Pvt Somchai Si-ueangdoi is from the Karen ethnic group and from Chiang Mai. He decided to serve in the military to earn money to support his mom and sister after his dad passed away.  About two years of conscription, Pvt Somchai was allegedly beaten to death. Like many other cases related to torture in the barracks, the court dismissed the case. 

Thai national identification card of Pvt Somchai Si-ueangdoi Photo credit:  Voice from Thais 

On 31 May 2016, Ratchada Civil Court read the verdict dismissing the case of Suda Si-ueangdoi v. Ministry of Defence, the First Defendant; the Royal Thai Army, the Second Defendant; and the Office of the Prime Minister, the third Defendant for a tort claim. Suda Si-ueangdoi demanded a remedy for the violation of the rights to life, physical integrity or mental integrity on behalf of her son, a conscript who died on an active duty at Kawila Military Camp in Chiang Mai, allegedly as a result of torture. The Court ruled that the testimonies from the mother and sister of the deceased were hearsay evidence, based on what they heard from the deceased. However, the Court heard that a physician, who served as the defence witness and who treated the deceased, was a significant and credible witness. The Court concluded that Pvt Somchai died from pneumonia and influenza and that he was not beaten. Hence, the death was not a tort claim.  The Court also ruled that military officials exercised due care in the treatment of Pvt Somchai as their subordinate. Thus, the Court concluded that the treatment was not an act of omission from severe and undue negligence. The Court ruled that the three defendants were not liable for a remedy to the plaintiff, and that the case be dismissed and all fees vested with the State. The plaintiff’s attorney intends to appeal.

The Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF) stated that the incident happened during 21-23 January 2014. Pvt Somchai Si-uenangdoi, 20, a conscript at Kawila Military Camp in Chiang Mai, called his family by phone, allegedly recounting that he had been subjected to ill-treatment; his family testified to this information in court.  Pvt Somchai claimed that he was beaten by three army personnel who covered his head with a metal bucket and beat him about 20 times on his head, back and chest. Subsequently, on 28 January 2014, Pvt Somchai was taken to Kawila Army Camp Hospital because of a cough, pharyngitis, laboured breathing, exhaustion, and profuse sweating. Medical personnel at the Kawila Hospital examined him and transferred him to Theppanya Hospital in Chiang Mai because of the severity of his symptoms and the possibility of inflammation. Somchai passed away on 29 January 2014 at 10.40 am. The autopsy was conducted by doctors at Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital. The autopsy result concluded that the body did not have any wounds and the cause of death was H1N1 bird flu infection and pneumonia.  However, during his treatment at Theppaya Hospital, there were twenty flu patients and Pvt Somchai was the only person to pass away from the flu. His family said Pvt Somchai was in good health and that he would not have died unless he had been tortured. The family was confident that the beating directly contributed to his weakened body, thus he was more susceptible to inflammation.  

Suda Si-ueangdoi, Pvt Somchai’s mother.   (Photo from Voice from Thais)

Pvt Somchai’s Mother’s Comments After the Verdict.

Suda Si-ueangdoi is a 57-year-old member of the Pakayaw (Karen) ethnic minority. She did not attend the verdict reading. On that day, she was farming her rice fields at her Chiang Mai home. Prachatai reporter reached her by phone. She speaks only Karen. Her poor Thai requires the use of an interpreter, who lives near her.  She apologized for keeping us waiting, as she had just walked back from the rice fields and from tending her cattle. The distance from her house to the rice fields, even in the dry season, still requires many minutes crossing hills on foot.

Suda Si-ueangdoi had a son — Somchai Si-ueangdoi, who was a little over twenty years old, and a daughter. In 2012, her husband passed away suddenly and her son became the main provider for the family. He decided to volunteer for recruitment to earn a salary to continue the construction of a house which was begun by his father, and to buy a motorcycle to get to the rice fields and take his mother to see the doctor.  Suda suffered from depression, and after her husband died the symptoms seemed to worsen. She had to borrow her neighbour’s motorcycle to travel to and from her treatment in the city twice a month. 

Somchai was recruited in May 2012. He would have been discharged from the army at the end of April 2014 if he had not passed away on 29 January 2014. It was only three months before he would have returned to his mother and sister.

On 23 January, Somchai called his mother, telling her he had a fever and body pain and asking if she could conduct a healing ritual based on their ethnic belief.  Suda replied that she would try if she could and suggested that Somchai also take fever relief medication.  He said he had taken some but it did not work. After she hung up, she had another call. This time, her daughter answered. She surreptitiously listened to their conversation and figured out that Somchai had been beaten. Earlier, she was always concerned that her son would be beaten because she heard that any army conscript who went back to the camp late would be punished.

After joining the army, Somchai transferred 5,000 baht to his mother every month. His latest home visit lasted two weeks before he returned to the military camp on 16 January 2014, two weeks later than the permitted period. Somchai told Suda that he did not have enough money for the bus fare back to the military camp, because he had not received any salary since August.

After 24 January 2014, Somchai called home several times each day. He asked how to treat pain from large bruises in the middle of his back.  His fever did not improve and the bruises on his back made Suda feel more concerned and even more upset. She asked why he did not go to the hospital at the Camp, as Kawila Army Camp has a hospital in the compound.  Somchai said he did not have the nerve to go to a military hospital. He said he would wait until his condition improved and request leave for treatment at a hospital near his home. Eventually, he died on 29 January 2014.

“I regret that I trusted the army and his supervisors. I thought the army camp would call me. I thought it was like a school, where a teacher would call a parent in case a student was sick. Then the parents can visit or the sick would be taken to hospital. I thought the supervisors would have taken him to hospital. But no one informed me that my son was in a serious condition. I was contacted on the phone only when his condition was irreversible.”

Suda said she felt guilty that she did not ask who was responsible for the ill-treatment. She asked about his symptoms every day. After her husband passed away and her son joined the army, she has been more absent-minded. The crux of the event was when she could not be convinced that her son had died from a fever. After Somchai died, she went to Kawila Army Camp to collect his personal belongings, and learned that two privates sleeping next to Somchai in the dormitory did not have any symptoms of fever and seemed to be in good health. She believes that there has been a cover-up, as the autopsy indicated that Somchai’s body did not have any wounds from an assault.

After learning the autopsy result, Suda, who earns on average 1,000-2,000 baht a month from paddy farming and basketry, borrowed 6,300 baht from her neighbours to seek justice in Bangkok. 

“I do not want any compensation. I want other people to know that they cannot trust an Army Camp. I was wrong to trust them. I want other people whose sons were conscripted to know, so they will not have to suffer like my son suffered.”

Suda affirmed her quest for justice.  The pain of losing her son, the family’s breadwinner, without any justice motivated her to seek a legal action, despite the difficulty, during a time of military domination, of identifying witnesses. She is steadfast about carrying on, not just for her own sake, but for other people’s sons, whose lives are lost in the same manner.  Even though the court dismissed her case, she would continue the fight, with her attorney and other people who have supported her. 

Hijabs and football? Compatible! 

Deep South women lack spaces to exercise and take care of their health

Every year during the month of Ramadan, large crowds of people pass near the border crossing at Tak Bai, going to market to purchase food for the evening meal that breaks the daily fast and crossing the Taba checkpoint into Malaysia to purchase new clothes in preparation for Hari Raya, celebrating the end of Ramadan.

Yaena Salaemae in front of the Tak Bai police station, site of the Tak Bai incident

As the sun rose on October 25, 2004, the 12th day of the Ramadan fast, the people of Tak Bai District began their normal routines. But this day was to be different. In the morning, a group gathered in a demonstration calling for justice for six Village Security Team members who had been detained. A large number of people who lived nearby went to watch the demonstration, and when those farther away heard what was happening many came in cars and trucks to watch. They had no idea that the events of the day would change their lives forever.

In spite of compensation payments, every day, every home, every family continues without justice being done.

Yaena Salaemae: Her son detained and charged, her husband murdered 

Yaena Salaemae at the site of the Tak Bai incident

A resident of Badomati Village in Tak Bai District, about 12 km from the police station, Ms Yaena was sewing at home when people began to talk about a demonstration near the border crossing at Tak Bai. Yaena and her son, Muhammad Maruwasi Malong went to see what was happening. After arriving at the site, they were unable to leave: “I was sewing, about nine in the morning, when I heard about the demonstration and went just to have a look. My son and daughter went too. We just wanted to see what was going on, but then were not able to leave. The leaders of the demonstration said we couldn’t leave. Many more people drifted in as the day wore on, with only one pathway in and out. Officials came and barricaded the path so there was really no way out.” 

At the demonstration, the men were gathered at the front, women behind, at the children’s playground near the river, separating Yaena from her son.

“The officials said that they would let us go home at three in the afternoon, but at three they began shooting bullets. And tear gas. They shot into the air and close to crowd. Some people fled into the river” Yaena reports.

Once everyone was lying down and the smoke from the violence had cleared, officials separated the women and sent them home. Those who were injured were sent to hospital. The men were ordered to remove their shirts and their hands were tied behind their backs. They were thrown onto the back of trucks, piled on top of one another like logs.

“I went home without my son. My eldest son coordinated with the lawyer. I went to Ingkhayut Army Base, but was not allowed to see the prisoners. They didn’t let me past the gate. The demonstration was on Monday, Tuesday we didn’t know whether my boy was alive or dead. Wednesday, he called home and we asked about the sons of other families that we knew, putting together a list of those who were still alive. A week after being detained he was released on bail but some were held for as long as 45 days. Only after he was released did we learn that he was piled on the truck bed in the second layer of bodies, and that the soldiers walked on top of them and beat them. He didn’t eat or drink for two days.”

Though her son was bound and thrown on the truck in a human woodpile, he was fortunately not injured. Unfortunately, he was accused as a leader of the violence and charges were pursued against him along with 57 others for no known reason.

Her son was required to report to the court weekly and other villagers were impacted in various ways. The sons of some were killed. Some were injured. Yaena contacted journalists, human rights activists and members of NGOs, notably, Soraya Jamjuree, Angkhana Neelapaijit and Pechdau Tohmeena, gaining an understanding of the judicial process and of the necessity of calling for compensation. From that time, though she has only a fourth-grade education, Yaena has never ceased to call for justice for those who were impacted by the violence.

“I talked with the others. At the time, no one could accept what had happened. They were hurting and angry. They wanted revenge and to fight. I tried to dissuade them from anger and revenge. From retaliation. I said we were wronged, but tried to make them understand, tried to make the others understand the officials. I said that this is a test from Allah. But some said that a test like this was no good. It’s unacceptable.”

After fighting the case for nearly two years, the government of Prime Minister Gen Surayud Chulanont issued an apology for the Tak Bai and Krue Se incidents and withdrew all charges. But that was only after two years in court. Yaena’s son and 59 others who were unjustly charged each received 30,000 baht in compensation.

“The inquiry into the deaths concluded that they suffocated. True enough. But the people are not satisfied; they want to know, they want the court to tell them why they suffocated.”

Yaena says that when people got the compensation and agreed not to sue the state, most were more or less satisfied and too worn out to press the case further. “I could do no more because the people wouldn’t fight further. They felt they couldn’t because that would mean going back to court for a few more years and they didn’t want trouble from the military.”

Yaena’s untiring, unceasing calls for justice attracted official suspicion that she was supporting juwae (the Patani freedom fighters). She came under constant surveillance and was twice invited to the military base under the Emergency Decree. “But I didn’t go. I didn’t even know who or what juwae was. I only went to school through grade four and I haven’t studied at a pondok (traditional boarding school teaching Islam).

“Since that time the police and soldiers surrounded and searched our house on a regular basis. In the first ten years, groups of them came over ten times. As the anniversary of the incident approached, the soldiers would come and search like they were trying to intimidate me, in order to prevent any [political] activity. Whenever anything happened close by they would also surround and search the house. The most extreme was in 2014 when they said there was an outlaw at my house and a hundred of them searched our home. But they haven’t come for the last two years.”

But that was not her hardest test. In 2007 Yaena’s husband, Mayuso Malong was shot dead at a roadside teashop. Witnesses, evidence and the reports of bystanders indicated that the killer was a member of the Volunteer Guards, affiliated with the military, with the purpose of ending the movement for justice through intimidation. However, the level of fear was such that no one dared come forward as a witness and no one was convicted. 

“Allah doesn’t want me to fear. I help the people. I don’t know whether or not that earns merit, but my husband’s life has already been sacrificed. My children say I’ve done enough, but I ask them if I don’t continue, who will the people depend on? I won’t stop. I ask Allah for the blessing of a long life so that I can care for my children in place of their father. And that takes away my fear of the officers. When my husband died, the soldiers came to the house and I told them that the killer was wearing a military uniform. But they said that outlaws can dress like that too.” Even though her husband was not well known because he didn’t mingle much, the townspeople came to the home every day for 40 days to show their sorrow. 

Hayiding Maiseng: Bullet in the back, through the chest 

Hayiding Maiseng reports that soldiers “visited” him at home so often he became used to it.

Sixty year old Hayiding Maiseng was 47 at the time of the incident. He wasn’t interested in going to the demonstration that morning but passed through the area on his way to buy food for iftar, the evening meal to end the fast. “I wasn’t going to the demonstration but passed by on my way to Taba to buy food for iftar. I wondered why so many people were gathered there and went to see what was going on. That was about 11 in the morning. But after going in I couldn’t get back out. There was a checkpoint blocking the exit. About three in the afternoon shots were fired toward the demonstrators. People ducked and I ran for shelter behind the blocks where they were planting trees, but was hit. I regained consciousness the next morning in Pattani Hospital.

“I don’t know why I was sent so far away, all the way to the hospital in Pattani. Maybe because they wanted me to die. But I didn’t die. There were seven others who had been wounded at the same hospital. They had all been shot. Our relatives tried to visit, but were not allowed to visit for about three days. The soldiers didn’t let us go anywhere. Afterwards, I was investigated continuously. When I finally had visitors, I learned that many from my village had died.”

Bullet scar on Hayiding Maiseng’s back. The bullet exited his chest.

After his wounds had healed, Hayiding went to work in Malaysia for three months. During that period soldiers came to his house many times, nearly every day, it could be said. Immediately after he got back home, they drove up with three armoured vehicles to his house. “When they arrived I offered them coconut milk and cool water as a way of building friendship with the soldiers. They came so often that we came not to fear them.”

Although he is more or less satisfied with his 500,000 baht compensation, justice has not been done: “Before, I wanted the military to be punished, but now, I don’t know what I can do.”

Mueyae So: Grieving mother whose son died in great pain

A 56 year old housewife, Mueyae So lost her eldest child, still quite a young man. 

Beginning in the morning, villagers who had passed the Tak Bai border crossing and returned home told others that a great number of people had gathered for some unknown reason near the crossing. She had her son go and see what was happening, and in a little while followed other villagers to have a look. But having gone into the area of the demonstration she was unable to leave. At three in the afternoon the demonstrators were dispersed with water cannon and bullets. Like Yaena, Mueyae was with the women in the back. She ducked down into the river to escape the bullets and became completely soaked and dishevelled.

Mueyae So grieves for her son every Month of Ramadan

Once the officials gained control of the situation, they called the women to come up out of the water and had the men sit in front of the police station. Concerned for her son Mueyae tried to look for her son, but wherever she looked she could not see him. Towards sundown the soldiers took her home.

“I thought my son had just been detained but that he would be safe. I thought that having detained him they’d take care of him. I wasn’t really worried. In the morning the villagers began saying that people had died in the military camp, but I didn’t know that my boy had died. His father and nearly the whole town, including the village head went to look for him but didn’t find him and returned home. On the third day they went to the intersection where the names of those who had died had been posted and someone saw my son’s name. 

