The post-coup restriction on access by human rights bodies to victims of alleged torture in Thailand's southern provinces limits efforts to suppress unlawful treatment of detainees, says a rights advocate.
According to Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, director of the Cross-Cultural Foundation (CrCF), authorities have largely closed off channels that allowed external observers, such as the National Human Rights Commission, rights experts from the Justice Ministry, NGOs and international agencies, to visit detainees and probe their treatment at the hands of the military and police.
In the past 18 months, arrest and detention conditions were kept under wraps, she said, while the military has toughened measures against those involved in the insurgency by applying a wider interpretation of what constitutes "security offences". The measures led to a lack of transparency, she added.
This stands in contrast with past procedures, which allowed for family visits in several cases. Rights bodies also had better dialogue with security forces and could keep their work in check.
The increased restrictions on rights and secrecy prompted rights advocates to question the treatment of detainees. The death of a Muslim man in custody at the Inkayuth camp last December sounded the alarm.
Ms Pornpen was commenting after the release yesterday of a report documenting torture and ill-treatment in the deep South in 2014-2015, which she co-authored.
In the report, the CrCF, along with the Duay Jai Foundation and Patani Human Rights Organisation (Hap) interviewed 54 former detainees, using Istanbul Protocol parameters -- international guidelines to investigate and document cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatments, torture, and punishment cases.
The report found 15 detainees were tortured in 2015, 17 in 2014 and another 22 between 2004 and 2013.
Last week, the Muslim Attorney Centre released a separate report, in which 75 people alleged they were tortured in 2015 by security forces in the southern provinces.
The number of reported cases may still be low compared to what is happening on the ground, Ms Pornpen added.
According to the report, the torture methods used by the police and military include prolonged interrogation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, beatings and physical violence, sexual assaults such as forced nudity, water boarding as well as choking.
"We found that the actions against the detainees were violent, degrading and an affront to their human dignity," Ms Pornpen added.
Such assaults do not seem to relate to officers' intelligence work in gathering information, but seems rather like harassment which may be motivated by racial prejudice, she argued.
Ms Porpen said the emergency decrees and martial law deployed in the region lack clear procedural regulations and officers posted in the region have a free hand to apply them at will. While torture of detainees in the southern provinces has been ongoing in the past decade, there is even less accountability now than before the coup, she added.
"Today, if unlawful acts are committed by officers, no external bodies can probe that," she said. She emphasised that perpetrators should face justice.