Pubdate: Mon, 18 Jul 2005
Source: Bangkok Post (Thailand)
Copyright: The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2005
Contact:  http://www.bangkokpost.co.th/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/39
Author: Richard Hermes
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

BLOOD ON THE HANDS

As Two 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 two 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 four people _ two men and a 
woman convicted of drug trafficking and a man convicted of murder _ 
were given lethal injections two 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 two years His Majesty the King has pardoned 
around 52 prisoners.

Thaksin's first "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 percent of the population 
believes that Thailand should retain the death penalty.

But five 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, two 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 two 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."

* With reporting by Karnjariya Sukrung.
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