MPs urge action on bill on forced disappearances

MPs urge action on bill on forced disappearances

Activists and the Move Forward Party (MFP) have called for the enactment of an anti-enforced disappearances bill which they say has been stuck in parliament for too long.

Natthawut Buaprathum, MP and MFP deputy leader, said 86 human rights and environment activists are known to have gone missing between 1980 and last year, among them Somchai Neelapaijit, a Muslim lawyer and human rights activist who disappeared in 2004.

Although Thailand is a signatory of the convention against enforced disappearances, no law has been enacted to implement it, he said. Enforced disappearances occur time and again and perpetrators are frequently not brought to justice, he added.

Four bills governing enforced disappearances are going through parliament. One of them is sponsored by the government and the rest by the House standing committee on justice. The drafts are queued up for deliberation although the waiting list is long. Mr Natthawut said he was unsure if other draft laws which the government deemed more urgent might cut the queue.

In June last year, the cabinet approved the government's bill against torture and enforced disappearances. The legislation aims to suppress acts of torture and enforced disappearances committed by state officials. The bill also offers compensation for damages incurred by crime.

Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, a former labour leader and currently an active member of an anti-government protest group and MFP politicians spoke at an event organised in Bangkok by the House committee on labour to recall the disappearance of Thanong Bho-ard, a labour rights activist who went missing in June 1991.

The president of the Labour Congress of Thailand disappeared from his union office in Bangkok three days after organising a protest rally. It was reported that he may have been taken to a "safe house" where he was killed and his corpse transferred to a compound in Kanchanaburi. A friend revealed Thanong was last seen bundled into a van by a group of men.

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