U.S. Marines Teach Thailand to Use Tasers & Neurotoxin Spray

BANGKOK, Thailand -- U.S. Marines have finished training Thailand's military and police to use electroshock Tasers to inflict "intense pain," shoot a blinding neurotoxin spray, and explode non-lethal grenades, one year after Bangkok's army unleashed snipers and armored personnel carriers against an anti-coup insurrection in which 91 people died.

U.S. Marines completed their training on June 10, three weeks before a nationwide vote on July 3 to elect Thailand's next prime minister, which may threaten the future of hardline Army Chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, who played a role in the 2006 coup.

"The purpose of the NOLES [Non-Lethal Weapons Executive Seminar 2011] training is to promote the use of non-lethal equipment in peacekeeping and develop the relationship between the civilian police and military, with an emphasis on preventing and stopping human rights violations," a U.S. Marine Corps spokesman, Lt. Col. Curtis L. Hill, said on Wednesday (June 15) in an e-mail interview about the training.

"The [U.S.] Department of Defense defines non-lethal weapons as weapons that are explicitly designed and primarily employed so as to incapacitate personnel or materiel, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment," Lt. Col. Hill said.

NOLES '11 was "to improve capabilities to maintain order during civil unrest."

Marines and sailors from Special Operations Training Group (SOTG), III Marine Expeditionary Force in Camp Hansen, Okinawa, Japan, led the training in Chonburi, Thailand -- a non-NATO U.S. ally.

"The human electro-muscular incapacitation device, also known as an X26 Taser," was used by the U.S. Marines in "classes and practical application sessions," wrote Sgt. Heather Brewer on the Marines' website (http://www.marines.mil).

The website quoted U.S. Petty Officer 3rd Class Byron Fjeld, an SOTG corpsman, describing his experience of being zapped by the Taser.

"It was a pretty intense pain," he said.

"The TASER X26 transmits HEMI (Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation) impulses through the wires tethering the probes into the target individual to provide incapacitation," according to Scottsdale, Arizona-based TASER International's website (http://www.taser.com/products/military/taser-x26-ecd).

"The TASER X26 is an effective force option at distances from direct contact up to 35 feet (10.6 meters) away."

The weapon inflicts "a sophisticated pulse wave that utilizes a high voltage leading edge, to penetrate barriers such as clothing around the body, followed by a lower voltage stimulation pulse to cause Neuro Muscular Incapacitation," TASER said.

Marines also instructed Thais to use oleoresin capsicum spray -- known as OC or pepper spray because it is made from hot, edible peppers -- which the U.S. National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, defines as a "spray containing the neurotoxin capsaicin," which is the active ingredient in capsicum.

In Thailand, a "mock" version of the spray was used against "a simulated uncontrolled crowd," the Marines' website said.

Other lessons by the Marines included how fire an "M-203 grenade launcher," and load "non-lethal ammunition into a Mossberg shotgun."

The 10 days of American-Thai bilateral training, plus a three-day seminar, was also attended by representatives from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, East Timor, Tonga, Vanuatu, Vietnam, and the United Nations.

Thailand's military and police may soon be using the Americans' techniques.

On Tuesday (June 14), Gen. Prayuth voiced opposition to candidates and voters who hope the July 3 election will reverse the coup which toppled thrice-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

"If you allow the election [results] to be the same as before, you will not get anything new, and you will not see any improvement from this election," Gen. Prayuth warned the country in a televised speech, referring to previous victories by self-exiled Mr. Thaksin's candidates.

Mr. Thaksin's youngest sister, Yingluck, 43, may win on July 3, prompting fears that Mr. Thaksin will use her to seek revenge against his opponents when she becomes prime minister in a coalition government.

Others worry that if she loses, or is somehow blocked, her angry supporters could ignite fresh street violence.

Thailand's military, and some ruling politicians, appear increasingly anxious about their ally, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, losing the election to Mr. Thaksin's sister and his anti-coup Red Shirt supporters, who are officially known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship.

Their failed, nine-week insurrection in April and May 2010 included surrounding Bangkok's wealthiest intersection with bamboo barricades, enabling up to 100,000 people to squat there, crippling the economy and sparking bloody clashes.

To crush the insurrection, troops repeatedly opened fire in Bangkok's densely populated neighborhoods, and erected signs warning residents that their streets were live-fire zones where the army could shoot anyone it saw -- including one infamous street sign, misspelled in English, which read: "Life Fire Zone."

Most of the 91 people killed were civilians, resulting in the bitter divisions fueling the July 3 election campaign.

Thai analysts and media describe the Thai army as factionalized, dubbing some officers as "watermelons" because they wear green military uniforms on the outside, but inside they conceal support for the Reds.

The police are described as "tomatoes" who are much more supportive of the Reds -- figuratively red on the outside and inside.

Americans have armed, trained and used Thailand's security forces for decades, enabling the military to dominate this Buddhist-majority, Southeast Asian nation, and fight for the U.S. against Bangkok's neighbors.

During the U.S.-Vietnam War, Washington paid more than 37,500 Thai military personnel to participate alongside Americans in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1972, but that strategy failed when Communist North Vietnam achieved victory in 1975 and reunited the devastated country.

During those years, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used Thais to fight against Pathet Lao Communists in Laos in a "secret war" which the Americans also lost in 1975.

Earlier, during the 1960s, the U.S. military trained Thai security forces in counter-insurgency against perceived Communists inside Thailand, when the Thai military dropped napalm on ethnic minority hill tribes in northern Thailand.

Since 1932, army generals -- in and out of uniform -- have ruled more than half the time as prime ministers, often with harsh dictatorial power, despite being repeatedly opposed by pro-democracy street protestors who suffered during bloody crackdowns.

Bangkok is currently also locked in a worsening guerrilla war against minority ethnic Malay-Thai Islamist separatists in the south where more than 4,500 people have died since 2001.

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978. He is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism. His web page is http://www.asia-correspondent.110mb.com (Copyright 2011 Richard S Ehrlich)

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