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amendment and making serious efforts to up the amendment to comply

with the timeframe in order that the Convention could enforce effectively.

Complaints on Torture in the Southern Border Provinces

12. Since the breaking out of violent incidents in the southern border

provinces in 2004, the NHRCT has received 102 complaints on torture

committed by public officials. In investigating these complaints, the NHRCT

collected information from relatives of victims, human rights organizations

and concerned government agencies and visited some places of detention

in the region. It has completed the investigation of 71 complaints, the main

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findings of which are as follows:

1) Torture was generally committed by means of infliction of physical

harm and intimidation or coercion by state officials or with their

acquiescence, allegedly for the purpose of obtaining intelligence and

information about instigators of violence or arbitrarily punishing individuals

whom state officials suspected of having committed a crime against national

security. Victims of torture were often Thai Muslims of Malayu descent. The

NHRCT found that some security officers had negative attitude against this

group of persons as could be seen from news reports in the media and

some operations which seemed to be discriminatory.

2) The complaints stated that torture took many forms of physical

and mental harm or degrading treatment such as covering the head of a

suspect with plastic bag to cause suffocation, kicking, punching, and using

electric shocks on or piercing burning cigarette into the body, detaining a

2 National Human Rights Commission, Rights relating to the judicial process: Investigation of torture cases in the southern
border provinces, 2011, pages 38-45.