Although such open use was curtailed and traffic of all illegal drugs was driven further underground by 2004, drug use continued in much the same way it did in hundreds of countries around the world, most remarkably in the United States, the world’s largest market. With the yaa baa factories getting support from the Myanmar (Burma) government and huge profits to be made either selling the stuff in Thailand or moving it through the Land of Smiles for export elsewhere. Although millions of pills were confiscated and more alleged dealers were shot while resisting arrest, and over sixty percent of court cases involved drugs, the traffic seemed little affected.
How did the average, non-drug using Thai citizen feel about all this? Mai pen rai seemed to be the phrase of the day: never mind, the recently deceased and those incarcerated in jails—built to hold about ninety thousand (now housing over two hundred and fifty thousand)—were a scourge, and Thailand was improved by their removal from the streets or life. NGOs, academics, and some of the media continued to grumble about the damage to human rights and the justice system, but few others seemed much to care.
At the same time, with the royal family’s financial support, a five thousand-six hundred-square-meter museum called the Hall of Opium opened in Golden Triangle Park in Chiang Saen, where the Mekong River separates Thailand from Laos and Myanmar. The aim, quoting the museum brochure, was “to further educate the public at large on the serious effects narcotics pose to the national economy and society as well as to the people’s physical and mental well-being.”
What once had been considered medicinal, or recreational, and a cash crop for an ethnic minority, was now simultaneously regarded as a threat to the nation’s health and, according to the Bangkok Post, “a world-class [tourist] attraction.”
Violence
Thais are non-confrontational, they are a people of accommodation, gentleness and peace. Thailand is the Land of Smiles, a place of harmony and courtesy where showing anger is a major taboo and the cool heart ( jai yen) is sought and praised. Thailand is where no matter what happens, you say, “Mai pen rai.” Never mind. Que sera, sera. Water off my back. And get on with your life.
Buddhism says you can’t so much as kill a fly; Buddhists will not work in the abattoirs slaughtering pigs and water buffalo for the family table. Unlike other “religions,” throughout its peaceful march of two thousand five hundred years, blood has not been shed in the name of the Buddha. Ninety percent of the Thai population is Buddhist.
So why is there so much violence?
Why is there so much cruelty and savagery in Thailand’s history? In what is the country’s most popular film, Suriyothai, generally agreed to be an accurate depiction of Thailand’s early royal dynasties, numerous enemies were decapitated and a child-king was beaten to death with a sandalwood club after being placed in a cloth bag so that the executioner’s weapon would not make contact with royal flesh. Why is there this legacy of brutality?
Why, more than a dozen years after the uprising of 1992, is Thailand still puzzling over the deaths of students who were shot in street protests, still demanding the names of those responsible, and an explanation for what happened to the many still “missing”?
Why are rape and domestic violence and pedophilia and other forms of abuse of women and children so rampant at all levels of Thai society? (According to a survey by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, forty four percent of Thai women had experienced physical and sexual assaults by their spouses and, in 2003, the Thailand Research Fund said forty six percent of children were attacked verbally and physically.)
Why is the national sport, Muay Thai—kickboxing as it’s known in the west—a part of every Thai male’s military training, and as one of the world’s most brutal forms of one-on-one combat, responsible for so many fatalities? At least one a week, according to one authority.
Why do so many of the trade and technical schools have rivalries that turn into gang-like “wars” that result in students getting killed?
Why do so many young men kill themselves racing motorcycles on public streets?
Why do so many Thais enjoy chicken fights and battles between fighting kites and bulls and beetles and Siamese fish?
Why do magazines and newspapers publish so many gruesome photographs of corpses, and why is the most popular ghost in movies a woman’s head flying through dark woods, trailing intestines?
Why are so many business disagreements resolved when one party hires a gunman?
Why are so many canvassers and other political workers and community leaders killed during the run-up to an election?
Why, from 2001 and 2004, were sixteen environmental activists murdered for opposing what they considered uncaring development by prominent politicians and businessmen? (All the cases remain unresolved.)
Why are extra-judicial killings matter-of-factly accepted as a part of the Thai way of life (and death)?
In 1996, six suspected drug dealers were executed while in police custody in Suphan Buri minutes after they had surrendered in front of television cameramen and photographers. The men were then taken back into the house where they’d held some hostages (who had been freed before the six surrendered), gunshots were heard, and when the police emerged, they said the men were killed in self-defense.
This wasn’t an isolated case. According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, ninety cases of extra-judicial killings were reported in 1995; forty-eight in 1996; sixty-eight in 1997; and forty-seven in 1998. Three years later, in The Nation (July 25, 2001), a front page story was headlined, “Police Death Squads Run Riot.” What followed sounded like I’d gone to sleep the night before in Bangkok and awakened in the morning in Bogota or Baghdad.
“Police-backed death squads are executing suspected drug traffickers in the lower Northeast,” the story began, naming the part of Thailand where I have a house and family, “and intend to kill as many as one thousand people this year, the region’s police chief said yesterday.” The Region 4 chief, Lt. Gen. Pichai Sunthornsajjabul, was then quoted as saying, “Our target is to send one thousand traffickers to hell this year, to join some 350 before them.” Sure enough, in a program called “Shortcut to Hell,” three men suspected of dealing amphetamines were found dead a few kilometers from my house a few weeks later.
The chief explained that an anti-drug “alliance” comprising police, soldiers, government officials, civilians, and members of “private organizations” had been working as an intelligence-gathering arm of the regional police. Once the alliance’s tips were confirmed, he said, police would consider whether there was enough evidence to prosecute.
“If there’s not enough evidence to take legal action [but we are sure they are involved in the drug trade],” The Nation quoted the Lieutenant General as saying, “drastic measures will be taken by members of the alliance. We have applied legal means, political science and even Buddhism, but the [drug] problem only seems to be getting worse. Now it’s time to rely on [the]