In the early 2000s, Thailand’s decade of human rights progress came to a brutal halt under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. His government launched a violent ‘War on Drugs’ that resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings and devastated the country’s human rights record. This domestic campaign was strategically framed as part of the broader U.S.-led ‘War on Terror,’ allowing Thaksin to leverage U.S. support to consolidate his own power and eliminate political opponents under the guise of national security.
Table of Contents
🎯 How Thaksin Localized the War on Terror
Thaksin’s government actively localized the global ‘War on Terror’ discourse for its own domestic agenda. While the Bush administration linked international terrorism to drug trafficking, Thaksin took this a step further, declaring a national ‘war on drugs’ that branded all suspected users and dealers as security threats and ‘social ills’. He famously stated that for drug traffickers, ‘It may be necessary to have casualties… If there are deaths among traders, it’s normal’. This strategy allowed him to pursue a policy of extrajudicial murder with a veneer of legitimacy derived from the global counter-terror climate.
💰 The Role of U.S. Support and Financial Incentives
While the U.S. State Department privately criticized the killings, the Bush administration publicly praised Thaksin’s cooperation on counter-terrorism, designating Thailand a ‘major non-NATO ally’. U.S. aid to Thailand doubled in the 2000s, with a focus on counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism training and equipment. Domestically, Thaksin’s government provided its own powerful incentives for violence. Police officers were given financial rewards for each methamphetamine tablet seized and bounties as high as one million baht (US$23,600) for turning in a major drug dealer ‘dead or alive’.
⚖️ A Campaign of Extrajudicial Murder
The result was a terrifying three-month campaign in 2003 that led to at least 2,500 killings and over 58,000 arrests. The process of identifying targets was highly arbitrary, relying on ‘blacklists’ compiled by local officials, which were often used to settle personal grudges or eliminate political opponents. The victims were not just traffickers; they included suspected drug users, critics of the government, and even children caught in the crossfire. A culture of impunity, fostered by an intimidated judiciary, ensured that state agents responsible for the killings were not held accountable.
—
Regilme, Salvador Santino F., Jr. Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia. University of Michigan Press, 2021.
More Topics
- How a Culture of Impunity Fuels Human Rights Abuses
- What is ‘Strategic Localization’ and How Does It Work in Foreign Aid?
- What is the ‘Aid Imperium’ in U.S. Foreign Policy?
- How the Philippines Reversed Its Human Rights Crisis Under Aquino and Obama
- How Thailand’s 1990s ‘Human Rights Renaissance’ Happened
- How ‘Interest Convergence’ Shapes Foreign Aid’s Impact on Human Rights
- How the Philippines Achieved a Human Rights Renaissance in the 1990s
