The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has done the country and the Thai armed forces a great service in recommending that the military brings to an end the use of conscripts as personal employees of higher-ranking officers within 90 days. Rights commissioners made a loud and clear official statement last week that the practice is a human rights violation.
So far, the Defence Ministry has not come out with an official response. The NHRC recommendation is not legally binding, but it is to be hoped that the Thai military which has pledged to modernise the armed forces will walk the talk by duly following the rights commissioners' recommendations. Sending conscripts to serve in what are essentially servant roles only reinforces the antediluvian image of the Thai military.
The NHRC came out with the recommendation last week after its commission concluded a probe into allegations filed by two conscripts about rights abuses. It is noteworthy that one of the two cases is related to a notorious report from last August in which a female 22-year-old corporal filed a charge with Muang police in Ratchaburi stating she was abused by her boss. Her employer burned her using a hair curler, hit her with a metal bar, and once sprayed alcohol on her hair and set it on fire.
It is shocking that the corporal was not only made to work as a servant at a private residence in Ratchaburi province. Her 43-year-old employer Pol Cpl Kornsasi Buayaem was a police officer and once on the staff of a senator.
Pol Cpl Kornsasi has been slapped with 17 criminal charges, which include physical assault and human trafficking. Yet, the army remains tight-lipped about how it let a soldier work as a servant at the private residence of a non-army officer. The abused corporal told police that her employer Pol Cpl Kornsasi had helped her get the job.
This notorious case is just the tip of the iceberg in the misapplication and exploitation of armed forces personnel funded with taxpayers' money. There have been reports, complaints and viral clips showing conscripts carrying out menial house chores. One much-talked-about clip in 2018 shows a conscript feeding chickens and polishing shoes at his boss's house. Such displays of subordination only bring down the image of career soldiers.
It is a culture that bears the indelible footprint of a ministerial defence law enacted in 1912, over 110 years ago. Under this ministerial code, commissioned officers could appoint conscripted men to serve them and their families, specifically for household affairs and sections 49-57 of the ministerial regulation also allow commissioned officers to punish conscripts as they see fit.
Despite the Defence Ministry's Public Administration Act (2008) supposedly eliminating the use of conscripts as servants, the act enabled the army to deploy conscripts for work such as administration, sanitation and other duties for retired army officials.
It is about time the Ministry of Defence shows it understands the Darwinist imperative to adapt or die. Instead of buying time and hoping people will forget, defence chiefs must come out and tell the public how they will comply with the NHRC's recommendations.
If there is any necessity to deploy conscripts to serve their bosses or take care of barracks infrastructure, there must be clear guidelines on what those roles can and cannot demand of the soldiers, with a specific emphasis on outlawing continuing their use as minions for the top brass.
