Officials responsible for Tak Bai should be prosecuted: HRW
Security officials responsible for the death of protesters in the Tak Bai incident in 2004 should be brought to justice, Human Rights Watch has said.
“Thailand’s failure to prosecute security personnel responsible for the Tak Bai killings is a glaring injustice that brings the police, military, and courts into disrepute,” the group’s Asia director Brad Adams said.
“The Thai authorities’ failure to deliver justice to southern Muslims has fuelled conditions for the insurgency in the deep South,” he added.
“What happened in Tak Bai 10 years ago must not be forgotten,” Adams said. “Delivering justice for the victims of this massacre is an important step to ending atrocities and respecting the rights of the southern Muslim community.”
In its statement released yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the incident, Human Rights Watch urged Thai authorities to make a “demonstrable commitment to holding abusive officials accountable was crucial for addressing unrest in the southern border provinces”.
Previous governments have provided financial compensation and other reparations to some Tak Bai victims and their families. But the US-based group said assisting some victims did not relieve the authorities of legal obligation to prosecute those responsible for unlawful killings, disappearances, torture, and other abuses in the southern border provinces.
On October 25, 2004, four Muslim protesters were killed in a clash with police and military personnel outside Tak Bai police station. Later, another 78 protesters suffocated or were crushed to death while being transported to an Army camp in Pattani.
In August 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the security personnel were blameless because they had only been performing their duties.
“The cycle of human rights abuses and impunity in Thailand contributes to an atmosphere in which state security personnel show less regard for the civilian population and abusive insurgents commit ever greater atrocities,” the organisation said.
