Brief update – more people are coming forward and saying that the photo tweeted by Human Rights Watch is photo-shopped. I am no expert on these matters but have emailed HRW and asked them to clarify where the photo came from and how they verified its accuracy. To be honest, given the usual way HRW in Thailand operate I don’t expect any clarification from them – which is strange when they are so eager to demand it of others.

Against a backdrop of 13 Mukdahan Red Shirts being incarcerated on decades-long prison sentences based on what appears to be the flimsiest of investigations and evidence, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Thailand’s Senior Researcher is fighting the good fight and tweeting about whose name is on a toilet. He did so using what some are claiming is a faked photograph.

“Pheu Thai must clarify why the name of its MP, Wanchi, is written on portable toilets donated by Japan. #ThaiFloodEng http://pic.twitter.com/bnyb1GfO“

So will HRW also clarify with their supporters why they failed to mention Thailand using cluster munitions against their Cambodian neighbours? Will they further clarify why they won’t mount any meaningful campaign whatsoever to call for reforms or abolition of Thailand’s lese majeste law? Will HRW clarify what actions they have been taking to make sure Red Shirts receive fair trials and what support they are giving to prisoners? The news coming in today of one of the Mukdahan Red Shirts trying to take his own life (scroll down the wall for mention in Thai) while screaming his innocence is surely of huge concern to anyone with even a passing acknowledgement of human rights.

But for HRW, guess not. After all, they have to make sure that the names on toilets are sorted out first.

Another curious development in the actions of Thailand’s international human rights NGOs is Amnesty’s recent report on the Southern insurgency.

In quite a damning article by Mark Askew on the Asia Times news website, Amnesty’s Donna Guest and Ben Zawacki stand accused of siding with the Thai state (something which is not news to this writer).

Amnesty’s press conference began with a categorical statement by Donna Guest, deputy director of its Asia-Pacific division, that targeted attacks on civilians constitute “war crimes” according to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on “persons taking no active part in hostilities”.

This legal designation of war crimes in international humanitarian law is applicable to “international and internal armed conflicts such as the one in southern Thailand” and is binding on all parties to the conflict, she said. Guest went on: “Insurgents are clearly in violation of the law and must cease these attacks immediately.”

Guest said that southern Thailand’s violent situation came under the definition of an “Internal Armed Conflict” according to criteria of the intensity and duration of violence and chain-of command of the armed groups.

Amnesty’s Thailand and Myanmar researcher, Benjamin Zawacki, the writer of the report, had a somewhat different line: the use of the label “Internal Armed Conflict” and all its legal implications for enforcing accountability for war crimes was “long overdue”. He said his report raised the issue of the south “to another level”.

Despite all the legalistic certainties of its rhetoric, Amnesty’s argument came in for strong critique. One representative of southern Muslim students claimed that the charges against insurgent “crimes” were remarkably similar to those made by the Thai state. More serious were the weak foundations for identifying the warring parties in this “Internal Armed conflict”.

Amnesty are unequivocal in their claim that the targeting of civilians by the Southern insurgents amounts to a war crime. Maybe so.

But when the Thai Army was shooting completely innocent, unarmed nurses and school children last April and May, what was that?

Of course when that happened, the NGOs – such as HRW and Amnesty – painted a picture of Reds provoking the army or barely mentioned the deaths of civilians at all.

Amnesty and HRW can’t have it both ways – their own lack of transparency and their obviously unbalanced and politicised positions need clarification before they point the finger at anybody else.

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