Is the US State Dept report on Thai Human Rights a bad joke?

Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton makes remarks during a bilateral meeting with German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2009, at the State Department in Washington. Pic: AP.

Apr 11, 2011
By Andrew Spooner
AsianCorrespondent.com

The USA have long cosied up to the murderous coup-loving generals and authoritarian governments of Thailand. This support stretches back almost 65years and includes love ins with the notorious fascist drug-dealing dictator Sarit Thanarat, the brutal crushing of left wing student protests in 1976 and the various other nefarious characters who have held sway in the Land of Smiles

But the US State Department’s recent 2010 Human Rights Report on Thailand could quite likely go down as probably the worst document ever produced on human rights anywhere, ever.

Right from the start the State Department gets it spectacularly wrong.

“A coalition government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, of the People’s Power Party, has been in power since 2008.” (The State Department have now corrected this mistake. However, I have the original in pdf. Should anybody require a copy please email asiaprovocateur@gmail.com. It should also be noted that the US State Department are yet to correct their other glaring errors.)

The People’s Power Party?

If this was correct I’m sure the biggest shock to Mark Abhisit would be to wake up and find out, not only was he leading a political party that was dissolved by the Thai courts over 2years ago but that he was actually leading a genuinely popular party capable of winning an election.

The other spurious assertions in this report fall off the page as though it has been put together by someone who couldn’t be bothered to fact check the name of the present party of government never mind any other basic factual detail.

For example this is all the US State Department has to say on the dozens of people killed and thousands injured by the Thai Army in 2010’s Bangkok Massacre.

“Between March and May, antigovernment protesters affiliated with the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD, or red shirts) established two separate protest sites, including the commercial center of Bangkok, while calling for the dissolution of parliament. Ensuing clashes with government security forces left 92 persons dead. However, it remained unclear how many were killed by security forces, by armed factions associated with the protest, or by accident.”

Did the protesters “run, accidentally, into the bullets” as Thailand’s Deputy PM Suthep once claimed?

Did the US State Department check any of the hundreds of hours of TV and video footage of the Thai Army shooting over 100k bullets at mostly unarmed Thai protesters, murdering unarmed women, children, medical workers some of whom were taking refuge in a Buddhist temple? Did they speak to one single witness? Or do they believe that Thailand is capable of holding a proper investigation?

Of course the State Department would have to accept the findings of the Thai Department of Special Investigation, who finalised their report into the killing of Reuters journalist Hiro Muramoto after an army general looked at a photo for one hour, as being an adequate, governmental-level investigation. Are there any Political prisoners in Thailand? Not according to the US State Department they don’t exist. Nothing happened in Bangkok in April or May 2010. Just a few people died in “accidents”.

The US State Department has made one thing clear with this report – the kind of human rights they are willing to bomb Libya for will not be ascribed to Thais.