“We went to identify bodies at the army base. At first I couldn’t recognize him because the bodies were all discolored. Finally I knew which body was my son’s by a mark on his wrist and his red towel. There were three bodies from our village and we brought them back home together. I didn’t how he died. There were no bullet holes, but the body was black and blue and bloated.

“I couldn’t explain it. I only knew that the state did this and feared for my family. Feared that my other two sons would be harmed or killed too. I felt rage and wanted revenge and wondered how we could coexist with the state this way.”

She reports that soldiers came to her home so many times she can’t count. They asked questions like, “How many people are here?”, “Who is here?” They often asked whether someone else had come to stay with them and who she was hiding. Often soldiers just walked past the house and she felt afraid and understood them to be trying to intimidate her.

The family received 7.5 million baht in compensation, but it is not over for her. The death of her eldest son continuously weighs on her heart. “I understand that death is final. That he won’t come back. But for me it is not over. The court ruled that he died of suffocation. I’m not satisfied. Why did he suffocate? If they hadn’t been piled on top of one another like that he shouldn’t have died. Even more, their hands were tied and soldiers stood on top of them too. 

“I want a new ruling, to revive the case. But I can’t fight. I’m just an ordinary villager. If I tried to fight nothing would change.”

Mueyae says that over the last 12 years it’s been mental torture whenever the Month of Ramadan comes around. She can’t stop thinking of her son. She avoids images of the Tak Bai incident on the internet and the news because they make her think of her dead son and grieve. She also avoids going near the site. 

Maliki Dolo’s left leg 

Though the Tak Bai incident left him disabled, Maliki Dolo smiled throughout the interview, because, he says, he has to live with it and live his life.

That morning, 28 year old Maliki Dolo had no inkling that his strong youthful body would be disabled, that he would never again be able to work or even to take care of himself.

“That morning, about nine-thirty, I went to the border crossing. I was going to buy new clothes for Hari Raya. I saw a large group of people and went to have a look. I didn’t think it would be like this.

“After just a little while I tried to leave, but couldn’t. They had closed off the way in and out. I didn’t know what to do so I went to wait by the river and looked at the fish. Whatever. When they broke up the demonstration my forehead was cut open by a rock from a slingshot. I went down to the water to wash the cut but a smoke grenade was fired and I closed my eyes and crouched down. I stayed down for a long time and when I wanted to get up they wouldn’t let me. The soldiers said anybody that gets up will be shot. They were shooting into the crowd. I turned my head and saw a person next to me hit in the face and go silent.”

When the soldiers had taken control of the situation, they ordered the men to remove their shirts. They tied their hands behind their backs and ordered them to lie down and keep their heads down. 

“The soldiers ordered us to get onto the truck bed, but with our hands tied we couldn’t get up on the truck so they took us one at a time and threw us onto the truck like blocks of ice.”

The demonstrators were thrown onto the truck beds in tangled layers. The soldiers’ GMC was too narrow for them to lie at full length and Maliki says that his legs had to be drawn up the whole time from Tak Bai to the Ingkhayutthborihan Army Base. The 150 km trip took over six hours.

“During the trip, I heard someone below me breathing loudly, like there was water in his nose and I figured it was blood. I had heard it from the time we were first thrown onto the truck. Some were groaning loudly and the soldiers standing on top of us said that if the moaning didn’t stop they’d stop the truck. I tried to release air for him, but after a moment I didn’t hear his breathing anymore. Someone above said, “I can’t take this,” then was silent.

“ I felt ... On the truck I was hot, in pain, exhausted, couldn’t breathe. If I started crying I wouldn’t be able to stop. I just thought, I’m not going to cry; I’ll just bear it and think of nothing but Allah.”  

As a result of the long period stacked on the truck bed with others piled on top, Maliki is unable to stretch out his fingers and he has only minimal use of his hands. Simply eating, he says, the spoon slips from his fingers, making him recall the Tak Bai incident at every meal.

“At some point, I lost consciousness. I don’t know when. I came to 21 days later in Songkhla Nakharin Hospital in Hat Yai. I woke up to discover my leg had been amputated.”

The doctor amputated the leg because the muscles had died and decayed as a result of long-term pressure. They then cut decaying flesh from both arms, leaving him unable to manipulate his fingers normally. Much of the remaining muscle is paralyzed, including the knee of his remaining left leg and the muscles for stretching out his hands. He has no feeling on the back of the hands and he can barely move his fingers. There is no strength in his right hand so that he cannot use it. He can move his left hand only a little.

Beyond that, he suffers from kidney disease as a result of not being able to break his fast that day and lack of water. Lack of water for an extended period creates a sodium imbalance in the kidneys and many dialysis treatments are required before the kidneys return to normal. Many of the demonstrators that day also developed kidney disease.

Maliki was unable to continue at vocational school and is unable to work. He helps his mother every day now, planting small vegetables, and depends on his mother’s daily care.

The 2.5 million baht in compensation he received helped somewhat and he purchased a four-wheeled motorcycle with which he can travel on his own.

Maliki spends part of the reparation money to buy a big bike.

Asked whether he had received justice, he smiles and answers with a laugh, “I can’t really answer. I want them punished. But I can’t do anything about it.”

He says that he will never forget what happened: “How could I forget? That was the worst event of my life and every day when I eat, if the food is greasy and just a tiny bit of grease gets on the spoon, I can’t hold onto it.”

Since the incident, he has only gone near the police station once, to go to Tak Bai Hospital to make his compensation claim. Other than that he tries not to go near there, though sometimes a vehicle he is traveling in goes past.

Maliki smiled throughout his interview with Prachatai. He explained, “I have to smile. I have to continue my life and have to smile. If I become depressed, I’ll just stay depressed.”

In a bid to lure investors, Thailand’s junta plans to evict some 300 citizens from their homes to construct a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the southern province of Songkhla. While the military’s development plans could boost a stalled economy, the country’s poor are paying the price.

The junta is attempting to make Thailand a business hub of mainland Southeast Asia, approving billions of baht in new infrastructure in the process. In May 2015, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) issued NCPO Order No. 17/2015, turning large areas along the country’s borders into SEZs where industry deregulation and tax cuts are offered to lure investors.

Sainub Yamanya, a 45-year-old local fisherman of Haad Son, who opposes the construction of Jana Deep Sea Port

Why is it hard for us to imagine what the sex lives of disabled people are like? Will they have children? Have they ever had boyfriends or girlfriends? This may reflect the old saying that “sex” and “disability” are completely separate from each other. Many disabled people have never received sex education; some are kept away from it; some are afraid because they don’t know anything. The result is that many of the disabled and their families choose to bury this topic away as deep as possible, with many avoiding the problem altogether through sterilization.

How serious is sterilization? Many disabled women have been sterilized without them being aware of it and many have had it done because of one-sided information. Many others have had it done because their families persuaded them. Many who may want to become mothers after they had been sterilized, then find that it was widely recommended that young disabled women should be sterilized. Many women have been sterilized soon their periods start, because it is thought that sterilization will prevent these women from producing further disabled offspring.

Still, sterilization does not prevent sexual abuse, as is widely believed. In fact, it may even lead to sexual repeated abuse that no one knows about even though in reality, abuse is an offence which should never occur in the first place.

Some disabled people choose to live by themselves, but still must remain alert for fear of sexual abuse like the news they see on TV.

I crisscrossed all over Nakhon Pathom for many days in the belief that everyone is equal and everyone has rights over their own body. I travelled through the bustling city and into the quiet calm of Bang Len, Khlong Yong, and Bang Rakam to investigate and understand the perspective and mood of humanity that hasn’t been divided by disability.

These places helped dispel the popular questions: “Why does someone disabled need to get pregnant?” and “If you’re disabled, how can you raise a child?” among others.

“Dejection”

It’s late afternoon on a working day. I travel along a winding road alone, through Nakhon Pathom city aiming for Bang Len District. Most of the surrounding area there is forest, and once in a long while I’ll see a house or two. Nusra Num-euam’s house, my destination, is in the middle of rice fields. Short grass covers the area with a bright green. The red earth road is cracked because of the stifling heat. We sit and talk on the stone bench by her house. There are traces of a fish pond and pigpen, which have both been the household’s basic livelihood.

Twenty years ago, the hearts Nusra’s parents were bursting at the birth of their healthy baby boy into their financially stable household. Not long after their joy they found something unusual when their son didn’t make eye contact, didn’t walk, didn’t talk, and didn’t respond to any stimuli. But even so, the doctors told the couple to try for another child in the hope that the second child would not have any disability and could support their parents and elder brother.

Nusra Num-euam and her family

Nusra, the daughter that was expected, is now 24. She lives with her diabetic parents and a mentally disabled older brother. She has learning disabilities and can speak slowly with a few, short words. Phraiwan Num-euam, her mother, tells Prachatai that her son and daughter are different. Her son is cannot help himself at all and cannot even feed himself, and spends the day sitting and staring into space or moving himself by crawling. However, her daughter is slow but able to study at school. If Nusra had not had seizures at age nine, then she would have become childlike as she is today.

“When I found out my first child was disabled, I told the doctor to sterilize me. I didn’t want another disabled child. But the doctor told me he couldn’t, and to have another child who might be able to take care of me in my old age. But she’s disabled too. If I knew it would be like this, I would better have had myself sterilized myself at the beginning,” said the mother.

Nusra is able to speak a little to communicate. She is a young woman who loves to look good, dress up, put on makeup, and collect bags and shoes. Often she changes her outfit several times a day, trying things on and mixing and matching pieces. Sometimes, she changes her clothes where people can see. This really worries her parents, who are afraid of both gossip from the neighbours and worst of all that their daughter will be sexually abuse out of her own naivety.

“As a mother, I’m often dejected. But she’s been born, so we have to take care of her. I wanted one child to be good, but none of them are. I can’t go anywhere because I can’t leave her home alone. Nusra the lady loves to go naked and change her clothes. This problem has happened. All we can do is to make the houses around be good to her.”

“Someone once asked me, how can you handle having a child like this, who takes off her clothes and goes naked? I worried about it a lot. There was no option. I took my child to get sterilized in Nakhon Pathom. I was sorry, but what could I do? We don’t have any idea about how to take care of her ourselves,” said the mother.

Because of Nusra’s childlike level of maturity, she is unaware that what she does puts her at risk of sexual abuse. She often begs her mother and anyone passing by her house to buy her things, resulting in her once being sexually abused. Her mother told us in tears that she didn’t want to talk about that incident because thinking back about it reopens painful wounds.

Nusra was sterilized in 2005, when she was 13. Nusra herself is unaware that she was sterilized, because it was an agreement between the doctor and her mother.

“Someone once asked me, how can you handle having a child like this, who takes off her clothes and goes naked? I worried about it a lot. There was no option. I took my child to get sterilized in Nakhon Pathom. I was sorry, but what could I do? We don’t have any idea about how to take care of her ourselves.”

“The doctor talked to me. He said he did not recommend other methods of birth control. He said we should do this in case, after we are gone, someone bad comes to harm her, which did happen before and we even brought it to court. Sometimes, Nusra even goes crazy and grabs knives and things. Sometimes she sees me crying and tells me not to cry, she loves me. Sometimes she sits and cries,” said Phraiwan.

When the burden of raising two disabled children gets to be too much, the parents often argue. The father talks of “leaving” all the time because of the pressure, so sometimes the mother can’t help thinking that a shelter would help be a better place for them to re-establish their lives. In fact, getting into a shelter isn’t as easy as many people understand, especially if you cannot sending money every month payments. It’s even much harder for when Nusra is not used to living apart from her parents.

“My husband said he will leave. I told him, ‘If you leave, tell me first, so I can sort myself out properly.’ But he doesn’t have to tell me where he’s going or what he’s going to do. If he leaves, I’ll hang myself. Problem solved.”

“I’ve told the old people that if I die and my children are still alive, I’ll hand over my children and my land to the Public Welfare. They can do whatever they want with them. They don’t have to pray over my bones, just cremate me into dust so I won’t be a burden to anyone. I’m just worried about what in the future these two are going to eat. I thought about borrowing but there’s no way I can pay it back. We’re barely surviving now. It’s not easy taking care of these two because I can’t go to work, I have to stay at home and watch them. I’m stressed. I want to go outside the house to work and go out with friends and have some good fun in society,” said the mother.

Soon after we started talking, Nusra woke up and walked out of the house. She looks more like a child than she really is, with her short hair and thin body. She can only talk in short words, but understands questions. When her mother asked, “Nusra, do you love mommy?” Nusra quickly nodded her head. When her mother suggested Nusra wanted to go live at the shelter with me, the girl answered “Go, go, don’t cry.”

“Fear”

“I’m scared. I see a lot of news about disabled people being sexually abused. Going in or out of the room I double-lock the door, put on the bolt and fasten another one. I’m scared but there’s nothing I can do. I have to go out and sell, and I come home in the middle of the night almost every day,” said Orani Mongkhonphan.

Orani, a woman of 35, shares her concerns when she has to live in a rented room alone after leaving the welfare home. She has cerebral palsy or CP, which causes the muscles all over her body to stiffen. Apart from the effect of this illness on moving her limbs, but the muscles in her face are also affected. Orani is able to communicate in short sentences like a person with a stammer and relies on crawling along the floor to get around.

Although this all sounds overwhelming, Orani is able to do all of her daily chores such as cooking, showering, cleaning, dressing, and dexterously preparing the board of lottery tickets to sell at the Tesco Lotus near her house.

The area in front of Orani’s rented room

Orani tells me that ever since she can remember, her grandparents were the ones who raised her. When they passed away when she was 14, her world was turned upside-down. The welfare home became her second home and even though she was entering adolescence at the time, the welfare home had nothing at all to say about sex or looking after yourself.

“There was no sex education, only a ‘no sexual intercourse’ rule. Kids would find out from outside sources. Some looked in the school books. There was often a problem of sexual abuse there, such as ‘someone with a good head’ raping ‘someone with a bad head’ [Orani used these terms to refer to people with and without mental disabilities], raping the deaf, or the deaf raping the mentally disabled. Part of this stems from not having enough staff,” Orani said.

However, as far as she knows, this home did not force or recommend that students get sterilized because it was unethical. Still, she did know of some mentally disabled children who were sterilized in order to prevent pregnancies if they were sexually abused, and injecting contraceptives into people who were disabled in other ways.

“I’m scared. I see a lot of news about disabled people being sexually abused. Going in or out of the room I double-lock the door, put on the bolt and fasten another one. I’m scared but there’s nothing I can do. I have to go out and sell, and I come home in the middle of the night almost every day.”

When she was around 14 or 15, Orani started having sexual urges and constant questions and doubts about sex occurred even in the welfare home.  But from feelings of embarrassment about asking the welfare home staff these questions, so many children just kept their doubts to themselves. This was lucky for the staff, because they themselves didn’t have enough knowledge or understanding to give answers or advice about sex education and advice to the disabled.

Looking from the outside, we might think that the welfare home is a place full of rules and uniforms. But in fact, what is secretly hidden is a view on relations and needs that have never properly come together. Orani says that many students at the shelter hope to have a proper family outside the gates of the home. Same-sex couples can be seen here and there and heterosexual couples conceal their relationship, since all activities in the home are divided by sex. Therefore, while this kind of thing can be seen in many places, the staff at the welfare home have never given even a little information about sex and relationships for the disabled.

“When they reach 18, the kids would be sent out of the welfare home. Some were picked up by their guardians, others were sent to other homes, and there is a large number who choose to leave and live alone, like me. Life outside is quite hard. I always have to be careful. I sell lottery tickets at the nearby Lotus from noon until 8 pm every day. Once, a 10-wheeler scraped against my wheelchair and sent it spinning in mid-air. Still, I have to keep fighting because there’s not many other options,” Orani said.

These days, Orani takes good care of herself, and is always watchful of her surroundings. She sends money back home regularly. Although she is not thinking about romance at this time, she doesn’t close herself off, and has good social relations.

