We write to you about the human rights and political situation in Burma. We believe that Thailand, as the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Burma’s major political and economic partner, has significant leverage and policy options that can help improve respect for human rights and promote political reform in Burma.

We write to urge you and ASEAN leaders to use the discussions during the summit meeting from February 27 to March 1 to address three crucial human rights concerns in the region.

We are writing on December 18, 2007, International Migrants’ Day, to call upon you to implement key reforms to respect and uphold migrants’ rights. On January 21-22, 2008, the United Arab Emirates will host the latest round of the “Colombo Process,” a series of regional consultative processes focused on Asian contract migrant workers. We believe this meeting could provide an important stepping stone to establishing regional minimum standards regarding recruitment, employment, and protection of migrant workers.

Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong urging him and other ASEAN Foreign Ministers to establish specific deadlines for implementing a binding human rights mechanism as part of the new Charter.

We write regarding your approval of the sale of Manchester City
Football Club to Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Prime Minister of
Thailand. In light of the widespread, serious and systematic human
rights abuses perpetrated in Thailand under Mr. Thaksin’s leadership,
we are very concerned that you concluded that he is a “fit and proper
person” to purchase Manchester City Football Club.

We write to urge your government to immediately launch an independent and impartial criminal investigation of Thai security forces implicated in the deaths of at least 85 people in Narathiwat province this week. Security forces shot and killed seven protesters and at least 78 protesters were suffocated or crushed to death as they were being transferred to detention facilities. Some 1,200 people are still held by military authorities, without access to legal representation and with questionable medical attention. This incident marks a major escalation of the violence in predominantly Muslim southern Thailand, where more than 400 people have already been killed since the beginning of the year.

In an open letter to the committee that recently gave an “International Forgiveness Award” to the prime minister for his government’s treatment of drug users, Human Rights Watch and more than 50 other organizations called on the committee to strip Thaksin of the award.

Thailand's status as one of the leading rights-respecting democracies in Southeast Asia has been called into question by its violent "war on drugs." In response to a spiraling problem of drug use and drug trafficking, Thai police have conducted an anti-drug campaign in recent months in which more than 2,000 persons have died in apparent extrajudicial killings and more than 50,000 have been arrested, many arbitrarily.