Dump The Death Penalty In Thailand, Ex-Senator Urges

[miksguevara]

multiple rapist/paedophiles, genocide and large scale drug traffics all need to be put down imho with cast iron convictions of course ie

frederick west uk

moira hindley and ian brady uk

pablo esobar colombia

so not your run of the mill crims for sure

I understand your emotions

A mother see her baby is killed. Kill the murder of my baby she asks authorities.

Her other baby killed her son/daughter. She will ask for death penalty?

no mate serial killers only

[bendix]

About the topic. Phaisan Visalo is an activist against the capital punishment. Every Buddhist ? must be like him. Google him.

THAILAND:

Blood on the hands -- As 2 Cambodian sisters hope for a pardon, how deep

does Thailand's support for the death penalty run?

In the visiting area of the Klong Prem women's prison, Cambodians Montha

Khuon, 27, and her sister, Srey, a 35-year-old mother of four, stand

behind several layers of Perspex and strain to make themselves heard.

Everyone shouts here: Family and friends crowd into the booths, leaning

close to scratchy speakers. When guards cut the microphones at the end of

the strictly enforced, 20-minute visiting period, Montha is left mouthing

words in mid-sentence, trying to explain how she and her sister came to be

on death row.

While government and police tactics during the "war on drugs" _ including

an alleged 2,500 extrajudicial killings and disappearances _ have received

much attention in the local and international press over the past few

years, the legal administration of the death penalty in Thailand has

largely been absent from national discussion. However, when a Thai

delegation appears before the United Nations Human Rights Committee in

Geneva tomorrow and on Wednesday to answer 26 human-rights queries,

several will relate directly to the way that the death penalty has been

applied here in hundreds of cases like the Khuons.

During the mid-1990s, Montha Khuon ran a small shop in the market near the

Cambodian border in Had Lek, Trat. In interviews conducted during prison

visits by the Bangkok Post and Forum-Asia, a regional human-rights

organisation based in Bangkok, the Khuon sisters said that in 1997 Montha

was approached by a soldier who asked her to contact a drug dealer on his

behalf. Montha agreed, she said, because another soldier had run up a

100,000-baht debt at her shop, and she was hoping to recoup some of her

losses.

On October 7, 1997, the soldier who had contacted Montha carried five

plastic bags full of pills into the bedroom of Srey's house with the help

of 2 men, the sisters say. The men promptly placed the women under arrest.

"I wasn't afraid then, because I knew those bags weren't mine," recalls

Srey. "I became very angry as the process went on and I realised the

severity of the charge." It was the sisters' first offence. Their

14-year-old brother and Srey's husband, Thai national Bunchu Kesee, were

also arrested, but the brother was later released.

A document obtained by Forum-Asia, that draws on court records, says that

according to the police, the soldier who approached the Khuon sisters was

a "spy", or informant, who organised the drugs bust. Police claim they

came to the house as undercover agents and saw Montha, Srey and Bunchu

exchange 3 million baht in cash for 100kg of amphetamine pills.

The defendants were sentenced to death on April 3, 2001. Last August they

lost their final appeal to the Supreme Court. Their only remaining chance

to avoid execution is a royal pardon.

>From January 2001 to December 2003, the height of the Thaksin

administration's "war on drugs", the number of people convicted of capital

crimes tripled to nearly 1,000, according to Amnesty International, a

figure also cited in a report by the European Union-funded International

Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the local Union for Civil Liberty.

Wasant Panich, a member of the National Human Rights Commission, says that

the Thaksin administration's fixation on blacklists, quotas and timetables

during the "war on drugs" has had a dramatic effect on the way that

capital cases were prosecuted and sentences meted out in the last few

years.

"Setting targets and deadlines puts pressure on officials," Wasant says.

Under normal circumstances the police know that they should wait for

enough hard evidence before pressing charges, "but under the 'war on

drugs' policy they skipped the waiting part, and this caused a lot of

problems". Courts had to dismiss too many hastily brought cases due to a

lack of solid evidence, he says. The policy may also have pressured

officials into resorting to "irregular" methods, such as planting

evidence.

"We got consistent reports of police beatings, and of people signing

confessions admitting to trafficking drugs in an attempt to bargain for a

lighter sentence," says Siobhan Ni Chulachain, an Irish barrister and one

of the authors of the FIDH report, which also raises other concerns,

including 24-hour shackling of prisoners, inadequate defences for people

who aren't able to afford their own legal representation, and no

requirement for the police to notify detainees of their right to a lawyer.

Still, executions in Thailand are surprisingly rare. No one has been put

to death since December 2003, when 4 people - 2 men and a woman convicted

of drug trafficking and a man convicted of murder 2 were given lethal

injections 2 months after the official method of execution was changed

from death by shooting.

Royal pardons (commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment) may be

granted to individual applicants, or en masse to mark a special occasion,

as happened last August on Her Majesty the Queen's 72nd birthday. In the

last 2 years His Majesty the King has pardoned around 52 prisoners.

Thaksin's 1st "war on drugs" enjoyed widespread support. Nathee

Chitsawang, director-general of the Department of Corrections, cites the

popularity of the death penalty as one reason for keeping it. He says that

while he himself would like to see the day arrive when Thailand does not

need the death penalty, "now we still have too much crime. As a society we

are not as mature as places like Europe".

