"Climate of impunity"

The report, released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch, has called on the Thai government to undertake an "impartial and transparent investigation" into the political violence in 2010, the worst in 20 years in Bangkok.

Based on dozens of interviews, the report documents deadly attacks by government forces on protestors. The two months of protests left 90 people dead and also two thousand injured, mostly civilian supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup. The protestors (known as the Red Shirts) had called the current government to step down.

Efforts to negotiate an end to the protests, including an offer of early elections, failed in early May leading to a crackdown that ended the rallies on May 19.

The report says the death toll and injuries came as a result of "excessive and unnecessary lethal force" on the part of security forces.

Live-fire orders

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, says the Thai military should be held accountable for "live-fire" orders that violated human rights and international law. He says, the government cannot simply say "in the heat of the attempt to clear the demonstrators from the streets of Bangkok some soldiers may have exceeded their orders - the government provided these orders and the army put these snipers in place and people died."

But Adams was also critical of the protest movement of the Red Shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), being backed by the so-called "Black Shirts," who were armed. He says while the Red Shirts claim to be a peaceful movement, "Red Shirt leaders welcomed Black Shirt leaders publically as early as January 2010," though, according to Adams, none of the Red Shirt leaders have admitted to it.

The report says UDD (Red Shirt) leaders contributed to the violence with inflammatory speeches, by urging supporters to carry out riots, arson attacks, and looting.

Despite that, Adams says for the climate of "systematic impunity" of the Thai military needs to be addressed. He believes impunity has been the foundation for human rights abuses in Thailand. "Human Rights Watch concludes that there will be no rule of law and there will be no respect for human rights so long as the military remains above the law in Thailand," Adams adds.

Justice

On May 19, hundreds of protestors sheltered in a Buddhist temple complex near the rally site came under fire by armed men. Six people, including two volunteer medics, were killed.

Phayaw Akkhadhad, mother of 25-year-old volunteer medic Kamakate Akkhadhad, who was fatally shot, says, "The truth is the military - the army even killed a nurse, a volunteer nurse." She wants justice and calls on the military to "stop killing people."

The Thai government has set up investigative panels into the 2010 bloodshed. But it has yet to present a final report. Police investigations are taking place through the Department of Special Investigations within the Ministry of Justice; observers worry that they may be politically biased rather than independent.

Author: Ron Corben
Editor: Sarah Berning