“The Wait”

Thitima Liangraksa, 42, is disabled with cerebral palsy like Orani. Thitima has three siblings, and a younger sister with mental disability. She lives in a small, one-storey house surrounded by concrete, stone, and gravel that Thitima always has to crawl across in order to get in and out of her house. As a result, her knees are scratched and cut. Books and school are something she almost doesn’t know about. Her parents go out to work, leaving her and her mentally disabled sister alone every day with only the radio for company.

Thitima was sexually abused together with her sister while at home alone. Although they know who abused them, they could not prosecute him because there was no evidence and Thitima is unable to communicate so that others can understand very much due to her disability, which makes her facial muscles so stiff that she cannot speak clearly. Both she and her sister got pregnant from the rape and gave birth to healthy daughters, who are now 19 years old.

On the day of the delivery, the obstetrician sterilized Thitima and her sister without informing them or asking for the prior consent of Thitima or their family.

Generally, sterilization needs the consent of the patient, according to Article 3 of the declaration of rights of the Medical Council, which states the right of the patient to be clear and complete information from medical professionals so that they can choose to voluntarily give or not give their consent for an operation. The only exceptions are emergencies or cases where the operation is necessary but the patients cannot make a decision and relatives or guardians can make the decision for them. Nevertheless, Thitima’s condition does not impair her conscious ability to make decisions. Her brain is normal, it is just that her speech is not clear and leads many people to assume she has a mental condition. Therefore, it may be thought that the sterilization exceeded medical responsibility, because Thitima and her family were not even informed about the procedure.

While Thitima was pregnant, it was not kept a secret. But she never went to the maternity hospital or had a check-up. The only relevant thing she had were blood tonics her relatives got from Phutthamonthon Hospital. Thitima didn’t know the sex of her child until birth. Thitima’s first question was “Girl or boy?” and she heard the answer “Girl.”

As a new mother, Thitima was never taught about “motherhood.” No one told her how to hold her baby.  No one told her how to breastfeed and she was not allowed to see or hold her baby after she was born. She hasn’t even ever held her own child because immediately after the birth, her child was taken away and sent to be raised by another younger sister.

What happened to Thitima illustrates well how the Thai public health system treats the disabled. Generally, when an abled woman gives birth, the midwife has the job of giving advice and teaching skills about childcare to all new mothers, which might include advice about having more children or any possible risks. One factor that made the doctors choose not to communicate with was that they thought Thitima was mentally disabled because her speech was slow, unclear and halting. In fact, Thitima only has a disability with moving.

From her story, many readers may think Thitima now is living a fretful existence because of what happened to her. Although it is certain that her past cannot be changed, Thitima today has become a strong mother and a beloved grandmother to a 3-year-old granddaughter.

Thitima Liangruksa

“When Mother’s Day comes, I don’t go anywhere. I wait at home for my daughter and granddaughter,” she said. “She’s cute, has long hair, is talkative, and is very smart,” Thitima said over and over. She talks over and over when it’s about the feelings she has towards her granddaughter, with smiles with happiness shining from her eyes.

Thitima only has a few daily chores due to her physical limitations: eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. One thing she does well, which everyone in the family says she’s the best at, is mopping the floor meticulously. She spends almost the whole day sweeping and mopping the floor while happily listening to luk thung (country) music on the radio.

She has two favourite singers: Jintara Poonlarp and Jaloi Henry. Jintara’s hit,“Asking My Friend to Write a Letter,” is her favourite song. Here are some of the lyrics.

“Lying thinking of him, but I’ve got no chance

So I picked up a piece of paper to write a letter

But I don’t know how to write, what will I do?

Asking friends to write it for me, I’m so embarrassed”

“Books, I’ve never read them since I was born

Shameful life, unbearably far from home

My unlucky parents have nothing, struggling to survive

Because of poverty, I didn’t go to school”

“The lyrics are just like my life. I listen to it and think of my own life,” Thitima said.

“Insanity”

Inside the fence of a house shaded by trees that stretch from the entrance, a mother duck and her ducklings are running around playfully next to a big pond to the side of a large house and a blue, one-storey house, where Phloen (not her real name) lives with her mentally and visually disabled brother.

Phloen, a middle-aged woman with the manner of a child has eight siblings in all, with four of the eight, including Phloen, having various disabilities in sight, hearing, and mental ability. The doctors cannot determine for sure what the condition is. Phloen’s disabilities have always been called a “hereditary disease.”

Phloen and her brother

Nowadays, Phloen can see very little because of glaucoma. Compared with three years ago when she could still see fuzzy shapes, her sight has gradually deteriorated as a side effect of her diabetes and sedatives. She can take care of herself to some level, but cannot work or communicate with those around her. She is focused on the things she is interested in, and uses touch to identify people. Phloen uses a special language of “ers” and “ahs” that she uses only with her brother.

Saithong Natsuwong, her younger sister, said that Phloen was raped almost 20 years ago by their younger brother. At that time, no one knew she had been sexually abused until one night when Phloen started crying and throwing an extraordinarily heavy tantrum. Saithong saw a baby’s leg sticking out of Phloen’s sarong. Although they rushed to the hospital, the distance was too far and most of the baby was delivered in the back of a truck with just the chin stuck at the entrance to Phloen’s vagina. In the end a baby girl was born at the hospital.

“I pity her because she’s disabled and can’t talk or communicate. She was probably in a lot of pain so she threw a tantrum. She knew that the person who raped her was her brother, but she couldn’t do anything because he did it because he couldn’t control himself. Phloen uses injectable contraceptives, and will stop soon since she is nearing 50.

“I don’t think she knows she had a baby, since her mind isn’t sound. Especially at that period, she threw a lot of tantrums. If she didn’t take sedatives, she would have shown signs of being scared of her rapist. I don’t know who to blame. It’s something we can’t talk about, because the person who did it is within the family,” Saithong said.

Phloen’s daughter is disabled, like her. Phloen has never held or even been close to her child like other mothers, because the doctors do not believe she can take care of a child. So the whole burden of raising the child fell to Saithong who had to work twice as hard to support her older sister and niece, who can walk and eat on her own, but cannot take care of herself or communicate. In 2011, when she was 13, the niece drowned in the big pond by the house.

“I pity her because she’s disabled and can’t talk or communicate. She was probably in a lot of pain so she threw a tantrum. She knew that the person who raped her was her brother, but she couldn’t do anything because he did it because he couldn’t control himself. Phloen uses injectable contraceptives, and will stop soon since she is nearing 50.

“I felt connected to my niece because I took care of her since she was little. Once I sent her to a home for disabled children, but I couldn’t bear to see her bullied by the other kids. They smacked her and bit her ear and her face was all bruised because she couldn’t communicate. When my niece drowned, I was sad but couldn’t do anything. She was probably in a lot of torment, struggling in the water but couldn’t get out. Her muscles were weak,” said Saithong.

In Phloen’s case, she never received advice from doctors about sterilization nor did she enter the public health system, even when pregnant, since Phloen’s family is poor and lives far from the hospital in the city. When Phloen still had her periods, she could take care of herself.  She used a twisted loincloth as a sanitary napkin without anyone having to teach her. This is a clear example that shows that Phloen’s disability did not diminish her ability to learn about sex, as many believe. Suitable sex education adapted for disabled people might have helped Phloen to learn about being a “mother” and helped to give her better protection in sex matters.

The article was first published in Thai in Prachatai and translated into English by Asaree Thaitrakulpanich.

Prisons in Thailand still fail to recognise the basic rights of female prisoners, depriving women of essential health services and goods from sanitary pads to bras. Overburdened prisons due to Thailand’s harsh drug laws aggravate the current situation. This report reveals the devastating condition of female prisons in Thailand, places where women detainees live without dignity.

Fungus infested bras and unchewable food

During my visits to prisons, female prisoners told me they receive bras through donations from outsiders. Oversized and so old they are no longer elastic, those bras are home to different types of fungus.

“Whenever they give out bras, we will all go crazy,” said Tick, an inmate. “Bras are usually distributed by room but [what bra you get] also depends on whether you have any connection to the room leader. If you don’t get along well with the room leader, you will get the leftover bras without a chance to choose. Often I always get bras and pants that are too large, so I have to give them away.”

“The same goes for sanitary pads. We have to sign a form before getting a pack. They are bad quality and barely have any glue. When we wear them, sometimes we have to use rubber bands to hold them against our underwear,” said Tick. “One time, a prisoner was running and the pad just dropped out onto the middle of the exercise field. When I have money, I’ll buy branded items because they are much better.”

Since money is required to access basic goods in prison, incarceration can create financial strife for inmates who rely on borrowing.  

“We can withdraw a maximum of 300 baht per day, an increase from the previous 200 baht maximum. I cannot live on that small amount so I have to take loans ‘from the inside’. But the interest rate is 20 per cent per four days,” said another prisoner Pla. “There are so many creditors-cum-prisoners who have gotten quite rich. Some have about 200,000 baht in their bank accounts and manage to send back home 50,000–60,000 baht per month. Even though the authorities are aware of this, they don’t really want to intervene. If the borrowers do not have the money to pay back, the foodstuffs sent by their relatives are confiscated.”

“As for work, sometimes we have to do jobs like rolling cigarettes or folding gold leaf used in temples. Each worker needs to produce 400–600 pieces per day to earn about 100 baht every 3-4 months,” she says. “Who said one doesn’t need money in prison? You do need money to survive.”  

As for food, she asks me if I have ever had ‘cold water mama’: instant noodles with cold water since the prison doesn’t provide hot water. Food in prison is repetitive and of low quality. She once ate porridge with chicken feet and pork so gummy that she couldn’t chew.

That was the situation before the junta came into power in 2016. After that, they were barred from even cooking. 

NCPO reforms for the worse

After the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) seized power in May 2014, the Department of Correction that administers Thailand’s prisoners was affected heavily. The result was new restrictions on prisoners’ lives. 

“The front of the sleeping room states that it has the capacity for 30–33 persons. But when I arrived there, 77 people were sleeping in that room. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. In the second year, there were about 58 people. After the 2014 coup, they told us to return the blankets relatives had brought us but we wouldn’t let them,” said Pla.

Auyphon Suthonsanyakorn, the facilitator of the ‘From Heart to Heart’ program that works on the long-term rehabilitation of female prisoners, told Prachatai that women have faced many new challenges in prison since the NCPO came into power.

“They have ordered female prisoners not to take anything up to the sleeping hall. They are only allowed to take three pieces of tissue paper with them. But women have specific needs: some are on their period, some wear glasses. They are also barred from taking books. Some women like to write in their diaries and some read prayer books before going to bed,” she said. “But the NCPO gave a sweeping order to prevent any of that. Prison guards told me they are afraid of being found guilty if they don’t follow the orders.”

“The NCPO wants to be strict on drugs. Initially they also barred [the women] from bringing drinking water [to the sleeping hall]. They were not okay with that so we negotiated, and they were allowed to bring a bottle of water plus five pieces of tissue paper, which was later reduced to three. Even though we don’t have a drug problem, we cannot decide things ourselves. This is because of the sweeping orders. NCPO said if the prison wouldn’t tackle it, they would do it themselves. That’s why the prison authorities are afraid and have to impose these strict rules on the prisoners.

No health services, just paracetamol

Women prisoners are entitled to health services from the state. They are entitled to access public health services under the national health security scheme like any other citizens. But since prisons are overburdened and underfunded, the solution for women prisoners in reality is to simply ‘not get sick.’

“Inside, they always said do not get sick because you only ever get paracetamol to cure everything,” she said.

In some cases, prisoners face verbal abuse from health professionals. In the case of Tick, who returned to prison after giving birth, she had to see the doctor inside the prison. 

“The stitch that I had got infected. I told a male doctor that but he didn’t even bother to look at it,” said Tick. “He said it’d be fine and gave me paracetamol.”

“He is the in-house doctor there and couldn’t be more rude. When he examined my record, he asked me, ‘How did you get pregnant when you’re so ugly?’. He also asked if the child has a father, or if I was sleeping around. I was so pissed off I cursed back at him. I got punished for that.” 

Women prisoners who live within a smaller compound within a larger male prison face even more problems than those in women’s correctional institutes or in the women’s sections of large central prisons. This is because women prisoners in male prisoners do not have their own medical unit, but have to share services male inmates. They are given access to health services only after male inmates are finished, due to prison regulations that male and female prisoners are not allowed to mingle.

Auyphon said doctor’s visits in women’s prison are rare. “Once a week is considered very generous. If it’s a central prison, he may only enter the male inmate zone. The female prisoners often won’t get to meet with the doctors. In general, there might be one nurse who is always stationed there to look after both male and female prisoners,” said Auyphon.

“I’ve seen a case where a woman inmate got really sick and and could not get up. She was lying there for many days. When I got in that day, she also had a high fever. When I touched her knee, it was really hot and swollen and badly infected. Yet she wasn’t taken to hospital. Some officers agreed it was a serious case, but they didn’t have enough authority                .”

Luckily, that inmate’s relatives requested that she be transferred to a hospital when she could not bring herself to meet them. The doctor later said that if she had come to the hospital just a bit later, she might have ended up at her own funeral.

The situation is comparable in central prisons, where women share facilities with male inmates and are not taken to hospital unless the situation is dire. In one such prison, a woman prisoner sprained her leg after falling down the stairs. She was taken to in-prison medicine unit and given some topical cream. The nurse diagnosed that it wasn’t serious so they didn’t take her to hospital.

These days, she still limps. The bone likely fractured but since it never received proper treatment, she now cannot walk properly.

Women correctional institutes are somewhat better. The doctors usually visit once a week. Women can access a wider range of medicines.

When winter hits, women inmates in the north and northeastern prisons have to suffer under the cold weather. Usually they are given three blankets per person to be used as a pillow, blanket and a mattress respectively. In winter however, that is not enough.

“Before that wewere given five blankets per person. The authorities also allowed relatives to buy more for them. After the allowance was reduced to three pieces, the prisoners protested. The directors then filed a request to make the prisoners get five pieces. The thing is that in winter,  even five is not enough because they are bad quality. But they cannot provide more because the prisons have a tight budget.”

...............

Chartchai Suthiklom, the former director of the Department of Correction — now a National Human Rights Commissioner — said that in principle, prisons are obliged to provide basic necessities to prisoners.

The ‘Prisoners’ Manual’ published on the prison’s website states that inmates are entitled to:

1. The right to get food that is nutritious and fulfils the body’s needs. The Department of Correction guarantees that every prisoner will receive three meals a day for free from the first day they enter prison until the last day.
2. The right to clothing suitable to the weather. Many inmates may have their own clothing from relatives. For those who cannot get their own, prison authorities should provide them with personal items, including clothes and blankets.
3. The right to hygienic conditions. All prisons are obliged to provide a hygienic sleeping area for inmates.
4. The right to receive free health care. Every prison has its own medical facilities and nurses that should provide appropriate care to the inmates. If the inmate is seriously ill, he/she may be sent to an external hospital or sent to the prison’s hospital in Bangkok.

Despite these regulations, it’s clear that the reality does not reflect the ideals.

...............

Why is it that prisons are overflowing with inmates? Does it mean that our society has more criminals or bad people than others? Or is there something wrong with our justice system?

Are atrocious prison conditions the fault of the Correction Department or the prisons? Obviously both share some responsibility. Yet prisons are just small jigsaws in the bigger picture of an inefficient justice system. Problems faced by female prisoners do not derive solely entrenched hierarchies within the prisons, they are caused at root by the Correction Department’s measly budget.

84.58 per cent of female inmates were sentenced from drugs cases. As of 1 June 2016, out of 35,768 convicted criminals, 30,821 were convicted from violating drug laws.

It is obvious that Thailand’s overly harsh drug laws are putting more and more people into sub-par prisons.

Note: This article was originally published on Prachatai Thai. It was translated from Thai to English by Suluck Lamubol.

