Matthew McDaniel - Drug War

Drug War

See also: Thaksin Shinawatra#The 'war on drugs' and Policies of the Thaksin government#Anti-drug policies

McDaniel accuses the "US Drug War" and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime for helping cause the arrest, forced dislocation, prosecution, starvation, death and extrajudicial killings of Akha people in Thailand and Laos. McDaniel has filed reports with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court.

He documented extrajudicial killings during the anti-drugs push of Thailand's prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2003.

For example, Matthew McDaniel and three of his associates (Itaru Furuta, Katharine Ricke, and Lisa Friedland) documented the June 20, 2003 killing of Leeh Huuh. McDaniel reported:

"TODAY. Two days ago Leeh Huuh, other son of Ah Nah Burh Chay and Loh Pah Ah Sauh were called to the Phrao police station. The police left a notice with Loh Pah's wife which she had to sign. TODAY at 8am these two men left for the police station. They were ambushed on the road and shot to death. We saw the bodies which we photographed. Police at Phrao police station denied knowledge of the details of the case that we already knew."

The first photo below is of Leeh Huuh and his wife in 2002. The next three photos are of Leeh Huuh's body on June 20, 2003. The last photo is of two Akha wives whose husbands had been killed earlier that day of June 20, 2003. Leeh Huuh's wife is on the right side. Matthew McDaniel took the photos.

Thailand's English-language newspaper The Nation reported on the drug war in November 2007:

Of 2,500 deaths in the government's war on drugs in 2003, a fact-finding panel has found that more than half were not involved in drugs at all. At a brainstorming session, a representative from the Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) Tuesday disclosed that as many as 1,400 people were killed and labeled as drug suspects despite the fact that they had no link to drugs.

Prosecutor Kunlapon Ponlawan said "it was not difficult to investigate extra-judicial killings carried out by police officers as the trigger-pullers usually confessed."

The January 24, 2008 edition of The Economist reported that "over half of those killed in 2003 had no links to the drugs trade. The panel blamed the violence on a government 'shoot-to-kill' policy based on flawed blacklists. But far from leading to the prosecutions of those involved, its findings have been buried. The outgoing interim prime minister, Surayud Chulanont, took office vowing to right Mr Thaksin's wrongs. Yet this week he said there was insufficient evidence to take legal action over the killings. It is easy to see why the tide has turned. Sunai Phasuk, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, a lobbying group, says that the panel's original report named the politicians who egged on the gunmen. But after the PPP won last month's elections, those names were omitted."

The New York Times reported on April 8, 2003:

Since the death of 9-year-old Chakraphan, there have been frequent reports in the Thai press of summary executions and their innocent victims. There was the 16-month-old girl who was shot dead along with her mother, Raiwan Khwanthongyen. There was the pregnant woman, Daranee Tasanawadee, who was killed in front of her two young sons. There was the 8-year-old boy, Jirasak Unthong, who was the only witness to the killing of his parents as they headed home from a temple fair. There was Suwit Baison, 23, a cameraman for a local television station, who fell to his knees in tears in front of Mr. Thaksin and begged for an investigation into the killing of his parents. His stepfather had once been arrested for smoking marijuana, Mr. Suwit said. When the police offered to drop the charge if he would admit to using methamphetamines, he opted instead to pay the $100 fine for marijuana use. Both parents were shot dead as they returned home from the police station on a motorbike. Mr. Suwit said 10 other people in his neighborhood had also been killed after surrendering to the police.

On March 4, 2008 the Asia Sentinel reported:

The first war on drugs, as it was known, pretty much evolved into a war on anybody the police decided to shoot. Under former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, more than 2,800 people were killed over a three-month period five years ago —about twice the normal murder rate of about 500 per month. Appointed Premier Surayud Chulanont half-heartedly set up a commission to investigate the drugs war nearly a year after the coup, but it had the effect of absolving the Thaksin administration. The committee found that about 1,370 of those deaths were related to drugs, while 878 were not. Another 571 people were killed for no apparent reason, according to the panel, and police investigated just 80 of those cases.