Paintings of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, drawn by Fine Arts students from Pohchang Academy of Arts, are installed on the college’s perimeter wall yesterday.
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November 08, 2016 01:00 By Jakrawan Salaytoo,
Tanatpong Kongsai
The Nation
Event will allow people to savour ‘precious stories’ about His Majesty as Sanam luang attendance hits 1.7m
AUTHORITIES are preparing to stage an exhibition in honour of much-revered HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej at Sanam Luang, the main ground for mourners from across the country.
Since the King passed away on October 13, more than 1.7 million black-clad Thais headed to Sanam Luang to queue up for their turn to pay respects to their beloved monarch before his portrait over the first 15 days, and more recently before his body inside the adjacent Throne Hall at the Grand Palace.
“The exhibition will go up so that waiting people can admire the precious stories about His Majesty and his royal works,” First Army Area deputy commander Maj-General Pongsawat Pannajit said yesterday in his capacity as the deputy chief of the joint-safety operation centre.
The centre sprang into action since the demise of the King, who commanded overwhelming love and respect from his people throughout his 70-year-long reign.
Pongsawat said it was Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha’s initiative to have the exhibition set up.
According to Pongsawat, Renu Tunkachivangoon, deputy secretary-general to the prime minister for political affairs, was dispatched to consider details about the location of the exhibition yesterday. “The exhibition will be in the northern zone of Sanam Luang,” Pongsawat explained. “We are preparing the area.”
He added that more tents would be erected to accommodate the huge turnout of mourners.
Today, about 200 mahouts and 10 elephants will perform a show of loyalty to the late King in front of the Defence Ministry, which is opposite the Grand Palace.
In a related development, relevant authorities have been discussing preparations to continue providing convenience to people even though a large portion of Sanam Luang must be cleared to pave way for the construction of the royal crematorium.
Free services currently available in Sanam Luang include food and medical assistance. Mourners from the provinces can also get free accommodation in Bangkok.
Security officials have been on duty round the clock at Saman Luang. Between October 21 and November 6, a police unit based in Sanam Luang has received 83 complaints of alleged crimes. Of them, 21 related to theft and 48 to crimes against the state such as migrants’ illegal entry into Thailand and the unauthorised wearing of military uniforms.
Other complaints include public concerns about people with apparent mental problems and two alleged sexual assaults.
Prawit thanks Vientiane; extradition treaty does not apply to politics.
DEPUTY PRIME Minister Prawit Wongsuwan yesterday praised Laos’ decision to block the activities of Thai dissidents and lese-majeste offenders as requested by the Thai government, but admitted that |getting them extradited to the Kingdom for punishment remained unclear.
“It is a pleasure to know that our neighbour has provided good cooperation for the matter by not allowing those people to create trouble for us,” Prawit told reporters.
The government recently made a request for a number of lese-majeste offenders to be extradited from several states including Laos, where many Thai dissidents are believed to be hiding.
The Lao Embassy in Bangkok did not reply to a request from The Nation for comment on the matter yesterday.
Prawit, who is also the defence minister, said he had made another request to his Lao counterpart Lt-General Chansamone Chan-yalath when he was in Vientiane for the Asean Defence Ministers Meeting last week.
However, Prawit said he did not make a formal extradition request to Laos since he did not know where the fugitives were. “But that depends on our neighbour. If they can arrest them, they could be deported to us,” he said.
“But I made it clear [to my counterpart] that these people have insulted our King, so the neighbour should not allow them to do such a thing anymore,” he said.
Thailand and Laos signed an extradition treaty in 1999 but the pact cannot be enforced for the junta’s purposes due to the political nature of the lese-majeste offence. Laos is a socialist republic where insulting the monarchy is not a crime. The extradition treaty does not allow offenders to be sent home for political crime or crimes that are not listed by the contracting parties.
A source close to the matter said the Thai government did not make an extradition request in accordance with the treaty but the junta used political influence to block the movement of dissidents in a neighbouring country.
Post-2014 opponents
The authorities believe there are several groups of Thai dissidents in Laos who fled the Kingdom since the coup in 2014. They are mostly members of the red-shirt group and some are ex-communist insurgents.
Their political activities in Laos mostly centre on producing and publicising criticism of the junta and the monarchy via the Internet, notably YouTube. Programmes such as “Faiyen Channel”, “Yammy Revolution” and “Media Force” are famous among red-shirt groups.
It is said the dissidents live and work in Laos under the protection of senior local officials who have strong connections with Thai politicians.
Upon the request to Laos after the passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej in October, Lao authorities warned the Thai dissidents about risky activities and asked them to keep a low profile, at least during the grieving period. Some YouTube channels such as “Media Force” disappeared early this month, according to a viewer who closely monitors the dissident programmes.