She would not let the death of her uncle be forgotten as insignificant and has braved legal, physical and psychological threats in her fight against military-backed torture. Prachatai introduces Naritsarawan ‘May’ Keawnopparat, our Person of the Year 2016.   

Bravery in the face of bullets 

“My uncle’s life must not be valueless”

“We talked by phone. My little brother talked for me, I didn’t talk to her myself (laughs). After more than a week, I went to pick her up to live with me, and then I proposed to her. I can’t really pinpoint why she’s so nice. I like her for how hard-working she is, waking up early to do housework and taking care of the kids. When I took her to my uncle for him to look her over, he said I could have her if I want. Before, I took many girls for my uncle to look at but he said this one got up late, or was too lazy to wash the dishes.  Once the meal was over they hid the dirty dishes. Lazy. But Sim is hard-working. She gets up to do laundry at 4 and 5 am. Uncle sneaked in to watch her.”

This is what a disabled husband said about his disabled wife when we asked him how they met.

These answers may be really common if we ask abled people. However, very few people can even imagine disabled people having a married life. Some probably think that disabled people don’t even have boyfriends/girlfriends because in the past “sex” and “disability” are completely separated from each other. Most abled people do not understand and are not in a position to understand disabled people because the worlds of the two groups are extremely distant from each other.

Therefore, disabled people themselves have received no sex education. Some are kept away from it and fed only with fear-inducing information, causing many to stay away from these matters as much as possible, and there are quite a number who escape from it through sterilization.

How is sterilization physically harmful? Many disabled women undergo forced sterilization, many without being informed and many more because their families persuade them. We found that this phenomenon is widespread because people believe it will cut short the process of producing more disability from giving birth to disabled children.

Some teenaged disabled girls have been sterilized since childhood. After they grow up they are able to take care of themselves may want a family, but sadly there will never come a day when they will be mothers and have their own children.

Read Part 1: Disabled women, doubly cursed, raped, sterilized

“Love”

In the middle of the overlapping roofs of a small community, in one blue house, a wicker cradle holds a sleeping short-haired girl. Although the size of the cradle doesn’t let her extend her legs or stretch her arms above her head, the stifling silence and heat of midday easily put her to sleep.

Aran and Prachum’s family

Aran Namab or “Sim,” a 39-year-old woman rocks the child’s cradle with a smile on her face. She’s a mother of two daughters: one is asleep in the cradle and the other is just now playing behind her.

Aran is a plump woman with short hair and a broad smile on her face. She speaks a bit slowly and takes a lot of time to think of her replies when we ask her questions. On the surface, she looks a bit like she has Down’s Syndrome from the look in her eyes, but more than that is her sight is blurred to the point where she can hardly see and the left side of her body is paralyzed, which makes it hard for her to walk about.

“Actually, the doctor in Nakhon Pathom told her not to have children, but she wanted to. The doctor injected her with a contraceptive, but she stopped the injections because she wanted children. She only went to the doctor once when pregnant. If the doctor knew she was disabled, they would take it out. Her eldest child is disabled too. She can sit up for a little bit before falling over. She is always twisted and stiff. She can’t stand,” her neighbour interjected when I started talking about Aran’s family life.

Although Aran and her husband, Prachum Khongkhem, 41, were aware of the risks as the neighbour said, the couple were still determined to have children and build a family life of their own. “We just let it go, luk thung [rural folk] style. After three to four years, we had our first child. When we had our second child, we didn’t intend it. Sometimes she took contraceptives, sometimes not. But the injectable contraceptive, I even asked a doctor friend, what kind of fucking medicine did you inject into my wife? I suspect it was expired. So we had the second child, and then after that we got sterilized,” Prachum said.

Their two daughters are aged 5 and 3. Saeng, the older one, is a white-skinned, short-haired girl who looks slightly more like a boy. She’s small, has small limbs, and is thinner than most 5-year-olds. She can’t sit up and is always stiff. Both her hands and feet are turned inwards. Saeng can’t communicate. She just has small reactions, which is all she can express, like opening her mouth when she’s hungry or crying when she’s displeased, so she has to lie in the cradle almost all day. Aran’s little one, Donut, aged 3, is able to walk and run, and looks quite clever. Although she seems to be able to walk normally, you can clearly see that her legs are and they are gradually getting worse, according to what Aran says.

Still, Donut is a cheerful, talkative, smart girl, even a bit hyperactive who often shows love toward her sister by feeding her sweets every time she eats one herself. When Saeng cries, Donut doesn’t hesitate to hug her and pat her chest. During the interview, Donut ran all over the place, asking me for sweets, rummaging through my bag, and so on — no different from most 3-year-olds.

Aran and Prachum’s love story started over 10 years ago. Prachum said that he was quite old when he first met her. He had a wife before her, but they divorced after he had an accident when his motorcycle hit a 10-wheeler. Prachum became disabled when the bones in his ankles were deformed and he couldn’t walk. When he was sad and lonely from the divorce, a relative introduced him to Aran through the phone, and that was the start of their life together which has lasted 10 years.

“Before this, I had a wife from Yasothon. But after the accident, and my legs were gone and I was broke, she left me. After I broke up with her, I lived alone with a dog. When the dog died, I got Sim.”

“We talked by phone. My little brother talked for me, I didn’t talk to her myself (laughs). After more than a week, I went to pick her up to live with me, and then I proposed to her. I can’t really pinpoint why she’s so nice. I like her for how hard-working she is, waking up early to do housework and taking care of the kids. When I took her to my uncle for him to look her over, he said I could have her if I want. Before, I took many girls for my uncle to look at but he said this one got up late, or was too lazy to wash the dishes.  Once the meal was over they hid the dirty dishes. Lazy. But Sim is hard-working. She gets up to do laundry at 4 and 5 am. Uncle sneaked in to watch her.”

“Now after I get home from work in the middle of the night, I ache all over because of all the bones missing from my legs because of the accident almost 10 years ago. My collar bones are completely gone. Even if I can’t work, I still have to. No matter how much it hurts, I have to put up with it for my children. She’s going to go to school soon,” said Prachum.

While he was talking, several neighbours who were listening with us cut in on each other with stories about Aran’s life.

“It’s like the parent’s aren’t all there 100%. They didn’t even finish Grade 1 at school. Their brains are no good. They don’t even know when their kids pooped into their diapers,” said an auntie neighbour.

“Although everyone told them that their children would be at risk of being disabled, they still wanted to have children. I see staff from local medical centre visiting them often, but they never give advice about raising children,” said another neighbour.

“She is protective of her older sister. Whenever someone looks like they’re going to take her sister, oh! she cries. No one can take her sister. Whenever someone picks up her older sister, she runs after them and says she won’t let them. So I tell her that if anyone comes to take her, we’re around all day. Sometimes something’s up and we wait and take care of her all the time. I don’t work, so I can stay close by. Sometimes [the mother] sits looking and can’t find them so she comes to me and asks me to help her look for her children. She can’t see very well. When her kid’s diaper is full, she knows nothing about it,” added another neighbour.

“Before, someone once asked for Saeng to bring her up because they didn’t have children. But I didn’t let them. I would rather starve to death than do that. Still, people keep asking for her. Donut often hears them, so she’s afraid and very protective of her sister.”

Aran’s household uses red groundwater for drinking and showering, so the house isn’t very sanitary. Before, an official from the district health centre would visit weekly and bring required medication. Both times Aran was pregnant, she didn’t go to hospital for check-ups because she had no money. But she experienced toxaemia late in both pregnancies and had to deliver by C-section both times. Although Prachum can work, it is still hard for him because one of his legs doesn’t work. Even today he still has to bandage it because the wound is still tender.

On her disability card, Aran’s disability is categorized as impaired vision. Because it’s only that, her other disabilities are not looked after or treated properly and she has not been properly diagnosed by a doctor. Neither Aran and nor husband have the knowledge or financial resources or understand enough to contact the hospital.

After we sat and talked awhile, the neighbours in the room with us started to leave one by one until they were all gone. Both husband and wife relaxed considerably and began telling their stories from a different angle.

“The family had enough money before, but it was all taken by my mother. But because we had to stay in this house close to the hospital that our children go to, we didn’t have much alternative. When I ask her for it back, she asks in return, ‘When did I take your damn money?’ My brothers and sisters are no help. I want to move back to Ratchaburi, but we have no money because I sold everything to get married and move here. After I have some money, I want to go back so bad. Soon I’ll change to a construction job so I’ll take my wife and kids with me to the camp. If they stay here, I can’t manage running back and forth from work to see them,” Prachum said.

Almost every day, Prachum has to go out to a construction job outside, leaving Aran and her children alone. When feeding her children, Aran misses their mouths and it sometimes goes into their noses or ears because she can’t see. Prachum is very worried and often comes home during the day to get food and water for his wife and feed the two children.

“When she was born and went into the oven [incubator], her body was so green. I had to come home every noon to feed my child milk. Although now Saeng can hold the milk bottle up and feed herself, it’s still pretty messy and goes all over the place, into her ears and eyes. Donut is always watching and guarding her sister because she’s afraid someone will take Saeng. Before, someone once asked for Saeng to bring her up because they didn’t have children. But I didn’t let them. I would rather starve to death than do that. Still, people keep asking for her. Donut often hears them, so she’s afraid and very protective of her sister.” Prachum says.

Saeng used to eat through a tube to her stomach, but it was a problem because the tube kept breaking and falling out, so they had to go to the hospital so many times it was a joke. So Prachum decided to pull the feeding tube out, bandage the hole, and change to feeding her by mouth instead.

“Sometimes Saeng stiffens up and stops breathing. Her face and eyes get all green. When she can breathe again, she laughs like nothing happened. It’s so tiring, but we have to keep fighting. Once I took her to physical therapy and she resisted. She held her breath until she turned green. If we have to go to the doctor every day, we won’t have any money, no money for gas. Although we don’t pay medical expenses, there’s no hospital near here that we can get to.”

“I see her gradually improving, not getting worse. Before, she couldn’t sit, but now she can. She’s getting better at speaking, and can make some sounds. I have motivation to work. I want to be at home, because when I go out it’s too much. It’s better to stay at home. I don’t want to bother with anyone. I’ll save up a bit of money from work, wait until my kids can go to school, and then we’ll move from here to Ratchaburi, my old home,” said Prachum.

“Worried”

Next, we move into the city centre, within the labyrinth of sois within sois. Most houses around here are one-storied, colourful. Most have an open area in front where some sit and some sell things. Warisara Uppatha’s house does sewing. The loud noise of the sewing machines doesn’t stop with piles of variously coloured cloth scattered around the room.

Warisara is the youngest person interviewed for this article. She has short hair and was wearing a blue t-shirt with long black pants. She’s a girl with a nice face and a sense of humour. Because of her weak muscles caused by cerebral palsy, she sits in a wheelchair.

Wirachat Uppatha, her dad, said that Warisara is talkative and clever. Before, his daughter studied at the special education school, but is now home-schooling using materials from the school.

“My wife and I were advised to sterilize our daughter as soon as she started her periods. But at that time we just wanted her to get sterilized in the least painful way possible, so we wanted to work and save up money first because it would be more expensive than normal. We talked to our child, and she agreed. I went to seminars before and I understood that this kind of thing can’t be decided by the parents.”

“The doctor advised us to do it. Just do it. The reason was about taking care of herself and protecting herself in case her parents and relatives are not around, then it may be one level of protection. But if you ask if it’s 100%, then it’s not. I changed my mind because I thought a lot about it. Now wasn’t the only chance to be sterilized, there’ll be more in the future, but if we do it now then there’s no going back.”

“Sometimes, [sterilization] is just for the convenience of the parents.  When I looked at it, that’s all it was,” said Wirachat.

Warisara, however, said that she wanted to get sterilized because she was afraid she would be a burden to her mother, so when her mother asked, she agreed even though she was scared and never knew how sterilization was done. Still, Warisara was determined to do it, partly because she saw many disabled children near her house do it and get better, leaving only a small scar. Her friends at the special education centre where she studied also did it, so Warisara heard only about the pros and benefits of being sterilized.

“Sterilization is a tunnel-visioned solution, but outside, it’s wide open. If you don’t get out more, you don’t see what’s what. I once went for training about the rights of disabled women, so I know that in fact you have to ask the disabled person themselves and their family. Sterilization doesn’t solve the problem 100%. There’re still problems, only fewer. Nowadays we as parents aren’t in difficulty, but the thought of sterilization pops into our heads every now and then,” said her dad.

Warisara Uppatha

Although Warisara’s parents have a relatively clear stance on sterilization, they still can’t help but worry. The more they see the constant news about sexual assaults on disabled women, the more it makes them worried about their daughter’s future.

“A doctor from Nakhon Chai Si came to our house and asked if we had sterilized our daughter, and we answered, not yet. So he signed a form to go ahead and do it and even wrote on it ‘mentally retarded’. I’m very against this. My daughter isn’t retarded, but disabled with regard to mobility.”

“I look at her and can’t help but think what she’ll do if later her parents are not there. If we were better off, I’d be less worried than this. Once we enrolled her in Sri Sangwan School and I went to spy on her. My daughter is all there, but she can’t help herself in daily life. Other students had missing legs, arms. They brushed their teeth and raced up the stairs.”

“I told myself that no matter what, I would not put my daughter in that place. There’re 300 students and 3 care-givers. Think, when she’s stubborn, we hit her or leave her alone for an hour or two. If she went there, it would be like this, so we brought her back. If she stayed there, a care-giver would have to stay too, and we would have to pay the cost ourselves. So we decided that we should only do what we could manage,” the father continued.

Information from the Special Education Bureau says that there are less than 50 schools for the disabled nationwide, most scattered across the provinces. Although these special education schools help disabled children to enter the education system like other kids, the level of educational in many is much lower than the standard, and is not really adapted to fit individual students.

In Warisara’s condition, the muscles throughout the body will become distorted and stiff. She won’t be able to hold things or speak easily. Even though she can feed herself with one hand, the other is too stiff to do anything. Her parents are well used to the situation and understand what the doctors always say, that they should not expect much from a child like this.

“But I told the doctor, no matter what she’s like, it’s okay. Being beautiful is more important,” he said, smiling.

Warisara and her family

“I’ve never been embarrassed to take her places. I hope that if she knows lots of people, one day after we’re gone, there may still be other people to ask.  It’s a way to find people to support her.”

“Now on a good day, a government agency brings us gifts, smiling prettily and taking photos and then leaving. Still, my daughter has never gotten any closer to getting more rights. She’s lucky to have found a good environment, with her dad, mom, siblings, aunties, and uncles. There is no one who objects to taking her out. When she was young, we went even more often. But now that she’s too big for her mother to carry her, we don’t take her out as much,” say her parents, taking turns telling Warisara’s story.

At this point, readers may be surprised why I chose to interview Warisara’s family, when it looks like there are no problems in terms of their daughter and sexual issues. It would be — if not for the visit of a health worker a few days before.

“A doctor from Nakhon Chai Si came to our house and asked if we had sterilized our daughter, and we answered, not yet. So he signed a form to go ahead and do it and even wrote on it ‘mentally retarded’. I’m very against this. My daughter isn’t retarded, but disabled with regard to mobility,” the father said.

The community of parents of disabled children know each other well, especially in smaller areas in neighbourhoods like this. Warisara’s parents have the opportunity to talk often to other families and found out that almost all the families made their daughters undergo sterilization, sometimes as early as 9 years old. Some families wait until their daughter’s second or third period. So this issue has become normal by implication.

“From the doctor’s perspective, if you’re disabled you all should be sterilized. Big-name doctors, however, won’t talk about this unless the guardian asks. Lower-ranked doctors, like those in the district clinics, will cut to the chase and say that sterilization must be done. I think the problem they’re afraid of is pregnancy. It’s not a burden for us to take care of this issue, but think if we are old, what will we do?” said the father.

