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Many hope that the new head, Kittipong Kittayarak, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Justice, will begin to arrange royal pardons for those who have already spent ten years or more in prison for such slights as posting mocking images of the Thai royals on the Internet.
Unfortunately for those now in prison, Kittipong seems not to have been chosen for his compassion or his embarrassment over injustice meted out to the undeserving as much as for his status-quo leanings.
It is true that the international clamor for justice for those charged with lèse majesté – or insulting the royal family – has had some impact on the kingdom’s image makers. But it is also true that the emphasis on the near-divinity of the monarchy, something Thailand’s own monarch has decried, has been given more and not less emphasis in the recent past.
With near-unanimous consensus that the monarchy is to be regarded as sacred – and indeed this is enshrined in the national charter – it is not logical to expect that the new advisory council will proceed to free what are essentially political prisoners. In fact, given past protests from the likes of Amnesty International and Reporters San Frontiers against the investigation, incarceration, and embarrassing public exposure of Thais and foreign nationals alike in lèse majesté cases, and the relative silence and counter-objections from the Thai government against these protests, it is unlikely that anyone will be released or that major changes in the judicial process will be enacted.
This is not good news for those now in prison, many of whom merely tried to exercise their legitimate right to speak out, or even to be a responsible citizen, but who fell afoul of the ultra-monarchists.
Kittipong Kittayarak, besides being a senior official in the Ministry of Justice, has established a public record of supporting the 1997 Thai Constitution, which is cited by Red Shirts, genuine democracy activists and others as the People’s Charter that should be returned to the country but which was abrogated during the 2006 ouster of elected Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The subsequent 2007 Constitution has been viewed as continuing on the path of oppression, as a document that hardly opens the way for Thai democracy to flourish.
Kittipong’s comments on the abrogated 1997 Constitution are encouraging, but whether they will translate into effective and timely reform of the lèse majesté “process” is very unclear. Thais love their independence and autonomy, and anything that smacks of foreign-led or foreign-instigated interference in the country’s institutions or values is quickly pounced upon. Yet Kittipong’s comments in his 11-page essay on implications of the 1997 Constitution on criminal justice reform were encouraging.
He wrote, “The new Constitution has created the ground rules for transforming Thailand from a bureaucratic polity prone to abuse of political rights and corruption into a more participatory one in which citizens will have greater opportunity to change their own destiny. It has set the framework of laws and administrative procedures, which promote citizen participation, protect individual liberties, restricted state’s power to infringe upon individual rights, advocate independent judiciary, and create mechanisms for greater transparent and accountable government.”
Now, coming up to five years since that Constitution was cancelled by the military – as has happened so often in the past – not only its provisions but the intellectual thinking of those who will now steer the kingdom through judicial reform – such as Kittipong – must be closely examined.
In his essay he also wrote, “Even though Thailand was able to maintain her independence during the colonial era, she was forced to quickly ‘modernize’ or ‘Westernize’ her legal system so as to be free from the curse of extraterritoriality. Caught in the rivalry between the English and the French in their colonial interests, Thailand was practically forced to adopt elements from both legal systems.”
That Thailand’s current elite and government allies will actually proceed with reform is one matter. Yet the tone of Kittipong’s writings contains hints of Thailand’s approach to all reform, legal or cultural. There still lurks oversensitivity to foreign influence, as well as a perceived need to adhere to traditional “sakdina” values to preserve national security.
Given these sensitivities any judicial reform is likely to fall far short of that expected not just by the West but by United Nations agencies who are rightfully concerned about Thailand’s harsh lèse majesté laws.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com – he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)
