Human rights activists say the disappearance of Lao community advocate Sombath Somphone is a slap in the face for the Asean Human Rights Declaration and the regional bloc's human rights agency.
Sombath: Disappeared after cops stopped him
Niran Pitakwatchara, a human rights commissioner, said the Thai government should encourage discussions about the case within the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR).
"The forced disappearance of outstanding human rights defender Sombath should be of great concern for not only Laos but for Asean as well," Dr Niran said.
The commissioner was one of the panelists at a roundtable discussion on the topic of "What Does Sombath Somphone's Abduction Signal to Asean?", held in Bangkok yesterday.
Jon Ungphakorn, a member of the National Human Rights Commission's subcommittee on civil and political rights, said similar circumstances elsewhere showed that human rights defenders could be "disappeared" by the powers-that-be.
He said this sent a signal to the people that challenging a society's rigid tenets would not be allowed.
"Sombath's disappearance is intended to suppress or threaten the emergence of civil society in that country," he said.
Mr Jon called for the dismantling of Asean's founding principle of non-interference which the bloc's members cling to like a mantra.
"The practice of non-intervention should be abolished, at least on the issues of the human rights of the Asean people, as it is does not concern issues within borders, but of a community which proclaims to be caring and sharing," Mr Jon said.
Mr Sombath, 60, who had been honoured for his work to reduce poverty and promote education in Laos through a training centre he founded, has been missing since Dec 15 last year when he left his office in Vientiane to drive home to his wife, but never arrived.
Closed-circuit camera footage from that night, which relatives have posted online, shows him being stopped by traffic police.
However, Vientiane's ambassador to Geneva Yong Chanthalangsy told UN Special Procedures officials _ independent investigators assigned by the UN Human Rights Council _ that they had been misinformed about the case and that traffic police had not taken Sombath into custody during the stop.
Pablo Solon, whose brother was among a large number of people who disappeared in Bolivia during the 1980s, said Asean people must not accept such weak explanations by the Lao officials.
"The state authorities are obliged to give an explanation _ who were the traffic police involved and why did they stop the activist. The state security in that country must be held responsible for this obvious abduction," said Mr Solon, executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.
Angkhana Neelapaijit, director of the Justice for Peace Foundation, said unless enforced disappearance is stipulated as a crime, the region will only be making an empty boast in its claims to be a community that cares for human rights.
"The cases of Sombath and my husband are similar, a threatening signal to those defending and fighting for the rights of others," she said.
Ms Angkhana's husband Somchai, a Thai-Muslim lawyer and human rights activist, disappeared in 2004.