Prisoner Rights: Death Row Reality Show Axed

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Published on Jan 17 , 2005

Justice Ministry halts plan for TV programme on the last days of inmates facing execution

The Justice Ministry pulled the plug yesterday on a plan by the Corrections Department to initiate a reality-show programme by installing Web cams in the cells of inmates on death row and broadcasting live their final moments before they are executed.

Corrections Department director-general Natthee Jitsawang unveiled the plan on Sunday and a Thai-language mass-circulation newspaper, gave the story front page treatment with promises of live broadcasts about executions. Yesterday Natthee reiterated the plan to broadcast live the lives of death-row inmates through the department’s website, but said his department did not intend to show actual executions. The broadcast would be terminated the moment that an inmate was strapped to the execution bed, he explained.

Kitti Limchaikij, deputy permanent secretary for Justice Ministry, countered that such programming would go against the grain of the law. Kitti said he thought the Corrections director-general had simply wanted to promote his department’s website.

Kitti said the website would only provide live broadcasts of visiting hours between inmates on death row and their relatives. When asked about Natthee’s plan, which he did not seem entirely familiar with, he said, “The live broadcasts of living conditions in prison and the execution of inmates could not be allowed as it would violate the constitutional rights of prisoners.

“Inmates would surely not be happy to be subject to minute-by-minute scrutiny and humiliation through the website. Although they have committed crimes, they are still human beings.”

Meanwhile, Natthee said yesterday he wanted to facilitate broadcasts of the lives of inmates on death row at a maximum-security prison to make the work of wardens more transparent to the public. “I would like to remind wardens and inmates who are secretly violating prison rules that they are being watched by outsiders all the time,” Natthee said. “Society can also bear witness to the hard conditions prevailing in prison so people outside will make sure not to end up in there.”

He said he intended to broadcast only the atmosphere before an inmate was strapped to the execution bed, not the actual moment of fatal injection. Natthee added that 65 inmates, five of them women, are currently on death row.

A well-informed source at the Corrections Department said 60 of the death-row inmates were planning to ask the Justice Ministry to cancel the live-broadcast project for fear that it might humiliate them and their families.

Surasee Kosolnawin, a national human right commissioner, agreed that it was unconstitutional to subject prisoners to live broadcasts. “Inmates have their rights to privacy, too,” Surasee said. “They have already been punished by law so they should not be punished again by society imposing further humiliation on them.”

Piyanuch Thamnukasetchai

The Nation

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PRISONS / BROADCASTING PLAN

Amnesty slams live internet showing of death row inmates

Amnesty International Thailand yesterday condemned the Corrections Department's plan to show the prison life of inmates live over the internet, including the last minutes of convicts on death row.

According to director-general of the department, Nathee Chitsawang, internet broadcasts of prison life on were intended to deter potential lawbreakers.

In a statement, the human rights watch group called on the department to review the broadcast plan, saying its intended effect would fall flat.

``We believe most lawbreakers are poor and don't have access to the internet,'' read part of the statement.

The website should be a channel for the department to show the functioning of the justice system, Amnesty said.

It said there were several ways to deter young and adult offenders and proposed psychological methods in which convicts were allowed to talk about the consequences of their crimes.

Amnesty International Thailand, which is campaigning against the death sentence, also called on the media to refrain from reporting and publishing all forms of violent punishment.

BangkokPost