Thailand's bloody "war on drugs" marred its rights...

Thailand's bloody "war on drugs" marred its rights record in 2003, Amnesty International said in an annual report which also noted that critics of the government faced threats and harassment. The London-based activist group said that 2,245 people were killed in the three-month anti-narcotics campaign unleashed in February, which was aimed at curbing rampant methamphetamine addiction.
"Officials claimed that the vast majority of these deaths were the result of drug traders shooting one another, which the authorities appeared to condone," it said.
Many of the victims were killed after leaving police stations where they had gone either to turn themselves in or to clarify whether they were among some 42,000 people placed on blacklists as suspected traffickers or users, it said. Amnesty said that another area of concern was Thailand's continued use of the death penalty. Four executions took place in 2003, all by the newly adopted method of lethal injection which replaced the firing squad. The number of people given the death sentence reportedly nearly tripled between January 2001 and December 2003 to nearly 1000, with most of those convicted of drug offences, it said.