BANGKOK—Thailand’s lawyers council will investigate allegations that a Myanmar man was tortured to death by Thai soldiers near the border between the two countries, a rights group said Thursday.
Aung Ko Ko, 37, was detained by four Thai soldiers in January 2024 in the country’s western Mae Sot district for wearing the uniform of an official Thai village security force, according to the NGO Fortify Rights.
Three of the soldiers beat Aung Ko Ko with a long wooden stick while interrogating him, leaving him bruised and bleeding nearby until he died hours later, the rights group said, citing eyewitness accounts, photos of the scene and an autopsy report.
The Myanmar man was a volunteer member of a local village patrol group in Mae Sot, Fortify Rights added.
The Lawyers Council of Thailand, which receives government funding but operates independently, providing legal aid in civil and criminal cases, said Thursday that it will conduct an independent investigation.
“We will set up a working group to look into facts and collect evidence from the relevant departments,” said council president Wichien Chubthaisong in a statement released by Fortify Rights on Thursday.
“Then we will figure out the way to help, whether it’s through civil or criminal actions.”
The Thai military has denied the allegations, instead blaming an unspecified “Karen ethnic armed group” from Myanmar for the man’s death, according to the rights group.
An ongoing conflict in Myanmar, sparked by a 2021 military coup, regularly sends civilians rushing across the 2,400-km border between the two countries.
About 90,000 refugees live in nine camps on the heavily patrolled Thai side of the border, according to the United Nations, many having escaped fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic minority armed groups.
Thai security forces have been criticized in the past for pushing boatloads of ethnic Rohingya entering Thai waters back out to sea, and for holding migrants in overcrowded facilities.
Thailand, which is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, does not distinguish between refugees and other migrants, and thousands of people live under the radar in the country.
