A couple of weeks ago I commented on Thailand’s impressive performance on the Millennium Development Goals. I suggested that the Thai state - in its various democratic and less than democratic forms - has achieved a lot in terms of basic service provision to its population. As some readers commented in response to my post, civil society, NGOs and individual enterprise have also played a role. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that much of Thailand’s basic health, welfare and education infrastructure has been provided by the state.
But there is one human indicator against which Thailand does not perform very well at all.
Murder.
I am no expert on crime statistics but there are indications that Thailand rates high on the international league table for murder. One source (albeit with not particularly up-to-date data) rates Thailand 14th in the world with a murder rate of 8 per 100,000 of population per year. I won’t go into a full comparison, but here are just a few figures to put this in context: at the top of the list is Colombia, with an astonishing 61 murders per 100,000; Malaysia rates 34th with 2.3 murders per 100,000; and Australia rates 43rd with 1.5.
When it comes to murder, there are countries much worse than Thailand, but it is clearly not performing as well on this basic measure of human security as it is on many other human development indicators.
In recent years, commentators have placed a lot of attention on the murderous activities of the Thai state itself. Most notorious, of course, is Thaksin’s “war on drugs” in which it is widely reported that there were 2,257 extra-judicial killings. While there is room for debate about the number of killings actually attributable to the “war on drugs” (see Bangkok Pundit for a detailed discussion of the various sources) it certainly represents an appalling low point in the Thai state’s recent dealings with its citizenry.
But a focus on the directly murderous action of the Thai state, however urgent, is not sufficient. If the murder rate is indeed 8 per 100,000, Thailand now experiences around 5000 reported murders per year. Thaksin increased this murder rate alarmingly, but he did not create it. Nor did he create the longstanding “state of impunity” whereby murders, massacres, disappearances and political assassinations are all too often unreported, uninvestigated and undiscussed (see Tyrell Haberkorn’s very useful discussion). As a number of regular commentators on New Mandala have noted this is a state of impunity that extends well beyond the government of the day to justify criminal acts - or silence discussion of them - at all levels of Thai society. And the state of impunity is not just enjoyed by those in Thailand’s elite. I have, on occasions, been shocked by the seeming nonchalance with which some people in the rural district where I work describe the settlement of disputes or the resolution of persistent criminal activity with murder.
In relation to murder, the failings of the Thai state are go well beyond its own violent acts. The Thai state, despite sustained progress on many fundamental aspects of human security, has seemingly failed to create a legal culture that consistently reports, documents, investigates, and prosecutes violent criminal action (see Rule of Lords for one recent case).
Anthropologists have often commented on Thailand’s seemingly “loose structure.” They have documented a persistent flexibility when it comes to rules, roles and institutions. For many external observers this mai pen rai flexibility is one of the country’s stereotypically endearing features.
But flexibility and nonchalance are also key ingredients in a murderous mix of impunity. And it is a mix that the Thai state seems both unwilling and unable to seriously challenge.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Thai TV // Jul 22, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Talking about “state of impunity”: do your remember this stupid young guy who drove his car into a crowd because he was angry after a bus would have made a mere scratch to his luxury car… The guy may have been brought to court but is still allowed to drive a car and is not even in jail yet… despite all the witnesses…
2 manning sawwinner // Jul 22, 2008 at 1:02 pm
This is not surprising. We Thais are a nation of no discipline. We follow our whims. Anything that involves law enforcement usually ends up in failure. It’s seems natural for Thais not to have moral scruples, and this manifests itself in things like murder and banditry, or at least habitual traffic violations, and oftentimes the police look the other way. So don’t get excited about Thailand’s high rating on the incidence of murder. If you can’t change the Thai trait, you can only hope and pray to the many deities that are supposed to protect Thailand.
3 Bangkok Resident // Jul 23, 2008 at 5:52 am
What always struck me is how safe Bangkok feels as a foreign resident. Compared to Detroit, New Orleans, or Washington D.C., Bangkok feels to me like a walled garden of safety, where at worst one may encounter a pickpocket or purse snatcher. I know plenty other foreign residents who would agree. My wife, back in grad school, once encountered up-close an armed robber being chased on foot by police right through a student neighborhood in Ohio!
