Abhisit and Suthep Charged, Bring on the ICC

After brutally massacring peaceful civilians protesting for elections in Bangkok during April and May of 2010, the military installed government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva arrested thousands in order to further crush the pro-democracy movement.  Thailand’s prisons are currently packed with hundreds of these political prisoners. These men and women include political activists, labor leaders, bloggers, and ordinary citizens who have been arrested on charges of lese majeste (Article 112 of the Criminal Code) or violations to the 2007 Computer Crimes Act.

Yet nobody has been arrested for the murders of the innocent protesters in Bangkok during 2010! 

Let me draw you a picture…

In Thailand, the scales of justice are as unbalanced as some of the judges there. 

Let me draw you another picture…

Does this Judge Look Mentally Balanced?

For too long now, Thai authorities have not genuinely pursued those most responsible for the murders of innocent civilians.  

However, according to a rare bit of journalism in the Bangkok Post, the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has charged Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva and Democrat MP Suthep Thaugsuban for authorizing the killing of anti-government protesters during the 2010 unrest in Bangkok.

Suthep Thaugsuban and Abhisit Vejjajiva
They're not laughing now

And in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Pitch Pongsawat, Professor of Political Science at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said, “This is just the beginning of a long process and there’s no guarantee that the courts will rule against Mr. Abhisit.” 

Of course there’s NO guarantee that the courts will rule against Abhisit. Part of the royalist elite strategy for self-preservation is to utilize the Thai judicial system for political gain. This includes the judicial protection of their friends and criminalization of their enemies in the pro-democracy movement. 

Thailand’s judges have increasingly made flagrantly political decisions, from dissolving political parties to stopping the charter amendment process, making the justice system there completely defective.

This is where the International Criminal Court (ICC) intervention can help.

The ICC is a mechanism that will complement the criminal justice system of any country whose justice system is flawed and cannot function effectively which describes the justice system in Thailand perfectly.  ICC involvement doesn’t mean that Thailand hands over jurisdiction to the ICC as some have claimed.    

And one of the felonies the ICC will help to adjudicate in a country with a faulty justice system is a crime against humanity.

And make no mistake about it. The killing and wounding of civilian demonstrators in 2010 was systematically planned by Abhisit and Suthep.  A crime against humanity, by definition, is any action as part of a wider, systematic attack with the politically motivated aim to harm the citizens or intimidate or destroy particular groups of people.  So if the 2010 massacre doesn’t qualify as a crime against humanity by Abhisit and Suthep, then I don’t know what does.  

Now the elitists in Thailand are saying that the ICC is not needed to improve the justice process and that what they have is “good enough.”   This is a good example of the maxim, "better is the enemy of good enough."  It is even a better example of the maxim “better is the enemy of sucks big time.”   

I say, bring on the ICC.