The main worry that the parents have about Warisara is if they are not there and Warisara has to stay with her older brother. Even though they have faith in him, because he has helped take care of her since she was little, they feel unsettled and don’t feel as confident as if they were taking care of her themselves .

“If mom isn’t at home, I can do everything: help her shower, dress, change her Pampers, and sanitary pads. When she was taken to camp, she had to be separated from the other kids, and dad was always spying on her from afar. He thought ‘hey, how can they do this to her? I was worried (laughs). Still, I felt good about her getting into society because she seemed happy and was having fun, so dad’s happy too,” he said.

Yet even happy days may be overshadowed with suffering because we still cannot see a way for the future. And the system for looking after people with a difference in Thai society still cannot make it clear how they can have a life when they have no family to rely on. Warisara’s mom often tells her that she wants her daughter to go before her, because she can’t handle the anxiety if she merely thinks how Warisara will live with no parents.

“I’m scared when my parents say that it would be good for me to die before them. I’m scared they won’t take care of me.”

“If in the future we’re not here but our daughter still is, there probably has to be something done. I would probably have to leave her with some relatives who I can rely on, and I’d leave my property and house to them too. But if it’s possible, it would be good if she went first. Sometimes when I’m washing her, she speaks up that she wants to die before us. I’m sad to hear that.”

“Sometimes she’s naughty, so I hit her. She says ‘Hit me until I die, dad.’ When I hear her talk like that, it really gets to me,” added dad.

“I’m scared when my parents say that it would be good for me to die before them. I’m scared they won’t take care of me,” said Warisara.

Although her parents believe that Warisara can make a life by herself in the future, Warisara’s age is over the limit for a rehabilitation centre or other schools, so this option was wrapped up a few years ago. Since then, dad has been her trainer.

As far as I could see, Warisara is a modest person — she does not dare to ask anyone other than her parents to give her a hand with anything. This might be because she doesn’t get to go out and meet people very much. Her father also often forbids it. When she speaks to ask someone for help, she’s not used to it if she gets help from others and many times when she wants to do something, what she hears from her father tends to be “Don’t go bothering your sister.” Apart from preventing Warisara from learning to interact with others, the sense of being denied the chance to appeal to others means that she has never received help.

While we were talking about this, Warisara nodded at intervals and said “yes” all the time whenever we were talking about her father, the person who never lets her out of the house alone.

“Whenever I go out, I like people saying that this man’s skilled, he can do anything for his child. But really, I just want her to meet a group of her own, develop a close relationship with doctors, get access to various rights. That’s better than just lying down, twisted, without any sort of development. I want my daughter to have a social life. When I meet other parents whose children can make their own lives, I feel a fighting spirit and strength and I think my daughter must do that.”

“She’s a very considerate person. If we’re with other people I’m afraid she’s too considerate. But I do think that she can take care of herself if we let her. Our family have set limits and rules for her. I cannot come to terms with it but I have to accept letting her go now (smiles),” said the father with a resolute tone of voice.

‘Possessive’

We travel into the green fields of Sisa Thong District. Nuanphan Bandit’s house is behind two large houses. It is a low wooden house with a parking spot on the side and another hidden in the innermost part of the property. We sit in front of the house, where a deafening factory-sized fan is swinging from side to side.

Nuanphan is a disabled woman with a thin body, long hair and dark skin. Although no one can accurately determine what her disability is, from her appearance it’s not hard to see that she is not normal. She does everything slowly, she answers and talks slowly. Her mom says that Nuanphan only started walking when she was seven.

Sunan Kanyawong, her mother, said that Nuanphan was sterilized at 10 years of age, because at that time her parents had to go to work and leave her home alone with a younger brother with a similar condition.

“We did it because we were afraid she would get pregnant. We work outside. When she’s with other people, I don’t trust them. I see people with similar conditions getting sterilized, so I brought my daughter to do it too, so she would be safe. If she got pregnant it would be a burden for me as well,” said the mother.

Surasak Bandit (left), Sunan Kanyawong (center) and Nuanphan Bandit (right)

Although Nuanphan can communicate slowly in a way that she can understand, she has never been informed about her rights over her own body. Even when she was sterilized, she was not at all aware of the procedure or the effects it would have.

“I’m afraid other people will bully her but I don’t know what to do. When she got sterilized I told her. She knew, but it wasn’t her decision. She didn’t understand about this. Once before, someone came and did something to her. She was scared. She didn’t tell me. I had to find out on my own.”

“Once one of the employees at a garage did something to her. I caught him and pressed charges. He’s in jail. His little brother saw. When I asked him, I found out the truth. Then the worker quickly left home but the police caught him and he confessed. After that I was very cautious, so I had her sterilized,” said the mother.

“I didn’t know I was sterilized. I only knew I was in hospital. The doctor didn’t tell me,” said Nuanphan. Did she want to get sterilized? “I wanted to because I can’t take care of myself. I will get hurt” she said. Who told you? “No one told me. I don’t know either.” Nuanphan looks like she is about to cry. “It’s nice to live the three of us, mother and children.”

When Nuanphan was a little girl, she went to school but with her appearance and slow thinking, her teacher told her to drop out of school after the second grade to practise making handicrafts at home instead. Although studying isn’t really for her, Nuanphan is surprisingly good at housework.

“Now she can do everything for herself. When she wakes in the morning she helps her mother do housework: sweeping the floors, washing dishes, and all other housework. She’s afraid of getting electrocuted, though, so she’s too scared to cook the rice. This might be because she’s always at home. She might go out of the house once per month. She rarely leaves home, so she’s great at housework.”

“Now she goes to the non-formal education centre near our house. She just started and is in secondary school,” said her mother.

Although Nuanphan is sterilized now and her mother is much more relieved, her mom still does not dare leave her alone. Ever since Nuanphan’s dad died many years ago, the three-person family has stayed together from morning till night. Mom also does not leave the two children alone together.

After chatting for a while, Nuanphan, who has been listening quietly to the conversation with her mother, spoke up.

“I didn’t know I was sterilized. I only knew I was in hospital. The doctor didn’t tell me,” said Nuanphan. Did she want to get sterilized? “I wanted to because I can’t take care of myself. I will get hurt” she said. Who told you? “No one told me. I don’t know either.” Nuanphan looks like she is about to cry. “It’s nice to live the three of us, mother and her two children.”

When you look into the future, it’s really dim. The mother still can’t see how her two children can live in the future if she herself cannot be there to look after them, since she won’t even dare to let her children try life on their own. She brought up a Disability Services Centre in the community a lot and wants to get involved in founding a centre that hasn’t happened yet, because she hopes that after she’s gone there will still be a community ready to support her children.

“We can survive, us two siblings. We can grow and sell earthworms or find other work for hire. I want to drive a taxi. I can’t drive yet, but I will soon,” said Surasak Bandit, Nuanphan’s younger brother.

“Surasak wants to be a mechanic. Nuanphan can do work, but it’s not neat and tidy. If you work, you have to be neat and tidy, and put up with it, not just get tired and quit,” said the mother.

“I can sweep and mop floors,” said Nuanphan.

If we were to ask what’s the difference between “normal people” and Nuanphan and her brother, I would just say that the pair of them talk slowly. Other than that, Nuanphan is a woman whose body is complete and it would not be strange if she had an admirer who wanted to make a family with her in the future.

“If he got a wife, I’m afraid they wouldn’t survive. If they had a child, they would just dump the child on me and it would be such a burden. If I die, how are they going to make a living? And if Nuanphan has someone who wants her and likes her, I would have to look at him first. Is there anyone who would really like her?” said the mother.

‘Regret’

Away from the fields, in front there is a row of houses with coloured roofs. Most of the houses are single-storied as is common in rural areas. Even though the house of Yui (not her real name) is not so far from those houses, it still has quite a lot of personal space in proportion compared to other houses.

Yui is a teenage girl of 17 with a round face and pitch black hair, and looks younger than most girls her age. Samroeng Chuenklinthup, her mother, said that Yui was sterilized because of her neurological condition that started after she fell off a bed when she was little. This meant that Yui cannot really communicate using language. She was sterilized when she was 14, about a year after she got her period and could not take care of her personal hygiene. Because she was worried about what would happen in the future, Samroeng thought that sterilization was likely to be the best option at that time, so that Yui would not be a burden to whoever would take care of her after her mother. Because of this worry, Yui has never gone out anywhere or been apart from her parents even once.

“When she was little, she fell off the bed. Her body didn’t have any strength, like a paralyzed person. She’s been having constant seizures since. She’s not having seizures right now because she takes medicine for it. Before, I was working and had to take care of her myself. When she just started, she couldn’t recognize her parents, but now she gradually knows more.”

“About sterilization, the doctor is always asking me if I’m ready yet to do it. If something goes wrong, not only will I have to take care of my daughter, but also a grandchild,” said the mother.

Even though so far there has never been a problem about Yui being sexually assaulted, part of it is because she is always with her mother. Before, Yui often had the chance to attend a special education class in her community for children with developmental problems to come together to learn. However, the relatively high monthly fees added to costs of traveling back and forth indirectly put an end to her studying.

“You tell her (about being sterilized) and she’s probably not aware because she doesn’t understand. One part of me doesn’t want her to do it. I pity her. I want her to stay in her natural state. But I’m also scared of the future. I’m not sure if later I’m not here, it will be difficult. I’m afraid that if she’s with other people, something might happen. So, I decided to do it.”

“At school they never taught about sex at all. I never let her be with anyone else. Normally if I have to go out and she can’t go, I lock her inside the house.”

“I get stressed if I think about the future. I don’t know what to do. She has no siblings. Nowadays she can take care of herself a lot, showering, dressing, feeding herself, going to the bathroom. Sometimes she asks me if she’s put her clothes on correctly. Before, I always had to dress her because she couldn’t tell the front from the back. But now she can do it herself, which is the front and the back even and if the seam is on the inside or outside.

“I teach her things, like when she has a shower, wrapping her sarong under her arms. Before she comes out of the bathroom she has to wrap her sarong under her arms so that she’s not indecent. She remembers stuff and knows more than before. She understands when I teach her things, and can remember what I told her before,” the mother said.

“At school they never taught about sex at all. I never let her be with anyone else. Normally if I have to go out and she can’t go, I lock her inside the house.”

Although Yui has improved from before, her mom still sees her as a little girl. Of course, it’s not just in families with disabled children. Parents often continue to see their offspring as little children you have to carry. So this has meant that Yui’s mother has never planned for Yui’s and her own future.

“If I’m not here anymore, maybe my older sister can take care of her. On her dad’s side he only has younger sisters or brothers. On the surface, they get along, but if I leave them to take care of her, probably not. Sometimes I think that, if I know in advance what will happen, I would probably take her with me.”

“Still another part of me believes that she has got to survive. Sometimes she asks me, ‘Mom, do you eat like?’ Which is her way of saying, ‘Mom, do you want to eat?’ If I say yes, she will bring two plates, one for her and one for me. If I say not yet, she brings just one plate.”

“If I get the chance, I’d like to take her outside but I’m afraid she will make a scene and I’m afraid other people will be bothered. Some people give us strange looks. Still, I have to keep trying. If she reaches a point where she can help herself day in day out, then I won’t let her get sterilized,” the mother said in the end.

““If I get the chance, I’d like to take her outside but I’m afraid she will make a scene and I’m afraid other people will be bothered. Some people give us strange looks. Still, I have to keep trying. If she reaches a point where she can help herself day in day out, then I won’t let her get sterilized,” the mother said in the end.

Translated into English by Asaree Thaitrakulpanich

In October 2016, there was a minor news report that at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of 6 October 1976 and coincidentally the 10th anniversary of the 2006 coup, a film named Democracy After Death: The Tragedy of Uncle Nuamthong Praiwan was shown with no real marketing. After that showing, there does not appear to have been any screenings or distribution anywhere else. There were only rumours that the organizing committee was warned by security officials that some of the film’s content might constitute a violation of the lèse-majesté law.

Democracy After Death: the film that went almost completely unmentioned

Most recently, Democracy After Death was screened again at the Screening of Thai Political Films event organized by the ASEAN Friends Group last Nov. 5 at Sungkonghoe University in South Korea.

The film mixes several presentation formats, including animation, performances, and a large amount of actual news footage. Overall, Democracy After Death could be called one of the most colourful and complete Thai political documentaries ever. The documentary not only commemorates the story of the struggle and death of Nuamthong Praiwan, the elderly taxi driver who drove his taxi into a tank to protest the 2006 coup and eventually hanged himself to affirm there are those who are ready to sacrifice their lives to oppose the coup. It also reviews the beginning of the political conflicts of 2006, which can be seen as the beginning of the now-10-year-long political turmoil that shows no signs of stopping.

Images of violence, cruelty, anger and debilitating hopelessness are shown over the hour and a half. Instead of the normal film credits rolling at the end, the word “Anonymous” appears repeatedly. There is only the name of the director: Neti Wichiansaen. He is a director of advertisements that had to flee Thailand because of some posts he made on a political webboard. The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) arrested him, saying that his photos and comments broke the lèse-majesté law.

People may not know him by his real name, but his pseudonym, Pruay Saltihead, is likely to be well-known among politically-active internet users from 2006 on.

Who is Pruay?

“When I posted my opinions on the webboard, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I didn’t abuse anyone too much. I didn’t attack any individual. I never thought this country would reach this point.

“I started getting interested in politics probably because my dad is a lawyer and was once a candidate for the New Power Party in Kalasin Province. We had a lot of books at home and no TV, so I read a lot, especially about Oct. 6. My curiosity really began when I saw dad burn some political books in the oven. I also read books about the death of Rama VIII around that time.

“I have an account called ‘Loves Movies’ in Pantip [a popular Thai webboard]. I use it to comment about movies and even write some fiction. When the events in ‘06 happened, I posted about Nepalese politics in the Ratchadamnoen webboard, so my account was suspended. My old articles and writings were all gone. I had to move to the Prachatai webboard and the Fa Diew Kan webboard.

“My username Pruay came from political awareness at the time when Thaksin was being hounded out. At that time I understood that the President of the Privy Council supported kicking Thaksin out, so I created a spoonerism of “Pruay” from Gen. Prem’s name. Not long after the 2006 coup though, I knew there was more to it than that.”

Pruay Saltihead

Arrest

“I was arrested on 31 May 2010 while I was driving out of my neighbourhood. There was a car parked at the entrance of my neighbourhood. It looked like it had broken down, so I got out of my car to look. The driver was a woman. Then suddenly cars and DSI officers were surrounding me and asked me if I was Pruay or not. I said yes, and they arrested me under Article 112.

“Since then and until today, I have no idea what exactly I wrote that was wrong. I didn’t have Facebook at that time, I was only on the Prachatai and Fa Diew Kan webboards. When they took me, they had a thick file full of evidence against me. They showed me some of it. It was photos of the National Security Council meeting the King on the night of the coup on 19 September 2006, with a sarcastic comment along the lines of, ‘It’s nice to be a soldier. When you stage a coup there’s always someone to countersign it for you.’

“So I don’t know what evidence they used against me because they had such a big file. Some of the evidence they showed me was from 2008. I couldn’t remember if I had posted it or not because it was so long ago.

“On posts about the monarchy, mostly I didn’t specify any specific person but used the word ‘monarchical institution.’ They were critiques of the institution itself, not of specific personages in a political role.

“They caught me by tracking my IP Address because I didn’t conceal anything. My house, car, and phone are all under my name.

You can clearly see that I was caught because of lèse-majesté. When they arrested me, they showed me a list of names and asked me who I knew, who I went protesting with, and do I have red shirts at home. I replied that I didn’t know anyone, I went protesting alone, and that I don’t like to wear red coloured shirts. I really didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know what to say.

