Solidarity Message by Kiat Sittheeamorn on Sen. Leila de Lima’s Prize for Freedom award Secretary General, Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD) 28 July 2018
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Dear colleagues and friends, I’d like to speak less formally. I’d like to speak from the heart. When we had the meeting in Berlin at the Liberal International gathering at that time in June, we have representatives, all liberals from over 86 countries, 150160 people, and the issue of the Philippines was raised at that meeting. And I have to stand up and walk to the podium and tell everyone that this is a serious issue. What’s happening here in the Philippines is very serious. And it deserves all the attention from everybody, not just the liberals, but all nations in the world. And why? Because the more time wasted, more people die. Lives are lost. So I told our President, I told all my liberal friends that we must do more than issuing resolutions, making statements. And I think all my liberal friends got the message. And that’s how we decided that Senator De Lima deserve an award, this award…But I’m glad that I’m here today with both my President, my Vice President, Emily Lau, my colleague from Hong Kong, and a lot of other supporters, staff. And we give all the attention to what’s happening in the Philippines. Why is this issue so close to my heart? Because we’ve been there. Thailand is a country that have tried this war on drugs. The same method, the same approach. And we failed. That was in early 2000. We failed so badly and thereafter, when I was in the government, we had to set up a truth and reconciliations committee to investigate what’s happening and what’s wrong with the policy. It was so obvious, from the findings of this committee—independent committee, we don’t get involved with the investigation, whatsoever; it is headed by this respected attorney general of the country—and looking at all the evidence pointed out to the fact that out of 2,500 people that have died and disappeared within a period of 3 months of the campaign, 1,100 were innocent. And for us, in our case, we were very fortunate that we have our beloved king, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who actually had enough respect to stop, to put a stop to this kind of policy that take lives. So I’d like us not to be confused about what we are trying to do here. We are not trying to stop the government—any government in any country—to stop fighting drugs. We are fighting for whom? We are fighting for the innocent people who has to suffer from bad policy or bad policy implementation—and probably, with hidden agendas. In Thailand’s case, after just 3 months of war on drugs, same pattern, drug price has been pushed up 3 times. And none of the main agents, drug pushers or producers have suffered one bit. And I guess, if you look in the case of the Philippines, you have the same pattern.
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And why do we continue to do this? Why are we doing this? And in our case, you know we discovered that the loophole that led to a lot of innocent people’s sufferings is because the government is too much in a rush. They set up all the system. They get the police precincts to come up with names. And more often, in our case, what we discover is that those names—yes, it was put together by the police precinct—but many of the names on the list are those people who know too well the dirty work [of the police themselves]. And I guess that I’m not the expert for the case of the Philippines, but I suspect the same thing is happening here. And that’s led to the loss of lives of a lot of innocent people. And I came here to reinforce our experience as a country that failed. And we hope that nobody on this planet Earth should ever try to do what we, in the past, by some government, have callously implemented this kind of policy. And I’d like to end by quoting some wonderful—I think it’s a very relevant phrase from Martin Luther King. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” I think what we are looking at here is a violation of the rule of law. It’s ignorance to the rule of law. It’s a violation of the Constitution of this country. And I don’t think any country would allow any government to have free hand to go all out and have people—innocent or otherwise—executed. And those who are drug addicts should be viewed as patients. Drug pushers or transporters should be arrested. I actually agree with that. But they should be given a fair trial and it has to be evidence-based—not because their names are on the list. And we are all here fighting for all the family members of the victims of extrajudicial killings. And I hope us being here would somehow expedite the end of this crime against humanity. Thank you. (Applause)
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