Four years ago, a group of armed security personnel stormed into her husband's mobile phone shop in Yala province and took him away at gunpoint.

Tuan learned later that he had become a suspect because a SIM card used in a bomb attack had been purchased from his shop.

Though seven months pregnant at the time, she kept searching for him at every military camp and police station in the area, to no avail.

She has never seen him since.

Those who have survived torture in custody tell similar stories of what they went through: electrocution, repeated beatings, kickings, stranglings, forced to suffocate with their heads tied in a plastic bag or pushed under water.

Need to hear more?

Tuan has no doubt that what happened to her husband was a case of torture gone awry. Hence his disappearance.

He was one of 29 documented southern Muslims who disappeared after being illegally taken into custody.

"It's painful to be talked about as a mere statistic. This is about our life, a life destroyed," said Tuan.

At present, the victims of state abuse are legally entitled to compensation. But the likes of Tuan, who cannot prove that their loved ones are dead, receive no official help and are left to struggle with grief and a life in limbo, legally and psychologically.

We do not know how many lives have been destroyed by state torture and forced disappearance. One thing we know for sure: no officials have been punished for their crimes. Not a single one.

This is because the law requires hard evidence to prove that the detainees are dead. If not, the most you can do is to send the perpetrators to jail for forced detention.

This is why even the most publicised case of abduction and forced disappearance, that of human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit, still fails to touch the culprits - although we know who has blood on their hands.

It is wrong, however, to relate state violence with national security or anti-terrorism issues, or to think that it occurs in the deep South only.

"It's actually happening across the country," said Col Piyawat Kingkate from the Department of Special Investigation.

It is an open secret that the police routinely use torture to extract confessions, or to extract ransoms. When things go wrong, the police know how to destroy the evidence without leaving a trace, he added.

How to explain these disappearances to the relatives?

The police's routine answer: the detainees have already been released. If they have not returned home, it is not the police's problem.

Thanks to the poor witness protection system, no one is willing to say what they saw. And without evidence, the police can just announce a case closed.

How can we put up with this blatant and widespread state violence?

Last year, a high-ranking police officer declared in a TV interview that torture was a legitimate tool to deal with the baddies. His statement raised no public outcry.

Meanwhile, a recent poll showed that half of the respondents agreed with the idea.

Rights groups believe that if the government ratifies the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, it will be easier to punish the perpetrators and to help the victims' relatives.

Of course, we need better laws. But we also need to tackle what is in our minds for those law to work.

If we still believe that it is okay to use violence to get what we want, or if we still allow ethnic prejudices to blind us to the suffering of the southern Muslims - and others whom we don't count as our own - then state terrorism is here to stay.

Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor (Outlook), Bangkok Post.

Email: sanitsudae@bangkokpost.co.th

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/14Feb2008_news24.php