Another year passes.

5 years on and Somchai Neelapaichit remains disappeared. Another round of commemorations and calls for resolution, for justice, for an end to impunity. This law should be changed; this treaty should be ratified; these gross errors and defects in the investigation process should be put right. This piece of evidence must be authenticated; those phone calls must be checked out; these police officers must face disciplinary action, even if they can’t be prosecuted. In short, we must follow the rule of law and pursue justice.

But this all misses the point.

The rule of law has been followed. Justice has been done.

Not the law that you’ll find in the Criminal Code or the Constitution and not the concept of justice that you would find in a law textbook or international human rights treaties. But the real ‘laws’ and ‘justice’ as understood by those with the power to enforce the ‘law’ and administer ‘justice’. And as far as those people are concerned, the Somchai case has gone pretty well.

There are many complaints that the 5 police officers charged with Khun Somchai’s abduction were not locked up, or even kept off the force while the trial was going on. At the very least, disciplinary action should have been taken against them, say the activists.

Don’t these moaners understand that Khun Somchai’s disappearance was a disciplinary punishment? Khun Somchai broke the ‘law’ and had to be punished.

Everybody knows that torture goes on in detention cells in the south. High-ranking officers of all parts of the security services (with the exception of the Rangers) admitted as much in Amnesty International’s recent report. The Deputy Leader of the ruling Democrat Party says he has evidence of it from his days as a busybody Senator.

But Khun Somchai tried to do something about it.

Khun Somchai did not keep his mouth shut like the rest of us are expected to, and quietly go about representing his tortured clients. He didn’t even stop at bringing the allegations of torture to the attention of the court (where they can easily be dismissed by bland, bare-faced denials by senior officers, who genuinely may not know what goes on in the shed behind the kitchens because they are careful never to ask or look).

Instead, Khun Somchai decided to shout about it from the rooftops. And he made it clear that he’d had enough and he wasn’t going to stop until names were named and the bodies attached to these names were on trial themselves.

Well, that kind of behaviour is outrageous. And the forces of ‘law’ and the guardians of ‘justice’ had to put a stop to it. So they did.

They have since managed to subvert, sabotage and stonewall every investigation, they have destroyed and withheld evidence, or had it rejected by the court. And even when one of their number was convicted, not of murder, not of torture, but of ‘coercion’, and was facing a 3-year max, he walked out of the court free on bail pending appeal and has since ‘disappeared’ himself, reportedly to the growing colony of absconding Thai criminals in Cambodia.

The real system of ‘justice’ is one that makes sure that people know their just and proper place. If you have the clout, you have little to fear from the formal system of justice. And woe betide anyone ordinary who somehow gets the idea that they should have a share of this ‘justice’ or that they have equal rights under the ‘law’.

Is it any coincidence that the horror of enforced disappearance seems to fall disproportionately on minorities? These ‘others’, with their funny clothes and incomprehensible languages and inconvenient religions, have to recognize their place. They can carry on their bizarre way of life on sufferance, just as long as they don’t upset the apple cart by expecting to be treated as equal, let alone with respect.

No calls for their language to be used in schools; no complaints that the state apparatus has made such a hash of governance that they’d like to do more of it themselves; no airy-fairy twitterings about multi-culturalism that would only weaken the unity of the state and threaten the privilege of those who currently control ‘justice’ and the ‘law’.

And no amount of amendments to this or that law, or ratification of this or that treaty is likely to make much difference. The upholders of the real ‘law’ drive a coach and horses through the paper laws we already have. What difference would more words on a page have, however well-intentioned?

But suppose we decided we didn’t want this kind of ‘justice’ or ‘law’, where lawyers get disappeared, where ISOC officers can raid the office of the disappeared lawyer’s wife on the flimsiest of excuses and apparently without the knowledge or consent of their commanding officer.

What would we have to do?

It’s not much. We would just have to stop looking the other way. If we find ourselves in a tight spot, we don’t let ourselves get bullied. If someone else gets into trouble, we don’t decide it’s their problem and leave them to it.

Because if we let the perpetrators of ‘law’ and ‘justice’ treat the next person that way, it could be our turn next.