The Supreme Court has accepted a lawsuit against a former chief investigator who dared to accuse Abhisit and Suthep of murder for ordering the bloody military crackdown on anti-establishment red-shirt protesters in 2010.
On 9 June 2017, the Supreme Court accepted a lawsuit against Tharit Pengdit — the former Deputy General of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) — Pol Lt Col Wanphong Khotcharak, Pol Maj Yuttana Praedam, and Pol Cap Piya Raksakun.
The four comprised the team tasked with investigating the violent crackdown on the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) demonstrators, the main red shirt faction, between April-May 2010.
They decided in 2012 to press murder charges against the Democrat Party’s Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was Prime Minister during the crackdown, and Suthep Thaugsuban, Abhisit’s former deputy, for authorising the crackdown that took more than 90 lives and injured over 2,000 people.
Abhisit and Suthep subsequently accused the four of corruption and propagating false accusations against them, claiming that the DSI did not have the authority to investigate the crackdown in the first place. The Supreme Court’s ruling contradicts previous verdicts from the Court of First Instance and the Appeal Court, who dismissed charges against the four.
In February 2016, the Appeal Court dismissed the murder charges against Abhisit and Suthep. The court reasoned that the two authorised the crackdown via the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES), an agency formed to handle the 2010 red shirt protesters, while they were still PM and Deputy PM.
As the two were holding public posts at the time, the Court of Appeal concluded that only the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has the authority to process cases against Ahbisit and Suthep. The DSI, by this ruling, did not have the authority to investigate the case.
Earlier in 2015, Sansern Poljieak, the Secretary-General of the NACC, announced that the commission had reached a resolution to withdraw corruption and malfeasance allegations related to the 2010 crackdown on red shirts against Abhisit, Suthep, former Army Chief Gen Anupong Paochinda and other military officers under his command.
The NACC concluded that the 2010 red shirt protest was not peaceful and that there were armed militants among the demonstrators. As such, it was reasonable for the CRES to authorise armed personnel to reclaim the demonstration venues in Bangkok. The NACC concluded that members of the military would be charged instead on an ‘individual basis’ since it has been repeatedly proven that the disproportionate force used by authorities resulted in the deaths of demonstrators.
In the four years after the April-May 2010 crackdown, the Criminal Court made rulings on 30 deaths that took place during the massacre in a total of 20 cases. According to the rulings, 18 out of the 30 were killed by bullets coming from the military. These include Fabio Polenghi, an Italian photo-journalist; Kunakorn Srisuwan, a 13-year-old child; and Pan Kamkong, a red-shirt taxi driver. However, none of the inquests specified the individual army officers responsible for the deaths.
Human Rights Watch’s May 2011 report, Descent into Chaos: Thailand’s 2010 Red Shirt Protests and the Government Crackdown, documented how the excessive and unnecessary force used by the military caused many deaths and injuries during the 2010 political confrontations.
The high number of casualties – including unarmed demonstrators, volunteer medics and first responders, reporters, photographers, and bystanders – resulted in part from the enforcement of “live fire zones” around the UDD protest sites in Bangkok, where sharpshooters and snipers were deployed by the military.
Similar findings were presented in September 2012 by the independent Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand (TRCT), which recommended authorities “address legal violations by all parties through the justice system, which must be fair and impartial”.
The preliminary hearing on the case against the four officers will be held at 9 am on 21 August 2017.
The red-shirt protest in April 2010 (Photo by Noppakow Kongsuwan)