Conflict, Legitimacy and Government Reform: Equitable Allocation of ...

130 KPI Congress XI
rights to the local operational level (vernacularization). One important
question, both in theory and practice, is “What do human right
activists need to do for the human rights concept to be enforced in
society?”
This research was conducted with the objective of studying the roles
and attitudes of human rights advocates regarding human rights
violations during the war against drugs of 2003 when over 2,500 people
were murdered within a short period of three months from February to
April of 2003. Government officials and the media have often associated
these murders with drugs and the term “extrajudicial killing” has been
invented to explain the occurrence. It is known that, drug traders killed
each other so the government officials wouldn’t trace smaller drug dealer
to the larger dealers. Extrajudicial killing also meant cutting off the
examination process associated with all of the murders during that time
from the official judicial system, i.e. not one single case involving
individuals performing “extrajudicial killing” was to be tried. In the
same way, the sympathy or suspicions of Thai society toward these
murders were also extrajudicial. The society put up with and accepted
the necessity of using violence to solve drug problems. The results of this
extrajudicial killing left the victims’ family members to face the fate on
their own. Thai society virtually had no shared pain and envisioned no
threat in the use of violence supported by the government.
In addition to the National Human Rights Committee, some
human rights activists also try to become a voice in protection of human
rights. The significance of this research is to search for a conceptual
framework and see how human right activists apply the law and the
concept of international human rights on a local level.