There are 708 prisoners condemned to death in Thailand, two have been executed during the last eight years. The tendency is that death sentences are being commuted to life imprisonment by Appeal Courts. But the overall number of those sentenced is not decreasing. In the last year, 53 death sentences were handed down in Courts of First Hearing, showing that a breath of change has yet to reach the judiciary.
Meanwhile, the Government has declared, in its current five year human rights programme, an intention to abolish the death penalty. So why does the awful torture of living under penalty of death, shackled and in crowded cells, separated from the slight amenities of the general prison population, still go on?
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