Somchai was kidnapped on March 12, 2004 (Right Watch)

Human Rights Watch called on Thailand to seek justice in the case of prominent human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapajit, who today marks the 20th anniversary of his disappearance.

The organization said, "Another year should not pass without justice for Somchai and other victims of enforced disappearance, and the Thai government must achieve justice for them, their families, and all Thais."

Official investigations proved that Somchai was kidnapped in Bangkok on March 12, 2004, and was presumed to have been killed, although his body was never found, according to the organization.

When he was kidnapped twenty years ago, Somchai was at the time president of the Muslim Lawyers Association and vice-chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Bar Council of Thailand.


According to the organization, those involved in the kidnapping of the Muslim lawyer were a group of police officers, who sought revenge against him for his role in lawsuits related to widespread police torture of Muslim suspects in the southern border provinces that were then torn by the insurgency.


She added that over the past two decades, eight Thai prime ministers, including current Prime Minister Sritha Thavisin, have failed to bring those responsible for Somchai's forced disappearance to justice.

Without Somchai's body, prosecutors brought only charges of "theft and coercion" against the five police officers involved in the case, and that trial, hampered by "official cover-ups", ended with their acquittals in December 2015.

International law defines enforced disappearance as the detention of a person by state officials or their agents, and the refusal to acknowledge the detention or reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.

The United Nations has recorded 76 cases of enforced disappearance in Thailand since 1980, none of which have been solved, and no one has been punished for these crimes, even after Thailand adopted a law in 2022 recognizing enforced disappearance as a criminal offence.

Sritha's government pledged to ratify the International Convention on Enforced Disappearance, which Thailand signed in 2012, "but twenty years have passed since Somchai's disappearance, and this promise has not been fulfilled," according to the organization.

Source: Human Rights Watch