A survey conducted in 2000 by the Poll Research Centre of Rajabhat

Institute Suan Dusit, found that 91.5 % of the population believes that

Thailand should retain the death penalty.

But 5 years on, Thai society seems more divided over the issue, says

Thammasat law professor Kittisak Prokati. Opinions tend to break down

along socio-economic and educational lines. Buddhism still holds

significant sway over the culture, and Buddhism prohibits killing of any

kind, including by the State.

It's "out of the question", says Phra Phaisan Visalo, a respected monk and

noted writer on Buddhism. Phra Phaisan tells a story from the Jataka about

a previous life of the Buddha: The young prince had learned from his

father that one of the duties of a king was to order executions, so he

pretended to be deaf and mute so he wouldn't have to succeed to the throne

and take on that responsibility.

"Killing is bad for the killer," Phra Phaisan says. "Hatred and violence

can not be eliminated by violence."

That's why His Majesty is so careful about reviewing death-sentence

appeals, says Kittisak; he understands that the punishment is irrevocable.

Not all of Phra Phaisan's fellow members of the Sangha agree with his

stance. The Matichon newspaper reported that in September 2003, a popular

monk from the Northeast, Luang Por Khoon Parisutto, told Thaksin, "The sin

from killing a ya ba dealer is the same as from killing one mosquito.

Nothing to be afraid of."

In fact, Thais have long had a healthy fear of taking human life in the

name of justice. During the Ayutthaya period, criminals arrested for

stealing or killing were sent to the victim's family, who decided whether

the offender should be put to death or given a chance to redeem himself by

becoming a monk. In almost all cases, Kittisak says, the family chose to

pardon the criminal. In 1435, methods of execution included cracking open

the skull and filling it with red-hot pieces of metal, but by 1934 Prime

Minister Phraya Phahol Polphayuhasena proposed to his Cabinet that the

death penalty - carried out by beheading at the time - be repealed. It

wasn't, but the method of execution was declared "clearly inhumane". It

was changed to firing squad and an effective moratorium was put in place

until 1950. Prior to the change to lethal injection in 2003, the

executioner used a screen so that he could aim his sub-machine gun at a

target rather than at the blindfolded prisoner, who, typically, was given

flowers, joss-sticks and a candle to hold. Before pulling the trigger the

executioner would ask for forgiveness from the condemned.

By and large, says Kittisak, the influence of Buddhism on Thai society

still means that while many people may want the primal satisfaction of

revenge, they maintain a profound ambivalence toward the taking of life.

Kittisak believes that contemporary Thais adopt an "it's not my business"

approach to the death-penalty issue because to engage in the process would

mean shouldering a responsibility they don't want to bear. Like their

Ayutthayan ancestors, they don't want to feel as though they have blood on

their hands.

A recent proposal by the Department of Corrections to broadcast the lives

of death-row inmates up until the time of their execution was dropped when

the public voiced its strong disapproval. Last August a 12-year-old girl

in West Bengal was one of at least six children across India who died

imitating a criminal's widely publicised execution. The girl was trying to

show her younger brother how the man had been hanged.

Kittisak disagrees with the notion that the death penalty deters crime.

"All of the scientific research shows that it is clear - that the only

reason for the death penalty is revenge.

"The question is, 'Do all Thais really want revenge?"'

There is also the possibility of error. Since 1976, when the US Supreme

Court re-instated the death penalty (the same court had declared it

unconstitutional in 1972), at least 100 people awaiting execution have

been released after evidence emerged proving their innocence - 12 because

of DNA evidence.

In 2003, 2 days before leaving office, the conservative governor of the

state of Illinois, George Ryan - strongly supportive of the death penalty

when he was elected - cancelled court orders to execute all 167 men and

women on death row after a number of investigations by journalists

convinced him that the system was flawed.

A number of NGOs, including Amnesty International and the Cambodian rights

group Licadho, have petitioned His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej on the

Khuon sisters' behalf. King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia has also sent a

letter. "The Royal Government of Cambodia has attached great interest to

this case," says Cambodian Ambassador Ung Sean. "We don't want to see

Cambodians executed. We have no death-penalty law." The envoy says that

had the Cambodian embassy been made aware of the Khuon sisters' arrest in

1997, it would have sent officials to help them. Cambodia generally asks

the Thai authorities to inform its mission in Bangkok of such arrests.

A treaty currently under consideration by the Cambodian government would

allow for extradition between Thailand and Cambodia, but it's been 2 years

since the latter country began considering that document.

In the meantime, the sisters wait. Teary-eyed, Montha says she wants a

chance to hold her young son. The psychological stress took such a toll on

Srey that she had to be medicated and became sickly and frail.

"Whenever I thought about this whole thing," she recalls, "I would shake

from anger." She's feeling a bit better now. To keep herself occupied she

sews her own clothes, and says she's trying not to get her hopes up too

much.

"I don't mind being in prison for 50 years," she says. "I just don't want

to die this way."

(source : In this Forum I cannot quote)

This is now out of date. Thailand resumed executions a couple of years ago, when two people were executed in a gruesome public spectacle in, I think, 2009 or 2010.

[bendix]

Death penalty should be abolish in every country of this world.

Agreed

which method of death penalty execution need to be abolished?

hanging, electric chair, firing, gassing or by injection

i think hanging is the most awful way of execution.

Every method. There is no humane way for the state to execute people. It is barbaric and has no place in modern society.