“They took me for interrogation me for around five hours before releasing me. At first I said I would call a lawyer but the leader of the people who arrested me asked if we could talk formally first. So we agreed to talk first without a lawyer yet. We talked and then the officers escorted me home, and took my hard disk, computer, and political books. It seemed like I had a few privileges when they saw my living conditions as an employee.  The estate where I live looks middle-class. Sometimes I feel sorry for poor red shirts people who got caught, like Uncle SMS, A Kong, who got caught and locked up.

“The officials were probably confused, because most people who are arrested deny posting anything. But I said that I did post those things. The reason why I accepted it is because I thought that I’d definitely get caught. If I denied it, then I was afraid of creating more confusion. And I thought It was a good opportunity for me to say what I wanted directly to the state. They asked, what do you think of the [monarchical] institution, so I answered straightforwardly.

“On the day they arrested me, they also arrested and interrogated my mother and younger sister. We were in the same meeting room, but interrogated in different corners. My mother is a yellow shirt and used to teach in a private school. I overheard them asking her why she didn’t warn me. My mother replied that I was a grown man, and we can’t have the same opinions on everything. I heard her and thought, if all yellow shirts were like her, our country would be a nice place to live.”

The reason for fleeing

“That night, they let me go. They told me that they were compiling evidence to prosecute me. An official called me repeatedly to check if I was still using the Internet, and I said that I wasn’t. Every Monday, they called me in to get back my stuff, one item at a time. I understood it was to check if I was still there. On the third week, they called me in to pick up my hard disk. They said that they had taken all of my data. I thought that it was dangerous that they had done it without me being present. So I decided to get out of the country.

“I cannot accept the state of being locked up. At that time, the red-shirt protestors were being hunted down and were escaping to neighbouring countries in droves. There was news that some were shot dead. I didn’t know anybody so I decided to get out. I got on the train at Sam Sen, with a good chance of getting through immigration.

“When the train moved away from the Thai border, I knew that I was safe. I had simultaneous feelings rushing up in me:  I was worried about my mother, little sister, and our home. But when I got away, damn, it was the most amazing feeling…

“I’m a filmmaker. So the day before I escaped, I took my SLR camera and pawned it to get a newer model that can take good videos. It became my weapon. Part of the footage for ‘Uncle Nuamthong’ was filmed with that very camera I took when I escaped.

“Before I had to escape the country, I had an income of 1–2 million from making ads. This income wasn’t certain. Just think, there’s not an ad to make every month. I got 150,000 per ad roughly. When I fled the country I had around 400,000–500,000 baht with me, and it lasted me two years.

“When I left home I told my mother that after five years I could come back. At the time I thought that there would be elections and everything would be settled. But now it’s been 6–7 years and I don’t see any future.

“I don’t know anyone. When I was arrested and interrogated, the officials told me not to post on the web boards, but instead talk face-to-face with friends. But I have nobody, all my friends are friggin’ yellow shirts.”

“No one knew me until there began to be news after I had escaped the country. I began to use the Internet to search for information on asylum and started posting on Facebook again. Then people started contacting me behind the scene. The DSI arrest warrant then reached my house in Thailand, charging me with 112.’

Requesting refugee status

“I went to Nepal next because I found out through Google that Nepal grants 5-month tourist visas, and there was also a UNHCR office there. I had travelled there before, staying for months at a time, so I decided to go there. After I found a place to stay, I looked for a way to contact my mother to reassure her that I was safe.

“Then I had to explain to the UNHCR to make them understand what the problem is with the lèse-majesté law. They didn’t understand; they were only used to dealing with war refugees. They also had a prejudice against refugees because some are economic refugees. Things were resolved, however, when the DSI issued a warrant for me. I got a copy of it and translated it for them, and then they understood.

“When I went to contact the UNHCR, an official got someone who has dealt for a long time with people seeking asylum to take me to find a place to rent and stay. When I saw the place, I knew I couldn’t live there. After that they took me to a hospital. I saw the state of the hospital and thought to myself, ‘dammit! I can’t let myself get sick here!’

“The interview procedures in fact were completed in four months. The next stage was approval of my refugee status so I could contact a third country. I waited, my visa ran out and I still hadn’t got it. It was then 2011, and I had to exit the country and wait until I could re-enter in 2012. I decided not to wait. I asked Sudanese, Somalis, Afghanis who had come to ask for asylum. Some had been living in Nepal for 3, 4, 7 years. It was like living in a large prison.

“One limitation for those seeking asylum outside the country where they are seeking asylum is that their refugee status can continue pending for as long as six months. So I asked the UNHCR to move to another country closer to Thailand.

“When I came to this country neighbouring Thailand, a friend had suggested that I re-enter Thailand, but keep quiet and not make any moves. But I didn’t want this because there was no insurance at all. My life at home was lost anyway. I think I made the right decision because after the coup, dormant [lèse-majesté] cases were all summoned.

“At that time I was trying to contact one other embassy to get refugee status. They agreed to take the issue to their government, and said that they would arrange an interview. The UNHCR said they would grant me refugee status because the interview process was completed in Nepal, but I never saw it. Someone pointed it out to me that they may see me travelling about, so it looks like I’m not yet in any difficulty. I don’t look like a ‘victim’, so they don’t give me the status.

The problem for refugees is that visas expire, but some people disagree that it’s something normal and an indicator that those seeking asylum have really been driven to the limit of their struggle. If you come to Malaysia then you have to cross the border to extend your visa in Singapore. When you extend your visa a second time, you have problems with Malaysian immigration. They call you for questioning since they suspect that you’ve come to do something. Have you come to get work? Why haven’t you gone back to Thailand? I explained that I was a documentary filmmaker and showed them the website with a collection of my work, so I was able to pass.  But when I left, I decided not to go back again.

“When I left the country I had 400,000–500,000 baht, which lasted 2 years. But I have skills, knowledge, and friends so I could still find some work.

“Since I came to live here, you could say I’ve gotten a pretty good start. Getting a visa and other procedures is fairly easy, so I started work. It’s good that I still have a passport so I can travel. The work runs from designing logos, book covers, and odds and ends (laughs). I still have enough income. Friends in many countries help me get work too. I also have the equipment. When there’s work in Malaysia or Singapore, I fly there. I take photographs, do apartment renovation design jobs, make slideshows, all kinds of work (laughs).”

The future

“I didn’t think of settling down here. I still hope to get asylum from the embassy I contacted in June 2011. Acknowledgement came in September 2013. They contacted me for an interview in one country I could go to. After the interview, I came back to wait for the results. About 6 months passed and in 2014 they said they would not accept my case because 1) no one knew me there and 2) my life wasn’t in a crisis, I could still travel from place to place. I appealed. By chance this was right after the 2014 coup, so I explained to them that the situation had changed for the worse and the reason I applied for refugee status there even though no one knew me there was because that country allowed people to seek asylum from outside the country.

“In answer to the claim that I wasn’t in trouble, I appealed by asking how being forced to live a quiet clandestine life where I could not reveal my location is a normal untroubled life. Although I’m a refugee from a third-world country, I want to live like people in civilized countries and to be able to express myself and my opinions like normal people. In the end they still refused me.

“I will say that when I appealed I annoyed them. I argued on the issue of basic rights that all humans should enjoy equally. I didn’t act to make them to take pity on me.

To be honest, when I fled the country, I met an NGO friend who told me that if I was a journalist or activist, I would get protection. So I wonder why ordinary citizens don’t get the same protection.

“The refugee process became clear in 2014, that a request for asylum from outside the country would not work. It was very hard. This coincided with the increased violence in our country. Getting home is not likely to be.”

Troubles

“The house where I lived with my mother and sister I bought on instalments. I paid off about 2 million. When I first left the country, I tried to continue paying but in the end I couldn’t afford it, so we decided to sell the house so that at least we could get back the money we’d paid to spend. But the flood at the end of 2011 came and we couldn’t sell it. In the end the bank foreclosed on the house and we didn’t get back a single baht.”

“Another awful period was when I didn’t have a passport. To live, you need a job, and to travel. If you can’t travel, you have less work. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I have fun with being on the set, making movies.”

“I began to lose hope that I would ever come home as I had anticipated during the Yingluck administration. For the social changes or amendments to outdated laws which will cause a popular revolution, MPs are our hope, but there is not a single MP who is brave enough to stand up and suggest amending this set of laws. I’ve begun to think we’ve been too optimistic in the past.

“There is no future.”

About the Uncle Nuamthong film

“First I must explain, to prevent any misunderstanding, that this documentary is unrelated to the project to make a Nuamthong movie which fell through. This documentary didn’t use much funding. It used a crew of only 3–4 people, and was filmed in two countries. It used a lot of footage which we asked permission for or in some cases paid for.  It wasn’t expensive.

“It’s like not all the events that were important points were included. I admit that it was a limitation. We abbreviated 10 years into a little more than an hour. That’s difficult. I think that if the film has the goal of stimulating the interest of the audience to explore further, that should be enough.”

When no one dared to screen it

“I didn’t really think anything. I didn’t want to create trouble for anyone. Basically I think I’ve finished my job. Some university students contacted me saying they wanted to screen it in educational institutions. It should be OK like that, showing it secretly in small groups.”

What kind of film reveals only the director’s name?

“For me as director, I have nothing to lose. There’s a summons from the DSI, the news has spread, but I’ve been able to flee the country, so I thought it would be okay to reveal my name.

“As for the rest of the team, they’re still in this industry. If their names are revealed, there may be problems in the future in including their names. So they have to stay anonymous.”

Thais in Exile: The Next Documentary Project

“At first I wanted to make a documentary about political and lèse-majesté refugees all over the world in order to make a record of their stories to present a different perspective of the truth to the audience. Then it’s up to them to fight over which model they want, a republic or a democracy like Japan’s. But after the latest coup in Thailand, many people fled the country so it was a good opportunity. There were many celebrities for us to film easily. The project started to take shape. Now it wasn’t just lèse majesté, but also about people who were political refugees the coup.

“I tried travelling around, pitching the project to businessmen interested in politics, trying to sell it. After a few interviews, I edited a preview and sent it to ask for funding to make the documentary from various funders. I sent it to 6–7 in case I could get travel expenses to film the stories of refugees who lived really far. But I didn’t get funds from anywhere at all. It was like a lottery (laughs).”

The need to communicate

“I want to show how strange Thai society is in tourism ads that Thais make for foreigners. They get to see peace and happiness with monks, temples, good food, Thai boxing, a beloved king, and Patpong. But what they don’t know is that our country has refugees, and the reason we have to flee is so damn funny. Other countries have wars, and people have to flee because they’re killing each other. They have to carry their families to escape death. But our country has refugees just because of expressing opinions. Some are actors, some are musicians. We all have to flee just because we say things that one group of people don’t want to hear. It’s really a sick joke (laughs).

“The kind of political problems that creates Thai political refugees, when compared to other countries, may seem petty. But I want to say that the problems of Thai political refugees are problems they should be interested in giving the same kind of importance to.

“If you ask if what I’m doing is call ‘fighting,’ that’s too much. Maybe you could say I’m doing what I’m good at as a member of one faction of society that feels that it wants to see justice in Thailand. I’ve made ads before. That’s what I’m skilled at. In the neighbouring countries I filmed all the footage. The rest I got friends who are working in those countries to help shoot footage. Now what’s left is only asylum-seekers in distant countries that I’m still looking for a way to film.”

A recurring dream that haunts me

“I may be a lucky guy. In my life I do what I love (make movies), and I get paid a lot of money for it. It’s like someone hiring me to do something I want to do anyway. I’m always thinking about what might be the reason for this recurring dream I have these days. It recurs at least 3–4 times a month with the same pattern. I dream that I accept a job, film a movie, edit it, and do other technical work on it. The location is in Thailand. But every time, I never complete it because the police come and arrest me every time. Sometimes, it’s even a dream within a dream. I argue with myself that I’m dreaming.

“So far I’m still trying to do what I’m good at. I like it, so I’m totally into it, like this refugee documentary. Doubly so. I tell a story about injustice in the medium I like. It’s the best.”

What did you think after watching Democracy After Death?

Pattaporn Phutong - A crew member for the film Memory | Soundless and With Respect got to watch Democracy After Death in South Korea and talks about the atmosphere at the screening.

“Let me first say that I’m not a film fanatic or expert or professional filmmaker. My opinions will be that of a regular moviegoer, a person who can’t stand political and systematic violence, and someone who picks sides [politically].”

“I think with all of its limitations, telling the story through news footage is really a cool option he chose to do. I can clearly see the cause and effect and the order of events. The storytelling draws us to the truth, no matter how painful and horrific it is. During the film, I was too scared to watch many parts. I’m scared of blood and gore, but at the same time, I thought to myself that if I was too scared to face the truth, then I was fooling myself that everything was alright.”

“Another good thing about the film is that it made me see that ‘heart,’ ‘ideals,’ and ‘hope’ really do exist. Although the ending is sad, I didn’t feel abandoned and alone at the end. (What I didn’t like was the male narrator. I felt he was out-of-place, and why did he have to smoke and drink beer so much? I felt that was too on-the-nose. It made me not want to smoke, and many times he appeared unnecessarily.)”

“I don’t think it’s a movie that you watch for fun or watch alone. As an audience member, I chose to watch in a group. Some movies aren’t suitable for watching alone. This movie leaves us questions for us to discuss with other audience members. If you watch alone, the questions will just run around in your head.”

“At first, the event organizer and I were considering and discussing whether we should screen this film. I had to travel back to Thailand and had no plans to live overseas. I felt disturbed and worried. I hated feeling this way, like I was scared and quietly violated. The most uncomfortable thing was feeling scared when I was talking or discussing this topic with others, even though the things I was talking about weren’t wrong, and should even be brought into the open.”

“Nevertheless, if I didn’t hold the film festival or screen this film, I would feel guilty for the rest of my life, because it would go against my values. I don’t want to feel guilty for bowing my head down to stupidity. When it was the time to hold the event, I discussed with my Thai colleague whether we should ask the audience not to discuss topics sensitive to the Thai military and forbid recordings or photos of the event, because it could be dangerous to me and the colleagues who would return to Thailand after their studies.”

“After Pruay’s movie ended, the whole room was silent. Everyone was speechless.”

“During the discussion time, we agreed that people should be able to discuss whatever they want. A space of freedom is rare for us, therefore, everyone should be able to say and ask whatever they want.”

“Most of the people attending were shocked at Pruay’s movie. They (and even myself) weren’t expecting such violence and cruelty. On the screen, we saw people who viewed other people as inhuman creatures, eyewitnesses of injustice, and the ‘opened eyes’ phenomenon. We saw all the events that made us understand what happened in Thailand in the past ten years in the space of a little over an hour.”

“The audience asked Pruay about the country’s future, his opinions on the current situation, his hopes for democracy, and what caused him to flee the country. I myself was really excited to see Pruay up-close after having only seen him through Facebook for a long time. When he was answering questions, it seemed to me like he didn’t have much hope. But still, I think that if he didn’t have any hope, he probably wouldn’t have the strength to make Democracy After Death.”

Remark

The ASEAN’s Friends group is made up of university students and those interested in the societies, cultures, and politics of countries in Southeast Asia. On 5 Nov. 2016, the group organized a “Screening of Thai Political Films”, which screened Democracy After Death, Memory | Soundless, With Respect, and Missa Marjat at Songkunghoe University. The event included Skype disucssions with directors who could not attend, including Pruay.

News of police scapegoating innocent victims has inspired public calls for police reform. But amidst announcements by the junta that it will push ahead with planned reforms to the police force, some believe the initiatives will only increase the regime’s grip over the nation’s law enforcers. 

On 1 February 2017, Tanachai Yanu, a former post office worker in Chonburi Province, was released after one year and eight months in prison. The police had accused him of robbing employees from a cash delivery company at a Siam Commercial Bank ATM in Chonburi, along with four other suspects. Later, both the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal dismissed charges against him due to a lack of concrete evidence.

