The Unlawful War on drugs started in Thailand, let’s not forget it.

Could the same destiny being now faced by Rodrigo Duterte also hunt Thaksin Shinawatra?

While this possibly is very improbable, it is worthy remember how created the blueprint that Mr. Duterte later re-shaped and boosted.

Mr. Duterte, the former President of the Philippine has been recently arrested and brought to The Hague to face allegations of crime against humanity before the International Criminal Court over his past drug wars.

The fate of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand, at least till now has been different and he is enjoying a good moment.

Father of current Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Mr. Thaksin ruled the country from 2001 to 2006 before being ousted in a coup.

Following many years in “self-professed” exile in Dubai, Mr. Thaksin, after returning to Thailand in August 2023, is back in power even though his ruling is through a proxy, his daughter.

Mr. Thaksin and Mr. Duterte have something in common.

I am not talking about their natural inclination for populistic and divisive policies and their pro-poor agenda.

There is something else: the systemic use of violence, outside the rule of law, to fight the drug pandemic.

In this regard, Mr. Thaksin provided a blueprint to Mr. Duterte and the latter was able to go rampage on that.

It was Mr. Thaksin who first devised and implemented a brutal war on drugs by using methods out of the rule of law.

Mr. Duterte simply got inspired by Mr. Thaksin’s violent crackdown on drugs and he truly made it a central point of his government.

Let’s review a briefing paper written by Human Rights Watch and International Harm Reduction Association dated March 12, 2008:

“In February 2003, the Thai government, under then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, launched a ‘war on drugs’, purportedly aimed at the suppression of drug trafficking and the prevention of drug use. In fact, a major outcome of this policy was arbitrary killings. In the first three months of the campaign there were some 2800 extrajudicial killings. In 2007, an official investigation found that more than half of those killed had no connection whatsoever to drugs.1 Apart from the thousands who lost their lives, thousands more were forced into coercive “treatment” for drug addiction”.

Reuters had reported on August 10, 2007 the following:

“Thailand’s post-coup government has re-opened an investigation into ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s war on drugs in which more than 2,500 people were killed”.

There was even an attempt by the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand to do something about this situation.

“The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) plans to pursue a crimes against humanity case against ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra in connection with his government’s war on drugs 11 years ago, in which more than 2,500 drug suspects were killed”.

Fast forward nothing basically happened and Mr. Thaksin is remotely controlling the government of PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

I do wonder if the former PM is somehow getting concerned about what Mr. Duterte is going through at the ICC.

Let’s go back to Human Rights Watch and International Harm Reduction Association’ briefing:

“In 2005, the UN Human Rights Committee raised serious concerns about the “extraordinarily large number of killings” that took place during the ‘war’ and recommended that thorough and independent investigations be undertaken. Then UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Asma Jahangir, sent an urgent communication to the Thai government in 2003. In its response, Thailand said that every unnatural death would be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the law. To date, none of the perpetrators of arbitrary killings have been brought to justice”.

As things stand now, it is hard to imagine that Mr. Thaksin would face any form of accountability, either national or at international level.

At national level, while it is always difficult to predict, in the long term, parties’ shenanigans in Bangkok, the latest political vehicle of the Shinawatra family, is running the country.

In terms of international level forms of accountability, Thailand, while it signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on October 2, 2000, it did not ratify it yet.

An opinion essay by policy analyst Benjamin Zawacki published on the November 15 2012 for the Nation, the Thai daily, offered a clear view of the reasons why persecuting Mr. Thaksin by the ICC is really hard and imaginable these days but not totally impossible in the future.

“A country that has not ratified the Rome Statute may still request the ICC to investigate events that took place on its territory for which one or more of its citizens is allegedly responsible. Hence Surapong’s focus on former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, and his predecessor’s focus on former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

It is worth noting that this has never happened in the ICC’s ten-year history. All three countries that expressly requested the Court’s involvement were state parties to the Rome Statute, and on the one occasion where the Court investigated a non-member state’s situation, it did so on its own initiative and not at that state’s request. Nonetheless, as the ICC’s chief prosecutor reportedly assured Surapong, it is technically possible.

Even should the Court consider the cases however (noting that only the 2010 crackdown has been officially brought to its attention), two factors make the subjects of both foreign ministers’ calls unlikely to be substantively investigated.

First, the ICC’s substantive jurisdiction is currently limited to the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Genocide and war crimes (Thaksin’s “war” not being an armed conflict in the legal sense) clearly do not apply. Crimes against humanity include murder (such as alleged in both the 2010 crackdown and the 2003 drugs campaign) “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.

So technically speaking it is going to be extremely difficult to bring Mr. Thaksin to face justice.

As suggested by Mr Zawacki who, in his opinion piece, also analyzed the potential criminalization of another former PM Abhisit Vejjajiva for a different alleged cases of abuses, the best scenario to bring Mr. Thaksin to justice would be when Thailand will decide to ratify the Rome Statute.

Yet the fact that Mr. Duterte is now facing justice creates a precedent. Just few years ago, such scenario was truly unthinkable.

It might be that we reached this situation simply because the political equation in Manila changed after the fallout between President Marcos and his Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of Rodrigo Duterte.

That’s why the events of the last week might have created some discomfort among people close to Mr. Mr. Thaksin.

Probably he will never be brought to The Hague.

Yet, at minimum, Mr. Thaksin should be started to be considered as a “pariah” by serious policy makers, the media and civil society within Thailand and the international community.

At minimum Mr. Thaksin should face a level of inner discomfort, anguish and perhaps even fear that, while he could easily brush them off publically, could haunt him for the rest of his life.

Hopefully some bold human rights organizations and international media could restart talking about the war on drug that was carried out in Thailand over two decades ago.

On the 15 January 2025, the Nation published a piece entitled “I’m back: Ex-PM Thaksin’s chilling message to drug traffickers.”

Then, I am wondering: are we really sure that the pathway to justice and accountability over the drug war in Thailand is totally off?