But the statistics don’t lie. Last I heard, Thailand was hovering somewhere between Colombia and South Africa in the murder rate rankings.
4 Sidh S. // Jul 24, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Sad but true… you risk your life stepping on some big shot’s nephew’s girlfriend’s friend’s foot in a pub… “Do you know who my friend’s girlfriend’s boyfriend’s uncle is?” (ofcourse I’m exaggerating that part, but it does go something like that)…
Fortunately, often the situation could be charmingly redressed “Sorry krub Big brother, your watch is so beautiful - where did you get it?” - which can easily turn things around “Little brother, come have a drink with me” but it does require that you are not intoxicated too!
(It is a strange place - so easy to strike cordial friendship and fatal enemy)
On the other hand I’ve heard many times through the years what #3 Bangkok Resident stated… Perhaps more serious enforcement of weapons control and intoxication laws?
5 karmablues // Jul 25, 2008 at 3:36 am
The root of the problem is well explained here:
http://ratchasima.net/2008/03/30/thailands-best-organized-criminals-are-police/
summarized well in one paragraph taken from that blog as follows:
“Thailand’s police did not become an organized crime gang by accident. The modern force was from the beginning intended both as a criminal and political agency, monopolizing the drug trade and murdering or detaining opponents, including other police. It quickly became unstoppable as, historian Thak Chaloemtiara notes, while people whispered about its crimes “investigation was impossible, for the crimes were committed by the police themselves.”
Yes, and these guys are under the command of Big Boss and his TRT/PPP mafia.
6 Hla Oo // Jul 25, 2008 at 7:08 am
Corrupt Thai cops! That bastards give me nightmares just by remembering them before bed.
I was educated in Bangkok and then I used to live and work in Thailand for many years and as a near-fluent Thai speaker I never had any serious problem there. But one bad experience scared me so much, nowadays I refuse to even visit there. It involved a taxi-meter cab and a couple of real bad cops.
It was the time Donmuang Airport was still operating and when I arrived in Bangkok from Sydney one early morning, instead of waiting for a cab at arrival I went upstairs to grab one of the cabs just dropping his fare at departure, as I always did. That smart-ass practice gave me always quicker and cheaper ride to city. But that day my luck ran out.
The middle-aged cabbie didn’t reset his meter which was still ticking at over 600 bahts from last fare. I told him to restart, but he just ignored me and just driving real fast as the early morning traffic was clear. So I tried to get out as I had only two small cases with me inside the cab. But he wouldn’t stop long enough for me to get out.
Finally we were stopped at a policed intersection, it was Suthisan or one or two before that on Phaholyothin Road I don’t remember now, and I immediately opened the door and stood outside and tried to talk down the fare which was now more than 950 bahts.
I tried to give him a 500 baht note, which was the biggest note then, but he didn’t take it and got out and yelled out to the cops nearby. Two fat cops came running, one with pistol drawn. I tried to explain to them in my broken Thai and English as the driver was complaining that I was doing a runner.
Make the story short, the cops definitely knew the true story, but they forced me at gun point to give the driver two 500 bahts notes, and so I fearfully did. As soon as I handed the driver two notes one fat cop grabbed both notes out of the driver’s hand, gave one note to other cop, put one into his shirt pocket, and both sauntered back to where their motorcycle was and then just rode away. That day I took a bus to city and since then I avoid Bangkok if possible.
7 Kate G. // Jul 25, 2008 at 8:20 am
Yes, Thailand feels so chummy, compared to coming across armed police chasing a robber in Columbus, OH (I’ve got your wife beat, BTW; one evening I stepped out on my own patio only to encounter a policeman with his gun drawn chasing a gang banger down the gangway, patio, and across my garden).
