PRESS RELEASE
ALRC-PL-45-2005

Wife of missing Thai rights lawyer goes before U.N. panel in Geneva

(Geneva, July 18, 2005) The wife of missing human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit on Monday went before a high-level U.N. human rights panel in Geneva to tell of her disappointment that the Thai authorities that have failed to solve her husband's disappearance.

Angkhana Neelaphaijit is attending the U.N. Human Rights Committee hearings in Geneva on invitation from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC). Michael Anthony, the ALRC's European affairs liaison, is accompanying her together with members of the Thai NGOs Coalition for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.

"Angkhana's powerful moral voice and plentiful experiences with the deep defects in the Thai criminal investigation and justice systems are of keen interest to the committee," Anthony said.

The committee is considering Thailand's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a core treaty for the protection of human rights under international law.

The ALRC on Friday submitted its second report on Thailand to the committee, emphasising that stronger and more effective institutions are needed to protect human rights there. It is also speaking before the committee on these concerns.

"We are stressing the need to strengthen the roles of the Department of Special Investigation, Department of Rights and Liberties Protection and Central Institute of Forensic Science," Anthony said.

"If these agencies were working properly, and were accompanied by an effective avenue for complaints against the police and an independent missing-persons centre, Somchai's disappearance would have been solved by now and his wife would not have to be here," he said.

Clearly, Angkhana had approached the U.N. as a last resort, he added.

"She has tried everything in Thailand, from top to bottom, to get both her husband's remains and some answers," Anthony said.

"So she is coming here profoundly disillusioned," he said.

The Hong Kong-based rights group has drawn special attention to the case of Somchai as "an exemplary failure of state agencies [even] under pressure¡K to address the impunity that prevails in the country".

"The case of Mr Somchai Neelaphaijit is critical to the development of an effective human rights regime in Thailand because in it the nexus between cases of heinous torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings is explicit," the group's report says.

The ALRC has urged the committee to pay special attention to Somchai's case and take it up directly with the government of Thailand.

Thailand has not ratified the first optional protocol to the covenant, and therefore the case can not be brought separately to the committee under a special procedure established by the protocol.

The latest ALRC report supplements an earlier document submitted in March, which was published in the April edition of the ALRC's bimonthly periodical, article 2. It is also available on-line at: www.article2.org.

Both the supplementary report and the original submission can be found on the ALRC website: www.alrc.net.

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About ALRC The Asian Legal Resource Centre holds general consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The Hong Kong-based group seeks to strengthen and encourage positive action on legal and human rights issues at local and national levels throughout Asia.