Bangkok
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said this week that about 700 Thai government officials were involved in dealing illegal drugs. Thaksin was defending his crackdown on drug dealing, which critics say amounts to a shoot-to-kill policy. Hundreds of suspected dealers have been killed in the past three weeks—although the Interior Ministry said most of them died in gang shootouts, not police actions. Thailand has a catastrophic rate of methamphetamine addiction as well as a corrupt bureaucracy that profits from the meth trade. Thaksin, who was elected in 2001 on an anti-drug platform, has fingered police and army officers, ministry officials, and even village elders.
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