Extrajudicial killings are not an achievement.
By Pradya Toh-e-tae and Waeleemoh Pusu
In wake of the widespread glorification of Pol Col Sompien Eksomya as a hero, the southern news desk of the Isra Institute raised an issue about extrajudicial killings in its recent editorial as a warning to all members of the security forces in the deep South that they must strictly adhere to the laws in their performance of duties.
Which means they must try to avoid extrajudicial killings otherwise such killings will amount to a license to kill if they are allowed to take place unchecked.
According to statistics compiled by the Southern Provincial Police Task Force Centre since the year 2004 until this February, altogether 65,788 criminal cases have been recorded in the strife-torn region. Of these, 7,103 cases or 10.80 percent were classified as security-related criminal cases with the rest being classified as ordinary criminal cases.
Of the 7,103 security-related criminal cases, 4,834 of them or 68.11 percent were dropped by police in the course of investigation with only 1,405 cases or 19.78 percent were taken to the court. 152 cases were dropped by the prosecution.
Of the 152 cases which were dropped, 103 of them or 64.39 percent were due to the fact that the suspects were killed by security forces. Twenty other cases were dropped due to insufficient evidences to pursue the cases to the court. 25 other cases were also dropped after the prosecution believed that the security forces concerned merely performed their duties. Four cases were dropped on self-defence.
The most interesting aspect of the statistics is that there were altogether 121 cases of extrajudicial killings and, of these, 103 cases were dropped by enquiry officers because they believed that the authorities who committed the extrajudicial killings merely performed their duties or simply because there were no objection against the dropping of the cases.
But the actual number of people killed by the authorities under the pretext of extrajudicial killings could be much higher than the number of cases dropped which were 121.
In legal aspect, extrajudicial killings which can be easily undertaken is not accepted under the rule of law.
Ni-arong Nitae, a former probation officer of the Justice Ministry, said in a recent interview that extrajudicial killings would not solve the conflicts in the far South, but would only fan the hatred of the families of the victims against the state and the authorities.
In most of these cases, he said the authorities had claimed that the victims resisted arrests. But in the opinions of the local people, many of the victims could have been arrested without getting killed because they were often outnumbered and outgunned by the security forces, he added.
Ni-arong further pointed out that in some of the extrajudicial killing cases in which several suspects were killed at the same time, some of the victims were not insurgents or sympathizers but they were all lumped together under the same label as sympathizers. As a matter of principle, authorities have no right to kill the suspects, no matter the charges against them, he noted.
The former probation officer, however, admitted that the authorities were under extreme pressure and had to resort to the use of force when they tried to make arrests. He said that arrests of suspects who are alive would be more preferable and more useful to the authorities than dead suspects.
Mr Anukul Arwaeputeh, chief of the Muslim lawyers in Pattani, said that the enquiry officers must investigate to determine the causes of death in extrajudicial killing cases as required by Article 150 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
He noted that authough extrajudicial killings were permissible, they should be undertaken for self defence only. “The use of the power to commit extrajudicial killings must be limited as there is no law which allows the authorities to kill at will. And in making an arrest, the law allows the authorities to exercise such power only if it is necessary for self defence to prevent the suspects from escaping,” he explained.
The Muslim lawyer said that relatives of the dead victims could take part in the autopsy process if they have wanted to find out the cause of the deaths. But in reality, most people do not understand the legal process and do not know that they have the rights, he said, adding that in some of the cases, the relatives of the victims were too afraid to show up even if there were summonses from the court allowing them to attend hearings to determine the cause of the deaths of the victims from extrajudicial killings.
Given the statistics in which most of the security-related criminal cases were dropped by the police or the prosecution, Pol Col Pattanawuth Angkhanavin, deputy commander of the Southern Provincial Police Task Force Centre, admitted that the current approach of the state to resolve the southern conflicts was not right.
Unless the root causes of the conflicts are addressed properly, the conflicts will persist, he noted.