Violence in Thailand is different, and perhaps you need to be involved with people in a certain way to become aware of it. For women in Thailand, it’s the risk of violence related to sexuality. By this I don’t just mean sexual violence as in rape, but the encompassing sense of the possibility of violence if you don’t behave according to Thai male expectations (here, speaking in terms of the hegemony of male prerogatives and my apologies to my dear male Thai friends who by no means accept the prevailing culture of male sexuality and in fact resist it).
For instance (and I could go on at great length with many, many more examples): One day I was leaning over the balcony at my northern university when a friend casually motioned to a large smudge on the asphalt of the parking lot below us. A woman employee of the university who was divorcing her husband (supposedly because he was lai jai) acceded to his request to talk to him about it one last time. They sat in her VW Bug to talk; and he blew them both up with a hand grenade.
Or, at times when I was back from the field I would hang out at a local cafe run by a local man and his farang wife. Nice, small, intimate, great food after you’ve been in the field for a while. A Thai friend of the owners takes an interest in me. I do my usual thing of avoidance (can’t let the man lose face by turning him down flat!); then he follows me home and finds my phone number and starts calling. I tell my landlady, Pa, to simply say I’m “bon doi.” Which she does, for a time, until she sits me down and says I can’t continue to avoid him because he knows when I’m in town. If I don’t give in and go out with him, then she’s afraid we’ll be bombed. Well, now I can’t say “no” to him, and I can’t avoid him through the polite lie. Pa also points out to me the various stories we’ve read in the Thai news over the years about murdered women, sometimes murdered by men the woman herself did not know (e.g., the bus driver who murdered a woman he had a crush on, although apparently she did not know it). As Pa explained it to me, men’s desire can’t be denied, if it is, it makes them crazy; implied was that women had to give in to prevent this explosion. All I could do was leave town for a while until it blew over.
Think about that. I HAVE to go out with this man (married, violent, arrogant) or put my friends and local ‘family’ in danger. That’s a kind of violence that isn’t in the statistics, but underlays the statistics. Thai women face this to a constant level that I did not, I’m sure.
8 Andrew Spooner // Jul 27, 2008 at 11:27 pm
First time I’ve come across this blog and it’s good to find something sane in the general hubbub of Thai blogs.
I wrote a piece for the UK national newspaper, the Independent on Sunday, about the murders of British nationals in Thailand. Roughly, from 2003 to 2006, if you take out international terrorism, 10% of all murders of Brits abroad were in Thailand. Not all were committed by Thais and not all of the victims were crims or involved in such activity. Considering that Thailand attracts roughly 0.8% of all British travel abroad the murder rate is pretty high. The British Embassy admitted that the murder rate of Brit ex-pats per capita was equivalent to the local rate for Thais, which from the stats I saw, is almost 7times higher than in the UK.
Funnily enough, when I wrote the piece, many of my Thai friends were encouraging me to do so. Most ex-pats I knew were very cautious and many didn’t want to go on the record despite first hand knowledge of violence in Thai society. Also, my contacts in the Thai govt were also reasonably open - the British Embassy in Bangkok were openly hostile to me. The business interests of Tescos has been suggested as one possible reason for the lack of official UK openness on the dangers of travel for Brits in Thailand.
When the piece was published it attracted a lot of very negative comment in the Thai blogosphere - although these comments were entirely from ex-pats. Strange.
I spend a lot of time in Thailand and have never had much of a problem - once a taxi driver threatened to shoot me over 35baht fare but thats about it. However, once you get to know the place, the undercurrent of violence is palpable.
In London, were my home is, I don’t have much trouble either - though I am very aware of ALL the dangers here, having been brought up and raised here. In Thailand, it takes time to get past the smiles, the relaxed vibe and how arcane everything is before you can judge what is really happening.
Anyone who wants to read the piece can see it here - please be advised it is for a mainstream UK audience who will have little knowledge of Thailand beyond holidays and prostitution.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/with-so-many-britons-murdered-in-thailand-why-does-our-government-not-warn-of-the-dangers-faced-there-769640.html
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