Guns and safety: the inequities of Thai justice

On August 23 Hong Kong-based journalist Anthony Kwan Hok-chun was arrested at Suvarnabhumi for carrying a ballistic vest that, according to Thai law, is a war weapon. The bullet-proof vest, which Hock-chun brought as a precaution while he covered the Erawan Shrine bombing, was in his checked-in baggage. The same screening system that failed to detect a gun and bullets in a former police chief’s bag was able to spot the vest in the luggage of a journalist.

During the 2010 red-shirt protest, foreign journalists Hiro Muramoto and Fabio Polenghi were fatally shot in the chest in separate incidents. The perpetrators of these acts have never been identified. Muramoto and Polenghi would likely be alive today had they been wearing ballistic vests.

Kwan Hok-chun is facing a possible sentence of five years in jail and a fine of Bt50,000 for trying to leave Thailand with a defensive item incorrectly categorised as a weapon under the 1987 Arms Control Act. He is a journalist who was covering a bombing in a country known for deadly outbursts of political violence that recently resulted in the deaths of two other journalists. Kamronwit is not facing any charges for illegally transporting a firearm out of Thailand into one of the safest countries in the world.

It should be completely unconscionable to the relevant Thai authorities that these obvious miscarriages of justice and displays of legal hypocrisy have been allowed to further besmirch Thailand’s already poorly regarded legal system. Such inequities of justice have no place in a civilised society, and all efforts should be employed to ensure that those who break the law are held accountable, and nonsensical laws that may endanger people’s lives are removed from Thailand’s legal lexicon.

Roderick Livingston