New Thai drug war will hurt efforts to fight Aids: activists
Health activists and NGOs have warned the Thai government that its new 'war on drugs', launched last week, undermines efforts to combat the spread of HIV/Aids and will drive infected users underground.
Karyn Kaplan, policy director of Thai Aids Treatment Action Group (TTAG), said: 'It is very scary. It is dubbed a national security operation, with a complete disdain for human rights. The interests of public health and HIV prevention will be compromised.'
When Thailand's first 'war on drugs' was launched in 2003 under Thaksin Shinawatra, who was then prime minister, the campaign resulted in at least 2,500 killings of suspected drug users and others in three months. The killings were heavily criticised by human rights groups, which deemed them extrajudicial.
A feared resumption of harsh measures under the new government of Samak Sundaravej would fly in the face of appeals from the UN secretary general and UNAids calling for the decriminalisation of injecting drug use.
Fifty per cent of Thailand's heroin addicts and injecting users are HIV positive, according to TTAG.
Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung defended the government's new war on drugs, saying: 'I have never said that I have a policy of extrajudicial killings'. But he added: 'I said drugs are very complicated. If you don't want to die, don't walk down that road.'
In a report carried by The Nation newspaper in February, Mr Chalerm was quoted as saying it would be natural if around 2,700 people died in the course of the upcoming war on drugs. 'I am not saying you should summon drug suspects and shoot them down,' he was quoted as saying. 'I am just telling you to closely monitor drug suspects and co-operate closely with police.'
In the report, Mr Samak signalled a tough line: 'Why are you worried about the fate of drug traffickers?'
After Thaksin was ousted in October 2006, the interim prime minister, Surayud Chulanont referred to the 2003 killing spree as a 'crime against humanity'. Many innocent people with no drug connections were gunned down by the police, according to an official investigation, but no charges have been filed and no one has been held accountable.
Meanwhile, a new UNAids report urges Asian governments to fight the impact of drug use by providing 'harm reduction', including needle exchange programmes and opiate substitution treatment. Endorsed by the UN secretary general, it says governments should abandon counterproductive 'wars on drugs'.
At the report's launch in Asia last month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for increased health and human rights protections for people living with HIV.
UNAids director Peter Piot said: 'I look to Asian governments to amend outdated laws criminalising the most vulnerable sections of society, and take all the measures needed to ensure they live in dignity.'
He was referring to sex workers, homosexuals and drug users.
Ensuring easy access to clean needles for heroin addicts has been effective in combating HIV, according to Ton Smits, chief of the Asian Harm Reduction Network (AHRN), an anti-HIV group based in Chiang Mai. But he said only a few countries had embraced the measure, despite strong endorsement from the World Health Organisation and UNAids.
AHRN says forcing injecting users underground not only increases the danger of an HIV epidemic but also leads to a surge of hepatitis B.
Mr Smits said: 'It is important for drugs enforcement agencies to do some soul-searching and to recognise that the early stage of an HIV epidemic comes from drug users or sex workers.'
Innocent dead
An official investigation found that of the 2,500 people killed in Thailand's 2003 drug war, the number of victims who had no drug involvement was: 1,400
