PUBLISHED: 22 Oct 2024 at 04: 58
The prime minister, the interior minister, and the federal police chief are all in need of a lawyer, and forty-three non-governmental organizations have signed an opened letter to the government demanding that the defendants in the 2004 Tak Bai murder case be tried before the statute of limitations expires this Friday.
At a conference held on Monday to explain the looming end of the case, which involves a number of legislators and state officials, including former Pheu Thai Party list MP Pisal Wattanawongkiri.
” Twenty years have passed, and righteousness has not been served”, said Surichai Wun’Gaeo, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Research at Chulalongkorn University.
Angkhana Neelapaijit, a senator and original member of the National Human Rights Commission, said while it is the president’s responsibility to deliver righteousness in the case, it is the friends of victims who have been fighting for justice in court, as the country’s constitutional techniques are moving at a snail’s pace.
” If the Tak Bai case is considered a crime against humanity or genocide, then the case wo n’t expire”, she said, referring to the Friday deadline.
On October 25, 2004, security forces in Tak Bai city of Narathiwat staged a protest asking for the transfer of six prisoners in front of a police station.
Over 80 persons are alleged to have died in the incidents that followed the arrest of activists and their transportation to a military hospital in Pattani.
The PM ca n’t claim that the case was settled by her government because it occurred a while ago, and she ca n’t cite the Yingluck Shinawatra administration’s remedies as proof of closure, Ms. Angkhana said.
” Even Thaksin]Shinawatra] has said he has ]almost ] forgotten]about the massacre ]”, she said.
The government ca n’t hide behind Gen Pisal’s resignation from Pheu Thai, as Sunai Phasuk, an adviser to Human Rights Watch Thailand, said the party will still have to ask why they chose him as an MP in the first place despite his track record.
Additionally, Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai expressed unease over the use of the Tak Bai situation to justify the government’s position as the criminal.
Law enforcement agencies are working hard to track these suspects and prosecute them, he said, but it is n’t simple to do so.