But the damage had already been done. Tanachai said that he was tortured by police officers, adding that he will file complaints against the officers who arrested him.

According to the Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Pol Col Dusadee Arayawut, between 2015 and 2016 authorities received complaints regarding some 250 criminal cases warranting reinvestigation. In many cases, the suspects, like Tanachai, claimed that they were prosecuted for crimes they did not commit.   

With Thailand’s Royal Thai Police (RTP) regularly criticised for a lack of transparency in appointments and promotions, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) declared when it took power in 2014 that police reform was one of its top priorities. The regime stated that the primary goal is to rid the police force of ‘political influences’ especially in the investigation department where police inquiry officers are key.

However, many people, including police officers themselves, are skeptical of whether the junta’s reform initiatives will increase the efficiency and accountability of the RTP or merely bring the force more firmly under the military’s control.  

Preventing interference through junta intervention?

Tanachai’s acquittal, and the claim of former teacher Jomsap Saenmuangkhot that she was wrongfully jailed as a scapegoat for a fatal car accident in 2005, have renewed calls for police reform.

The Thai police on 1 February 2017 announced that they will accept the junta leader’s decision on whether or not to use Section 44 of the Interim Constitution for reform of the RTP. Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, the junta leader and Prime Minister, has said in turn that the NCPO currently has no plans to use its absolute power under Section 44.

“It is true that the work of inquiry officers is easily influenced by their superiors, government officials, politicians, and other influential figures,” Pol Col Dr Mana Pochauy, Superintendent of Thung Song Hong Police Station and Secretary General of the Police Inquiry Officer Association, told Prachatai.

He added that police inquiry officers, like other public servants in Thailand, work under strict lines of command. When there are orders from above to investigate or not investigate, officers are put in a very difficult position where most choose to follow orders to avoid trouble. Pol Col Mana told Prachatai that the majority of inquiry officers want to become more independent from the Central Investigation Bureau to ensuring checks and balance in safeguarding justice.

Agreeing with Pol Col Mana, a public prosecutor who requested anonymity proposed that a separate interrogation department should be established to ensure the independency of the investigation process. The idea is similar to a suggestion from Police Watch (PW), a civil society group campaigning for police reform. More radically, however, the group argued that this independent interrogation department should be established under the Ministry of Justice.

Contrary to what inquiry officers and other experts have suggested, the junta leader has centralised the police force further, creating obstacles to independent justice. On February 2016, the junta leader used his absolute power under Section 44 to abolish the position of inquiry officers, despite the role being semi-independent from the command of police station directors.

The junta leader reasoned that bringing all departments under the same structure would increase the force’s efficiency. “So far, we have not seen any sign that the authorities will make the investigation department of the force more independent from the centralised RTP administrative system,” said Pol Col Mana.

A mid-ranking police officer, who requested to be referred to by the pseudonym ‘Top’, told Prachatai that the NCPO’s top-down use of power to reform the police force will not bring about positive changes.

“They said that the appointments and promotions of the police force are too political, which is true. But we have witnessed the second coup d’état in the span of less than a decade. Isn’t the military playing with politics themselves?”

Pointing out the hypocrisy of the regime, he said that after the 2014 coup d’état, the military themselves have been the ones intervening in the investigative and inquiry work of the police, especially in cases related to political dissidents.  

Top added that after the 2006 coup d’état, there was a similar proposal to reform the RTP and a committee to reform the police force was set up for the task. However, except for a report on how the force should be reformed, nothing was done.

“If reform policies are going to be implemented, I think they are going to be policies to increase the power of the junta over the police force.”  

In an interview with the Bangkok Post, Wasan Luangprapat, a political scientist from Thammasat University, agreed reform is only a distant dream because the regime seems to exploit the police for self-interest.  

"The NCPO uses the police as a mechanism to implement its policies and stabilise its power. The regime has done nothing at all, be it on salaries or welfare benefits, skills development and or human resources (HR) administration," the Bangkok Post quoted Wasan as saying.

Dealing with lack of resources and transparency  

According to Police Watch, in order to make the inquiry procedures more accountable and transparent, public prosecutors should be allowed to monitor or to take part in the procedure together with inquiry officers.

Agreeing with the suggestion, Pol Col Mana said that cooperation between inquiry officers and prosecutors could bring positive changes. But he does not think the suggestion can be easily transformed into reality.

“Most public prosecutors are routine public servants who are used to working on documents during normal office hours. I don’t think that most of them would like to join the police in interrogating crime suspects at odd hours of the day,” said Pol Col Mana.

The prosecutor, however, told Prachatai, “But many would also be happy to work with police officers to make the interrogation process more accountable. If the suggestion is made a law, then of course it could easily become reality.”

The prosecutor said miscarriages of justice also occur when prosecutors do not do their jobs carefully.

“In certain cases, although more evidence was needed, the prosecutors did not send case files back to the police to ask for more evidence, but proceeded with the indictment.”

The prosecutor added that these oversights sometimes occur because the police submit case files to the prosecutors only when the pre-indictment custody period of 84 days permitted by the Criminal Procedure Code is about to run out. Therefore, the prosecutors feel pressured to proceed with the indictment.

Adding to the suggestions, Pol Col Mana said more financial and human resources should be allocated to the investigative and interrogation work of the police. “Although investigative and interrogation work plays a very significant role in influencing the fundamental justice process, the budget for it is very limited. So most police officers do not want to do this work. They get only a little extra payment on top of their police salaries, which are known to be rather low anyhow,” Pol Col Mana told Prachatai.

He further stated that the lack of skills and training is another problem. He said the budget for police training is very limited and on top of that most training programs designed by the Police Education Bureau are oriented towards delivering training certificates needed for promotion, rather than genuinely improving the skills of the force. When faced with high-profile criminal cases with tremendous pressure from the public, some police officers do their work hastily.

Culture of impunity

During the notorious war on drugs during Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration, at least 2,500 drug suspects were killed extrajudicially and many more alleged that they were tortured by paramilitary troops or police officers. Although it has been more than a decade since the war on drugs was scrapped when Thaksin was ousted by the coup d’état in 2006, not a single police officer has been prosecuted or arrested.

Throughout Thai history, state officials have engaged in torture and enforced disappearances and never been punished. Part of the reason is the lack of any law which criminalises torture and enforced disappearance. In fact, some officers who committed these crimes have been promoted while civilians who spoke out were punished.

In 2014, the Army filed a libel suit against Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a human rights lawyer and Director of the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF) of Thailand. Pornpen was accused of causing damage to the reputation of the army by submitting a report to the UN about alleged torture committed by the army.

In 2011, Suderueman Maleh was sentenced to two years in jail for reporting torture allegedly inflicted upon him by police. The lawyer representing Suderueman in this torture case was abducted and disappeared in 2004. Yes, that lawyer was the prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit.

The current judicial process and apparatus have created huge obstacles to bringing to justice perpetrators of these two extraordinary crimes. Currently, Thai law does not recognise or criminalise enforced disappearance and torture. If a person is tortured by a police officer, they have to start the judicial process by filing a complaint with the police themselves.

In 2016, almost a decade after Thailand signed the UN conventions against torture and enforced disappearances, the Justice Ministry submitted a bill against torture and enforced disappearance to the junta-appointed National Legislative Assembly. If enacted, the law will be the first to recognise and criminalise torture by Thai authorities. It will also recognise and criminalise enforced disappearance even in cases where the body of the victim is missing.

However, under the military junta which itself has utilised torture and enforced disappearance to suppress dissent, people are sceptical about the fate of the bill.

Under the bill, any government official or employee of the state who commits torture must serve a jail term of from five to 20 years. If the torture leads to serious injury, they may face 10-30 years in jail. If a person is tortured to death, the official will face life imprisonment and a fine of 600,000 to one million baht. It also states that officials who commit enforced disappearance will face five to 20 years in jail. If the enforced disappearance leads to serious injury, the officials will face seven to thirty years, but officials will face life imprisonment if the act leads to the death of the victim.

For Top, however, in a country like Thailand where reality usually varies greatly from rhetoric, we will have to wait and see if the bill brings justice to people who suffer torture and ill-treatment at the hands of public officials.

Why is it hard for us to imagine what the sex lives of disabled people are like? Will they have children? Have they ever had boyfriends or girlfriends? This may reflect the old saying that “sex” and “disability” are completely separate from each other. Many disabled people have never received sex education; some are kept away from it; some are afraid because they don’t know anything. The result is that many of the disabled and their families choose to bury this topic away as deep as possible, with many avoiding the problem altogether through sterilization.

How serious is sterilization? Many disabled women have been sterilized without them being aware of it and many have had it done because of one-sided information. Many others have had it done because their families persuaded them. Many who may want to become mothers after they had been sterilized, then find that it was widely recommended that young disabled women should be sterilized. Many women have been sterilized soon their periods start, because it is thought that sterilization will prevent these women from producing further disabled offspring.

Still, sterilization does not prevent sexual abuse, as is widely believed. In fact, it may even lead to sexual repeated abuse that no one knows about even though in reality, abuse is an offence which should never occur in the first place.

Some disabled people choose to live by themselves, but still must remain alert for fear of sexual abuse like the news they see on TV.

I crisscrossed all over Nakhon Pathom for many days in the belief that everyone is equal and everyone has rights over their own body. I travelled through the bustling city and into the quiet calm of Bang Len, Khlong Yong, and Bang Rakam to investigate and understand the perspective and mood of humanity that hasn’t been divided by disability.

These places helped dispel the popular questions: “Why does someone disabled need to get pregnant?” and “If you’re disabled, how can you raise a child?” among others.

“Dejection”

It’s late afternoon on a working day. I travel along a winding road alone, through Nakhon Pathom city aiming for Bang Len District. Most of the surrounding area there is forest, and once in a long while I’ll see a house or two. Nusra Num-euam’s house, my destination, is in the middle of rice fields. Short grass covers the area with a bright green. The red earth road is cracked because of the stifling heat. We sit and talk on the stone bench by her house. There are traces of a fish pond and pigpen, which have both been the household’s basic livelihood.

Twenty years ago, the hearts Nusra’s parents were bursting at the birth of their healthy baby boy into their financially stable household. Not long after their joy they found something unusual when their son didn’t make eye contact, didn’t walk, didn’t talk, and didn’t respond to any stimuli. But even so, the doctors told the couple to try for another child in the hope that the second child would not have any disability and could support their parents and elder brother.

Nusra Num-euam and her family

Nusra, the daughter that was expected, is now 24. She lives with her diabetic parents and a mentally disabled older brother. She has learning disabilities and can speak slowly with a few, short words. Phraiwan Num-euam, her mother, tells Prachatai that her son and daughter are different. Her son is cannot help himself at all and cannot even feed himself, and spends the day sitting and staring into space or moving himself by crawling. However, her daughter is slow but able to study at school. If Nusra had not had seizures at age nine, then she would have become childlike as she is today.

“When I found out my first child was disabled, I told the doctor to sterilize me. I didn’t want another disabled child. But the doctor told me he couldn’t, and to have another child who might be able to take care of me in my old age. But she’s disabled too. If I knew it would be like this, I would better have had myself sterilized myself at the beginning,” said the mother.

Nusra is able to speak a little to communicate. She is a young woman who loves to look good, dress up, put on makeup, and collect bags and shoes. Often she changes her outfit several times a day, trying things on and mixing and matching pieces. Sometimes, she changes her clothes where people can see. This really worries her parents, who are afraid of both gossip from the neighbours and worst of all that their daughter will be sexually abuse out of her own naivety.

“As a mother, I’m often dejected. But she’s been born, so we have to take care of her. I wanted one child to be good, but none of them are. I can’t go anywhere because I can’t leave her home alone. Nusra the lady loves to go naked and change her clothes. This problem has happened. All we can do is to make the houses around be good to her.”

“Someone once asked me, how can you handle having a child like this, who takes off her clothes and goes naked? I worried about it a lot. There was no option. I took my child to get sterilized in Nakhon Pathom. I was sorry, but what could I do? We don’t have any idea about how to take care of her ourselves,” said the mother.

Because of Nusra’s childlike level of maturity, she is unaware that what she does puts her at risk of sexual abuse. She often begs her mother and anyone passing by her house to buy her things, resulting in her once being sexually abused. Her mother told us in tears that she didn’t want to talk about that incident because thinking back about it reopens painful wounds.

Nusra was sterilized in 2005, when she was 13. Nusra herself is unaware that she was sterilized, because it was an agreement between the doctor and her mother.

“Someone once asked me, how can you handle having a child like this, who takes off her clothes and goes naked? I worried about it a lot. There was no option. I took my child to get sterilized in Nakhon Pathom. I was sorry, but what could I do? We don’t have any idea about how to take care of her ourselves.”

“The doctor talked to me. He said he did not recommend other methods of birth control. He said we should do this in case, after we are gone, someone bad comes to harm her, which did happen before and we even brought it to court. Sometimes, Nusra even goes crazy and grabs knives and things. Sometimes she sees me crying and tells me not to cry, she loves me. Sometimes she sits and cries,” said Phraiwan.

When the burden of raising two disabled children gets to be too much, the parents often argue. The father talks of “leaving” all the time because of the pressure, so sometimes the mother can’t help thinking that a shelter would help be a better place for them to re-establish their lives. In fact, getting into a shelter isn’t as easy as many people understand, especially if you cannot sending money every month payments. It’s even much harder for when Nusra is not used to living apart from her parents.

“My husband said he will leave. I told him, ‘If you leave, tell me first, so I can sort myself out properly.’ But he doesn’t have to tell me where he’s going or what he’s going to do. If he leaves, I’ll hang myself. Problem solved.”

“I’ve told the old people that if I die and my children are still alive, I’ll hand over my children and my land to the Public Welfare. They can do whatever they want with them. They don’t have to pray over my bones, just cremate me into dust so I won’t be a burden to anyone. I’m just worried about what in the future these two are going to eat. I thought about borrowing but there’s no way I can pay it back. We’re barely surviving now. It’s not easy taking care of these two because I can’t go to work, I have to stay at home and watch them. I’m stressed. I want to go outside the house to work and go out with friends and have some good fun in society,” said the mother.

Soon after we started talking, Nusra woke up and walked out of the house. She looks more like a child than she really is, with her short hair and thin body. She can only talk in short words, but understands questions. When her mother asked, “Nusra, do you love mommy?” Nusra quickly nodded her head. When her mother suggested Nusra wanted to go live at the shelter with me, the girl answered “Go, go, don’t cry.”

“Fear”

“I’m scared. I see a lot of news about disabled people being sexually abused. Going in or out of the room I double-lock the door, put on the bolt and fasten another one. I’m scared but there’s nothing I can do. I have to go out and sell, and I come home in the middle of the night almost every day,” said Orani Mongkhonphan.

Orani, a woman of 35, shares her concerns when she has to live in a rented room alone after leaving the welfare home. She has cerebral palsy or CP, which causes the muscles all over her body to stiffen. Apart from the effect of this illness on moving her limbs, but the muscles in her face are also affected. Orani is able to communicate in short sentences like a person with a stammer and relies on crawling along the floor to get around.

Although this all sounds overwhelming, Orani is able to do all of her daily chores such as cooking, showering, cleaning, dressing, and dexterously preparing the board of lottery tickets to sell at the Tesco Lotus near her house.

The area in front of Orani’s rented room

Orani tells me that ever since she can remember, her grandparents were the ones who raised her. When they passed away when she was 14, her world was turned upside-down. The welfare home became her second home and even though she was entering adolescence at the time, the welfare home had nothing at all to say about sex or looking after yourself.

“There was no sex education, only a ‘no sexual intercourse’ rule. Kids would find out from outside sources. Some looked in the school books. There was often a problem of sexual abuse there, such as ‘someone with a good head’ raping ‘someone with a bad head’ [Orani used these terms to refer to people with and without mental disabilities], raping the deaf, or the deaf raping the mentally disabled. Part of this stems from not having enough staff,” Orani said.

