by James Goyder

The investigation into the shooting of Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto is already being described as a ‘whitewash‘ but in many ways the findings are utterly predictable.

The army, who were originally accused of the shooting, are a group which is representative of, answerable to and ultimately controlled by the government. As the situation on the Cambodian border has clearly demonstrated, when the army takes any sort of action it does so with the implicit approval of the government behind it.

Of course it is possible for rogue soldiers to act independently, whether out of malice or incompetence, but this is not something which governments will readily admit to. At no stage in the debate as to which side was responsible for starting the recent series of skirmishes around the Preah Vihear Temple has the government ever issued a statement to undermine the army or to suggest that an individual soldier or group of soldiers might have acted without authorization.

It is clear that the army and the government are inexorably linked, you simply cannot separate one from the other. Under these circumstances how can the Department of Special Investigations (DSI) which conducted the investigation into the death of Muramoto retain any credibility? The DSI is a part of the Justice Ministry which, just like the army, is an arm of the government.

No wonder the investigation is being dismissed as a ‘whitewash’. The murder of a foreign member of the media on Thai soil is a major embarrassment for Thailand and, with pressure mounting on the current coalition government, has the potential to be an extremely incendiary political issue. Had it been proven conclusively that the army did fire the fatal shots, international scrutiny on the government handling of the red shirt protests last year would have increased dramatically.

As you can see from the letter above the UDD are already attempting to encourage the international community to condemn the government’s handling of last year’s protests, in which 91 people lost their lives. As one of only two foreigners to have been killed, Muramoto’s death, along with that of fellow journalist Fabio Polenghi, is sadly more significant than that of any of the 89 others.

If it had been proven definitively that someone on the state payroll did fire the fatal shot it could have also been a fatal blow to a government which already appears to be on its last legs. Even if the Bangkok Post had not published an article suggesting that an original report, which found the army culpable, had been cynically repressed, the results of the DSI enquiry would still be far from satisfactory.

The only way that the government could have legitimately absolved itself of blame for the death of Muramoto would have been to appoint an independent group, preferably from a foreign country, give it access to all the pertinent evidence and then ask it to act as an ombudsman.

Accusations of a ‘whitewash’ were inevitable from the moment the government  made the decision to keep this particular investigation in house. We did not know who killed Hiro Muramoto before the investigation began and the majority of impartial observers will feel that we are no closer to the truth now that the investigation has ended.

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