This year marks ten years since the disappearance of Thai human rights lawyer, Somchai Neelapaichit.
Somchai was a prominent Thai Muslim human rights lawyer. He was kidnapped for defending clients who had allegedly been tortured by the police in Southern Thailand.
On the evening of 12 March 2004, Somchai Neelapaichit was on his way home.
I am standing near a police station on Ramkhamhaeng Road in suburban Bangkok. This is where Muslim human rights lawyer, Somchai was abducted a decade ago. He was bundled into a vehicle by five men. No one has seen him since... he is presumed dead.
“The involvement of a group of men who were later identified as police officers who took Somchai away right in front of a police in Bangkok.”
That’s Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher from the Human Rights Watch. Sunai says the investigations have lacked commitment.
“The fact that it happened first of all not in a remote part of the country, it is in a Bangkok with a lot of security cameras, a lot of witnesses, and it was in front of a police station - Ramkhamhaeng police station. Yet we see the lack of commitment, the lack of seriousness being put in the police investigation and later by the Justice Ministry's Department of Special Investigation.”
In 2004, separatist violence erupted in the Southern Thailand … claiming almost 6,000 lives.
At the time of his abduction, Somchai was representing a group of men from the Deep South who claimed they had been tortured by police officers.
Pornthip Rojanasunan is former director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science within the Justice Ministry. She says the investigations were undermined by police involvement in that case.
“We have no independent unit to investigate the case. So in the case of Somchai Neelapaichit I think no police officer wants to find the evidence to link to the one who deal with that.”
For his wife, Angkhana Neelapaichit, the incident has turned her life upside down.
“Somchai's enforced disappearance has brought enormous change to my life. From being an ordinary housewife with barely any knowledge of the law I had to struggle to raise my children. So this is difficult and upsetting while trying to figure out a way to establish justice for the father of my children.”
Thailand signed the Convention against Enforced Disappearance in January 2012 – but it has not yet been ratified.
Rights groups say enforced disappearance is not only a serious human rights violation but also a crime under international law.
And for Angkhana, this shows that the culture of impunity still afflicts Thailand. “What I cannot accept is that 10 years on we are still fighting for justice. No one has been convicted and there is no guarantee this sort of thing won't happen again. This culture of impunity needs to be stopped."
Over decades, rights activists say enforced disappearance has been a common strategy by security personnel to fight crime and silence human rights defenders.
Sunai Phasuk from Human Rights Watch say there’s little progress in addressing the concerns. "If you are the enemy of the state you are no longer safe. Your safety can never be assured, justice can never be assured - that is the message.”
The Director of International Commission of Jurists on Asia Pacific, Sam Zarifi says, the world is watching this case.
“Somchai's case has come to be a symbol for the problem of enforced disappearances, not just in Thailand or South East Asia but really around the world. This is at this point one of the emblematic cases of enforced disappearance in the world."
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has paid compensation to the families of victims in the Southern provinces, including Somchai's.
But Angkhana says the money can never compensate for the loss. “Though the justice process may not bring his life back but it should not be allowed to avoid the responsibility to give justice back to Somchai. In the past 10 years i have tried very hard to achieve justice - the Yingluck government has given me compensation but the money cannot restore the dignity of the victims.”
Both of Somchai's daughters studied law. One is a judge - while the other, Pratubjit Neelapaichit, is a human rights lawyer. Pratubjit remains hopeful the case may someday be solved as her father always had faith in "truth and justice".
"As a human rights activist we have to be optimistic, right? We always believe and always have hope, we believe in the power of people have been very strong day by day. We believe that one day we might find justice and truth about this case."
