Activists call on govt to abolish capital punishment

“Abolition in practice is not a certainty. Abolition in practice should not become an aim in itself,” the rights activist explained. He attended a two-day international conference organised by the Justice Ministry’s Department of Rights and Liberties Protection, which ended on Friday.
Breen said that on average, at least one person a week is sentenced to death in Thailand, and more and more of them are people caught for insurgency-related crimes in the deep South.
Even though the last time a prisoner was executed in Thailand was in 2009, capital punishment has not been removed from law. However, the aim to do that was included in the country’s first human-rights master plan.

too many on death row
Natee Jitsawang, deputy director of the Thailand Institute of Justice, said there were some 67 prisoners on death row – most for drug-related crimes. In Thailand, capital punishment can be applied to 55 offences – a number that is far too large, the forum was told.
Roseann Rife, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific Programme, said that given this, Thailand needs to “move swiftly and decisively” to end the death penalty. She said public opinion was rarely in favour of abolishing the death penalty until abolition is passed into law. So, it was necessary for activists and the government to take the lead.
Rife noted that for the first time in history, no convicts in the Asean region were executed last year –even though Malaysia regularly sentences even small-time drug offenders to death.
Koren S Gomez Dumpit, director of the Philippines’ Government Linkages Office Commission on Human Rights, said research has shown that it is usually the poor who end up getting sentenced to death because most of them cannot afford proper legal representation.