Borders are expected to be much easier to cross, and thus the issue of how to deal with international criminal operations has come to the fore.
Since September 3, more than 50 representatives from the Asean states and Australia have been meeting at the Hilton Arcadia hotel in Karon to discuss intelligence gathering, sharing, and procedures. The meeting is hosted by Thailand, and participants include immigration, consular and intelligence chiefs from the various countries.
Decisions made during this conference will have a direct bearing on how immigration matters are handled with regard to tracking transnational criminals and preventing their activities after 2015.
MAKING PREPARATIONS
Pol Gen Jet Mongkolhatti, one of Thailand’s assistant national police chiefs, noted in remarks to the press that this is the 16th such meeting and the eighth covering intelligence gathering, adding that: “We’ve met 15 times before, seven times including intelligence matters.”
He also said that this time Australia and Asean would consult on a variety of matters including training and operations and sharing experience in working together.
“Thailand has learned the future plans or projects of individual members, and these can be adapted to our own immigration and consular activities,” he said.
“Sharing information will allow us to know the regional situation in timely fashion. It can be brought to bear on development of our working units and the ability of officials to keep up-to-date on types of organised criminal operations or groups plotting against the world community.”
Pol Gen Jet said good relations among those attending the meeting would bear fruit as they become “an effective co-operative network”, with Thailand, other member states, Australia and the Asean Secretariat Office “working together to provide the greatest security and safety benefits for Thailand and the world community.”
It is remarkable that the general made no talk of policy, of probable changes, of sticking points that could lead to future disputes or intractable immigration control problems. No talk of how deep intelligence gathering and sharing will go, and no talk of issues: is this what we should expect in discussing matters – immigration and related issues – of vital importance to Thailand’s security and prosperity?
Perhaps Pol Gen Jet regards it as impolitic to discuss such matters with the press. Or perhaps he is simply ignorant of what the important issues are: it would not be the first time Thailand was caught sleeping owing to a lack of useful intelligence, which is notoriously difficult to gather in Southeast Asia.
INTELLIGENCE MATTERS
The country often appears to rely on intelligence gathering by United States agencies, which is sometimes flawed or wrongly interpreted, leading to fiascoes such as the Vietnam War, and subsequent regional polarisation; and the dubious War on Terror, which has fanned the flames of Muslim militancy rather than doused them.
This region, with its many language groups, tribal, religious and cultural divisions, and long-standing animosities, was formed into nation-states in the 1950s, but several are yet only barely united. Insurgencies exist in several.
Government control shows an absence of uniformity in several countries.
How many areas in Burma alone, for example, are still off-limits to the central government? What is Thailand to do about, say, the Rohingya, a Muslim group on the Bengal border whose neighbours hate them and who, to escape dire poverty, undefined citizenship status and frequent massacre, make their way in rickety open boats across the sea to what they hope will prove a better fate?
Thus far Thailand has no clear policy. Or will the actions here of some local officials and naval personnel – dragging those who wash up back to sea and uncertain survival – become Asean policy?
On this and similar matters Pol Gen Jet was silent, but the fact is that intelligence gathering and application to immigration control in this region is problematic.
He did have something to say about human trafficking, the poster child for a number of influential NGOs. But on this he was less than refulgent, saying merely that planning was underway to track suspects.
On the more edifying issue of whether general agreement exists among the member states as to what precisely constitutes human trafficking, he said nothing.
THE ECONOMICS
Desperate economic refugees, ready to run any risk for the chance to work, are a major economic and political concern.
Their numbers are legion and their arrival en masse can transform the economics of a state or region, depressing wages and putting natives out of work.
It is a matter of no small concern that their influx be regulated – and, officially, it is – but agents can get round those regulations via official corruption.
Are Thailand and Asean moving to address the issue of official connivance in this form of human trafficking? Not if the general’s comments on tracking organised crime are any indicator: “This matter [organised crime] has been assigned to the Immigration Office chief, who will oversee collection of information and creation of a blacklist of foreign groups with criminal backgrounds. I expect some will escape detection and filter through when the Asean Economic Community opens, and that will have an impact on individual countries.
“Thailand is likely to have a deal of trouble with this. Detailed guidelines must be established capable of coping with as many eventualities as possible. Whether statistics on crime perpetrated by international criminals will go up or down is impossible at this point to say.”
He added that Phuket, as a “world-class international tourist destination” will inevitably be a target for their depredations and that thus the island’s police must be consulted on establishing guidelines to deal with them.
Pol Gen Jet’s comments above apparently envision handling an influx only of petty criminals – pickpockets, burglars, forgers, small-time drug dealers and con artists; more, in other words, of what we already have.
TACKLING CORRUPTION
Nowhere is there mention of initiatives to uncover the rotten apples in Thailand’s civil servant corps; nowhere any sense of worry that a system already fraught with corruption will not succumb to it completely when the borders open.
Official corruption is to organised crime as one’s hand is to a glove.
Where officials are yet uncorrupted, such crime is minimal (think Finland). Where corruption is rife, criminal organisations pursue their activities without hindrance (think Russia).
With no plans in place to rein in official corruption – indeed, no idea that the need to do so exists – Asean’s member states may find themselves quickly overwhelmed by criminal gangs and hordes of economic refugees, their citizens unprotected by constabularies and civil servants on the criminals’ payroll.
Official corruption is an urgent problem – perhaps the single greatest problem facing this region, for it seems to adumbrate all else – yet officialdom is loath to attempt anything more than window-dressing and face-saving.
It’s time citizens ask themselves why.
The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent the opinion of The Phuket News.