers the wrong impression that they had absolute powers to employ whatever methods to quell narcotics'. Thaksin's orders to make ‘merciless use of brute force', his declaration that drug dealers ‘are destined to either prison or monastery' (i.e. the cemetery) and his approving citation of former Police Chief Phao Sriyanont, a person notorious for taking the law into his own hands, are already part of the public record. The Committee's report examines the legal liabilities of such comments.

Even without the opportunity to examine the details of each case, the report is a damning indictment of a policy conceived in brutality and executed in indecent haste by a culpably compliant state apparatus (who admittedly were threatened with the loss of their positions if they failed to meet largely fictitious numerical targets). It has only confirmed in the minds of both the supposed enforcers of the law and the public that impunity is a prerogative that can be exercised at any time in this country.

One conclusion that the report does not reach reflects Hannah Arendt's famous phrase from her observation of the Eichmann trial, ‘the banality of evil'. The War on Drugs may have been egregious in its brutality, but implementation followed the humdrum flawed pattern of almost all government projects.

Head office in Bangkok dreams up a scheme and the first step is to order field-level agencies to draw up lists; these could be illiterates over the age of 30, farmers who would benefit from acquiring a cow, communities at perceived risk of an outbreak of dengue. Such lists are normally compiled with minimal effort to survey the real facts on the ground. Then the order comes to act on the list. So the government officials hand out a few literacy primers, the odd cow and do a bit of spraying, mostly for the wrong people. Wasteful, but so what?

It seems the lists for the War on Drugs were produced in especially slapdash haste and included thousands with no current involvement in drugs. But inclusion on this list turned out to be a death sentence. But that's the way the banal bureaucracy works.

Click to download ICID report