How fast do the wheels of justice turn?

On the same day that a man under the age of 60  is condemned to death in a Thai Court of First Instance, he is shackled. The shackles are welded to his ankles and are intended to remain until his execution or until the death sentence is rejected by a Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, or by a Royal Pardon. In a judgement made by the Administrative Court such shackling is illegal and prohibited by the Thai Constitution. The judgement has been appealed by the Department of Corrections, three years have passed without a response from the Appeal Court, during which time the prisoner concerned has remained shackled.
In shackling prisoners the wheels of 'justice' turn very fast indeed.
However, when prisoners benefit from a Royal Pardon, the wheels of Justice turn slowly. A recent proclamation of Commutation of Sentence, dated 11th August, allows 90 days for its implementation. Which is hardly intended to mean that a delay of 90 days is mandatory or even advisable. Prisoners are assured by well meaning officials that the shackles will be removed, perhaps tomorrow. Is this extra frustration for a prisoner who has been shackled for years necessary or tolerable?   

Conference on Prison Conditions in Thailand

As the possibility arises that Thailand will replace the death penalty with life imprisonment, we turn our attention to conditions of long term imprisonment. On 31st May UCL organised an afternoon conference on prison conditions in Thailand. What follows is a BBC report on the conference.
Prisoners in Thailand kept 'shackled and cramped'
By Vaudine England BBC News, Bangkok
An independent rights group in Thailand, the Union for Civil Liberties, has opened a campaign to improve conditions in Thailand's jails. It has issued a report on prisons which highlights overcrowding, the use of shackles and the lack of medical care. The group has campaigned against the death penalty and praises the government's promise to commute death sentences to life imprisonment.
That makes improving prison conditions even more important, it says.
Thailand's prisons are built to hold about 100,000 people - but according to the government's own figures, they are holding more than twice that number.
As a result, the conditions, says the Union for Civil Liberties, are horrendous.
People have to sleep in tight rows on hard floors. In these sleeping cells, each prisoner has an average of one square metre - as opposed to the four to six square metres described as the minimum by the Council of Europe.
Danthong Breen, chairman of the union, says the overcrowding is shocking.
"In the women's prison it's particularly bad. You have 200 women in a single cell," he told the BBC. "If one of them has to get up at night to go to the toilet, they all shift a bit and when she comes back the space is gone and she has to stand up all night.
"The level of crowding is inhuman and inhumane."
The other horror, he says, is the widespread use of shackles.
These are welded on to the ankles of long-term prisoners and are not removed, even during illness, until the sentence is served.
The United Nations has criticised the practice. The Thai foreign ministry has promised to end it. The constitutional court ruled the practice was wrong.
But the reality of the over-crowding and a ratio of warders to prisoners of about one to 45, makes the practice hard to stamp out.
Prisoners with money are able to improve every aspect of their life behind bars, Mr Breen says. But a lack of government money is holding back investment in new facilities and extra staff.
The civil liberties group suggests Thailand could look more at using non-custodial sentences. It estimates at least half of those jailed are being held for drugs offences.
And it hopes that whatever government emerges from elections next month, the promise to no longer impose the death penalty is kept.

Champion against Shackles

Shackled before Government House
On the morning of Tuesday 13th there appeared before Government House in Bangkok a 40 year old man in prison clothes, wearing shackles. His name is Benny Moafi, an Iranian and Swedish citizen; his legal campaign for prisoners on death row has already been recorded on this website. Benny has submitted the legal briefs against the permanent shackling of prisoners condemned to death. His case is a brilliant indictment of this practice and his arguments are based on Conventions of International Law ratified by Thailand, as well as on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is the first time in Thailand that a legal case has taken this dramatic approach, and Benny's arguments were studied as a test case in a recent legal workshop organized by the International Commission of Jurists in Bangkok. The Administrative Court on 15th September 2009 gave a favourable decision in the case. Unfortunately, implementation of the Court Order has been blocked by an appeal against the decision by the Department of Corrections. During the long delay for the appeal decision, the prisoner, whose case is subject of the exemplary trial, remains shackled. Benny is following the course of the appeal. However, international interest in the case is growing, and in a recent meeting with ngo representatives the Minister of Foreign Affairs has promised redress.

Benny Moafi graduated in law while himself a prisoner. He has just been released on parole after ten years of imprisonment. He has fought innumerable legal cases and complaints on behalf of other prisoners, most of whom are too poor to pay for any legal representation. One prisoner remarked that the day when Benny was himself released from prison, a statue to him should be raised before each of the prisons in Bangkok where he has served. At present he is pursuing over 200 cases in the courts.

And now he has turned to his own case, to claim that he has been wrongly imprisoned for ten years on falsified evidence. The case is a maze of Minos and the wheels of justice turn ever so slowly. At last the patience of Benny is reaching exhaustion, ten years of his life have gone by and he has ambitious legal plans to implement, if he can be truly free again. He has addressed a letter to the Prime Minister calling attention to the injustices he has suffered, as is the right of any inhabitant of the Kingdom when all else fails.
This site wishes to honour this great campaigner for justice and to support the call for justice he is now making on his own befalf.

For further details on the protest of Benny Moafi see the link on the right.