Last week, authorities gave an ultimatum to Thai dissidents – stop the programmes and channels on social media or face extradition back to Thailand.
On Saturday, the “Yammy gozzip yam” webpage posted a statement saying the situation in and outside the Kingdom was not stable and many relevant parties urged the dissidents to refrain from publicising any material or criticism via the Internet and social media, which caused the channel to “switch off”.
October 04, 2016 01:00 By Wasamon Audjarint
The Sunday Nation
As befits his position as executive director of the Thailand Institute of Justice (TIJ), veteran judge Kittipong Kittayarak is passionate about justice.
“With good laws comes good society; but without the rule of law, good laws cannot happen. Rule of law is fundamental to all justice processes,” Kittipong tells The Sunday Nation, espousing the principle that law should govern a nation.
“It requires laws to take root in legitimate ground. It enables involved actors to gain legal immunity. It is what brings about justice.”
Kittipong describes the rule of law as “basic, but hardly measurable.
“So we’re now working to create indicators to ensure that justice will be accessible to the general public,” he says.
This is one of the major goals the TIJ is determined to achieve and it vows to promote justice research and build crime and justice capacities.
Formally established in 2011, the TIJ in fact dates back seven years before that to the development of Her Royal Highness Princess Bajrakitiyabha’s project to enhance lives of female inmates suffering from unequal gender treatment in the country’s jails.
The level of domestic success in righting those wrongs was so high that Kittipong decided to push the agenda in the international arena following his appointment as permanent secretary to the Justice Ministry. A few years later, in 2010, came the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners – or Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders – in short, the Bangkok Rules.
The TIJ functions as a semi-private organisation, government subsidised yet directly accountable to its board. With forging of the Bangkok Rules concept, the TIJ has also expanded its focus to include other fields including drug and narcotic laws and rule of law.
For rule of law, the TIJ has collaborated with the Thailand Development Research Institute in conducting research to develop a set of law indicators in line with those created by the World Justice Project, an independent organisation working to advance the rule of law globally.
The TIJ’s version would focus on criminal justice performance. To Kittipong, making this abstract concept tangible is essential so as to ensure the complex legal progress is understandable to the public. It is also a crucial step to carrying out legal reform.
“Public understanding and participation needs to be included in legal reforms,” he says. “Laws serve people – and thus we have to know what people truly want and why.”
Legal reform has long been on Thailand’s agenda, he adds, pointing out that his ideas on the reform’s significance were noted by the World Bank in 1977.
“But it could be hard to realise because the feudalism between political and justice arenas is in the way,” he says.
“That is why legal reform is needed to open broader ways for public participation.”
For laws on drugs and narcotics, Kittipong sees the need to decriminalise some cases currently considered as crimes, particularly those against individual drug users.
“More than Bt10 billion of the Justice Ministry’s budget goes to the department of corrections. There are more criminals to detain each year,” he says. “This has been going on and on. Still, drug issues haven’t improved.
“Possession of a few drug tablets can land you in jail for years. For now, drug users are equal to criminals,” he says. “Some users want to turn to authorities for addiction help but are too afraid to do so.”
The TIJ is now studying cases from a model like Portugal, whose several successes with drug decriminalisation have included a rise among voluntary drug rehab patients of almost 400 per cent.
From his experience as director-general of the department of probation, Kittipong feels that dealing with drug users with administrative measures could alleviate the situation. For instance, users agreeing to rehabilitation would be exempted from filing by court prosecutors.
Through this approach, he explains, authorities could save a large amount of resources that they could instead invest in working on root causes, like major drug dealers.
As this revamp of the law requires a thorough understanding of the situation and its ins and outs, the TIJ has brainstormed with the Justice Ministry and the Public Health Ministry to come up with the most effective approach that would largely depend on medical rehabilitation knowledge and resources.
Since its inception, the TIJ has placed feminist Bangkok’s Rules on its agenda to ensure that rounded and fair treatment toward female inmates is promoted and continued.
Adjustments to the traditional system and facilities are one thing, Kittipong says, but what is equally important is a true understanding of gender differences and conditions that would bring about proper treatment towards women in jails.
This also includes female inmates’ access to judicial rights when facing sexual abuse during detention, rights to obtain medical confidentiality and gender-specific healthcare, HIV and self-harm prevention, and steps to ensure inmates’ reintegration into society after being released.
“The Thai correction system was originally designed to deal with male inmates as there was only a limited number of female ones,” he says. “Today the gender proportion of the inmates is very different.”
Starting with a struggle, Thailand – with its ownership of the concept of Bangkok Rules – is now a learning hub for foreign officers who come to observe and learn from women’s correctional institutions in the country.
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