However, as far as she knows, this home did not force or recommend that students get sterilized because it was unethical. Still, she did know of some mentally disabled children who were sterilized in order to prevent pregnancies if they were sexually abused, and injecting contraceptives into people who were disabled in other ways.

“I’m scared. I see a lot of news about disabled people being sexually abused. Going in or out of the room I double-lock the door, put on the bolt and fasten another one. I’m scared but there’s nothing I can do. I have to go out and sell, and I come home in the middle of the night almost every day.”

When she was around 14 or 15, Orani started having sexual urges and constant questions and doubts about sex occurred even in the welfare home.  But from feelings of embarrassment about asking the welfare home staff these questions, so many children just kept their doubts to themselves. This was lucky for the staff, because they themselves didn’t have enough knowledge or understanding to give answers or advice about sex education and advice to the disabled.

Looking from the outside, we might think that the welfare home is a place full of rules and uniforms. But in fact, what is secretly hidden is a view on relations and needs that have never properly come together. Orani says that many students at the shelter hope to have a proper family outside the gates of the home. Same-sex couples can be seen here and there and heterosexual couples conceal their relationship, since all activities in the home are divided by sex. Therefore, while this kind of thing can be seen in many places, the staff at the welfare home have never given even a little information about sex and relationships for the disabled.

“When they reach 18, the kids would be sent out of the welfare home. Some were picked up by their guardians, others were sent to other homes, and there is a large number who choose to leave and live alone, like me. Life outside is quite hard. I always have to be careful. I sell lottery tickets at the nearby Lotus from noon until 8 pm every day. Once, a 10-wheeler scraped against my wheelchair and sent it spinning in mid-air. Still, I have to keep fighting because there’s not many other options,” Orani said.

These days, Orani takes good care of herself, and is always watchful of her surroundings. She sends money back home regularly. Although she is not thinking about romance at this time, she doesn’t close herself off, and has good social relations.

“The Wait”

Thitima Liangraksa, 42, is disabled with cerebral palsy like Orani. Thitima has three siblings, and a younger sister with mental disability. She lives in a small, one-storey house surrounded by concrete, stone, and gravel that Thitima always has to crawl across in order to get in and out of her house. As a result, her knees are scratched and cut. Books and school are something she almost doesn’t know about. Her parents go out to work, leaving her and her mentally disabled sister alone every day with only the radio for company.

Thitima was sexually abused together with her sister while at home alone. Although they know who abused them, they could not prosecute him because there was no evidence and Thitima is unable to communicate so that others can understand very much due to her disability, which makes her facial muscles so stiff that she cannot speak clearly. Both she and her sister got pregnant from the rape and gave birth to healthy daughters, who are now 19 years old.

On the day of the delivery, the obstetrician sterilized Thitima and her sister without informing them or asking for the prior consent of Thitima or their family.

Generally, sterilization needs the consent of the patient, according to Article 3 of the declaration of rights of the Medical Council, which states the right of the patient to be clear and complete information from medical professionals so that they can choose to voluntarily give or not give their consent for an operation. The only exceptions are emergencies or cases where the operation is necessary but the patients cannot make a decision and relatives or guardians can make the decision for them. Nevertheless, Thitima’s condition does not impair her conscious ability to make decisions. Her brain is normal, it is just that her speech is not clear and leads many people to assume she has a mental condition. Therefore, it may be thought that the sterilization exceeded medical responsibility, because Thitima and her family were not even informed about the procedure.

While Thitima was pregnant, it was not kept a secret. But she never went to the maternity hospital or had a check-up. The only relevant thing she had were blood tonics her relatives got from Phutthamonthon Hospital. Thitima didn’t know the sex of her child until birth. Thitima’s first question was “Girl or boy?” and she heard the answer “Girl.”

As a new mother, Thitima was never taught about “motherhood.” No one told her how to hold her baby.  No one told her how to breastfeed and she was not allowed to see or hold her baby after she was born. She hasn’t even ever held her own child because immediately after the birth, her child was taken away and sent to be raised by another younger sister.

What happened to Thitima illustrates well how the Thai public health system treats the disabled. Generally, when an abled woman gives birth, the midwife has the job of giving advice and teaching skills about childcare to all new mothers, which might include advice about having more children or any possible risks. One factor that made the doctors choose not to communicate with was that they thought Thitima was mentally disabled because her speech was slow, unclear and halting. In fact, Thitima only has a disability with moving.

From her story, many readers may think Thitima now is living a fretful existence because of what happened to her. Although it is certain that her past cannot be changed, Thitima today has become a strong mother and a beloved grandmother to a 3-year-old granddaughter.

Thitima Liangruksa

“When Mother’s Day comes, I don’t go anywhere. I wait at home for my daughter and granddaughter,” she said. “She’s cute, has long hair, is talkative, and is very smart,” Thitima said over and over. She talks over and over when it’s about the feelings she has towards her granddaughter, with smiles with happiness shining from her eyes.

Thitima only has a few daily chores due to her physical limitations: eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. One thing she does well, which everyone in the family says she’s the best at, is mopping the floor meticulously. She spends almost the whole day sweeping and mopping the floor while happily listening to luk thung (country) music on the radio.

She has two favourite singers: Jintara Poonlarp and Jaloi Henry. Jintara’s hit,“Asking My Friend to Write a Letter,” is her favourite song. Here are some of the lyrics.

“Lying thinking of him, but I’ve got no chance

So I picked up a piece of paper to write a letter

But I don’t know how to write, what will I do?

Asking friends to write it for me, I’m so embarrassed”

“Books, I’ve never read them since I was born

Shameful life, unbearably far from home

My unlucky parents have nothing, struggling to survive

Because of poverty, I didn’t go to school”

“The lyrics are just like my life. I listen to it and think of my own life,” Thitima said.

“Insanity”

Inside the fence of a house shaded by trees that stretch from the entrance, a mother duck and her ducklings are running around playfully next to a big pond to the side of a large house and a blue, one-storey house, where Phloen (not her real name) lives with her mentally and visually disabled brother.

Phloen, a middle-aged woman with the manner of a child has eight siblings in all, with four of the eight, including Phloen, having various disabilities in sight, hearing, and mental ability. The doctors cannot determine for sure what the condition is. Phloen’s disabilities have always been called a “hereditary disease.”

Phloen and her brother

Nowadays, Phloen can see very little because of glaucoma. Compared with three years ago when she could still see fuzzy shapes, her sight has gradually deteriorated as a side effect of her diabetes and sedatives. She can take care of herself to some level, but cannot work or communicate with those around her. She is focused on the things she is interested in, and uses touch to identify people. Phloen uses a special language of “ers” and “ahs” that she uses only with her brother.

Saithong Natsuwong, her younger sister, said that Phloen was raped almost 20 years ago by their younger brother. At that time, no one knew she had been sexually abused until one night when Phloen started crying and throwing an extraordinarily heavy tantrum. Saithong saw a baby’s leg sticking out of Phloen’s sarong. Although they rushed to the hospital, the distance was too far and most of the baby was delivered in the back of a truck with just the chin stuck at the entrance to Phloen’s vagina. In the end a baby girl was born at the hospital.

“I pity her because she’s disabled and can’t talk or communicate. She was probably in a lot of pain so she threw a tantrum. She knew that the person who raped her was her brother, but she couldn’t do anything because he did it because he couldn’t control himself. Phloen uses injectable contraceptives, and will stop soon since she is nearing 50.

“I don’t think she knows she had a baby, since her mind isn’t sound. Especially at that period, she threw a lot of tantrums. If she didn’t take sedatives, she would have shown signs of being scared of her rapist. I don’t know who to blame. It’s something we can’t talk about, because the person who did it is within the family,” Saithong said.

Phloen’s daughter is disabled, like her. Phloen has never held or even been close to her child like other mothers, because the doctors do not believe she can take care of a child. So the whole burden of raising the child fell to Saithong who had to work twice as hard to support her older sister and niece, who can walk and eat on her own, but cannot take care of herself or communicate. In 2011, when she was 13, the niece drowned in the big pond by the house.

“I pity her because she’s disabled and can’t talk or communicate. She was probably in a lot of pain so she threw a tantrum. She knew that the person who raped her was her brother, but she couldn’t do anything because he did it because he couldn’t control himself. Phloen uses injectable contraceptives, and will stop soon since she is nearing 50.

“I felt connected to my niece because I took care of her since she was little. Once I sent her to a home for disabled children, but I couldn’t bear to see her bullied by the other kids. They smacked her and bit her ear and her face was all bruised because she couldn’t communicate. When my niece drowned, I was sad but couldn’t do anything. She was probably in a lot of torment, struggling in the water but couldn’t get out. Her muscles were weak,” said Saithong.

In Phloen’s case, she never received advice from doctors about sterilization nor did she enter the public health system, even when pregnant, since Phloen’s family is poor and lives far from the hospital in the city. When Phloen still had her periods, she could take care of herself.  She used a twisted loincloth as a sanitary napkin without anyone having to teach her. This is a clear example that shows that Phloen’s disability did not diminish her ability to learn about sex, as many believe. Suitable sex education adapted for disabled people might have helped Phloen to learn about being a “mother” and helped to give her better protection in sex matters.

The article was first published in Thai in Prachatai and translated into English by Asaree Thaitrakulpanich.

Prisons in Thailand still fail to recognise the basic rights of female prisoners, depriving women of essential health services and goods from sanitary pads to bras. Overburdened prisons due to Thailand’s harsh drug laws aggravate the current situation. This report reveals the devastating condition of female prisons in Thailand, places where women detainees live without dignity.

Fungus infested bras and unchewable food

During my visits to prisons, female prisoners told me they receive bras through donations from outsiders. Oversized and so old they are no longer elastic, those bras are home to different types of fungus.

“Whenever they give out bras, we will all go crazy,” said Tick, an inmate. “Bras are usually distributed by room but [what bra you get] also depends on whether you have any connection to the room leader. If you don’t get along well with the room leader, you will get the leftover bras without a chance to choose. Often I always get bras and pants that are too large, so I have to give them away.”

“The same goes for sanitary pads. We have to sign a form before getting a pack. They are bad quality and barely have any glue. When we wear them, sometimes we have to use rubber bands to hold them against our underwear,” said Tick. “One time, a prisoner was running and the pad just dropped out onto the middle of the exercise field. When I have money, I’ll buy branded items because they are much better.”

Since money is required to access basic goods in prison, incarceration can create financial strife for inmates who rely on borrowing.  

“We can withdraw a maximum of 300 baht per day, an increase from the previous 200 baht maximum. I cannot live on that small amount so I have to take loans ‘from the inside’. But the interest rate is 20 per cent per four days,” said another prisoner Pla. “There are so many creditors-cum-prisoners who have gotten quite rich. Some have about 200,000 baht in their bank accounts and manage to send back home 50,000–60,000 baht per month. Even though the authorities are aware of this, they don’t really want to intervene. If the borrowers do not have the money to pay back, the foodstuffs sent by their relatives are confiscated.”

“As for work, sometimes we have to do jobs like rolling cigarettes or folding gold leaf used in temples. Each worker needs to produce 400–600 pieces per day to earn about 100 baht every 3-4 months,” she says. “Who said one doesn’t need money in prison? You do need money to survive.”  

As for food, she asks me if I have ever had ‘cold water mama’: instant noodles with cold water since the prison doesn’t provide hot water. Food in prison is repetitive and of low quality. She once ate porridge with chicken feet and pork so gummy that she couldn’t chew.

That was the situation before the junta came into power in 2016. After that, they were barred from even cooking. 

NCPO reforms for the worse

After the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) seized power in May 2014, the Department of Correction that administers Thailand’s prisoners was affected heavily. The result was new restrictions on prisoners’ lives. 

“The front of the sleeping room states that it has the capacity for 30–33 persons. But when I arrived there, 77 people were sleeping in that room. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. In the second year, there were about 58 people. After the 2014 coup, they told us to return the blankets relatives had brought us but we wouldn’t let them,” said Pla.

Auyphon Suthonsanyakorn, the facilitator of the ‘From Heart to Heart’ program that works on the long-term rehabilitation of female prisoners, told Prachatai that women have faced many new challenges in prison since the NCPO came into power.

“They have ordered female prisoners not to take anything up to the sleeping hall. They are only allowed to take three pieces of tissue paper with them. But women have specific needs: some are on their period, some wear glasses. They are also barred from taking books. Some women like to write in their diaries and some read prayer books before going to bed,” she said. “But the NCPO gave a sweeping order to prevent any of that. Prison guards told me they are afraid of being found guilty if they don’t follow the orders.”

“The NCPO wants to be strict on drugs. Initially they also barred [the women] from bringing drinking water [to the sleeping hall]. They were not okay with that so we negotiated, and they were allowed to bring a bottle of water plus five pieces of tissue paper, which was later reduced to three. Even though we don’t have a drug problem, we cannot decide things ourselves. This is because of the sweeping orders. NCPO said if the prison wouldn’t tackle it, they would do it themselves. That’s why the prison authorities are afraid and have to impose these strict rules on the prisoners.

No health services, just paracetamol

Women prisoners are entitled to health services from the state. They are entitled to access public health services under the national health security scheme like any other citizens. But since prisons are overburdened and underfunded, the solution for women prisoners in reality is to simply ‘not get sick.’

“Inside, they always said do not get sick because you only ever get paracetamol to cure everything,” she said.

In some cases, prisoners face verbal abuse from health professionals. In the case of Tick, who returned to prison after giving birth, she had to see the doctor inside the prison. 

“The stitch that I had got infected. I told a male doctor that but he didn’t even bother to look at it,” said Tick. “He said it’d be fine and gave me paracetamol.”

“He is the in-house doctor there and couldn’t be more rude. When he examined my record, he asked me, ‘How did you get pregnant when you’re so ugly?’. He also asked if the child has a father, or if I was sleeping around. I was so pissed off I cursed back at him. I got punished for that.” 

Women prisoners who live within a smaller compound within a larger male prison face even more problems than those in women’s correctional institutes or in the women’s sections of large central prisons. This is because women prisoners in male prisoners do not have their own medical unit, but have to share services male inmates. They are given access to health services only after male inmates are finished, due to prison regulations that male and female prisoners are not allowed to mingle.

Auyphon said doctor’s visits in women’s prison are rare. “Once a week is considered very generous. If it’s a central prison, he may only enter the male inmate zone. The female prisoners often won’t get to meet with the doctors. In general, there might be one nurse who is always stationed there to look after both male and female prisoners,” said Auyphon.

“I’ve seen a case where a woman inmate got really sick and and could not get up. She was lying there for many days. When I got in that day, she also had a high fever. When I touched her knee, it was really hot and swollen and badly infected. Yet she wasn’t taken to hospital. Some officers agreed it was a serious case, but they didn’t have enough authority                .”

Luckily, that inmate’s relatives requested that she be transferred to a hospital when she could not bring herself to meet them. The doctor later said that if she had come to the hospital just a bit later, she might have ended up at her own funeral.

The situation is comparable in central prisons, where women share facilities with male inmates and are not taken to hospital unless the situation is dire. In one such prison, a woman prisoner sprained her leg after falling down the stairs. She was taken to in-prison medicine unit and given some topical cream. The nurse diagnosed that it wasn’t serious so they didn’t take her to hospital.

These days, she still limps. The bone likely fractured but since it never received proper treatment, she now cannot walk properly.

Women correctional institutes are somewhat better. The doctors usually visit once a week. Women can access a wider range of medicines.

When winter hits, women inmates in the north and northeastern prisons have to suffer under the cold weather. Usually they are given three blankets per person to be used as a pillow, blanket and a mattress respectively. In winter however, that is not enough.

“Before that wewere given five blankets per person. The authorities also allowed relatives to buy more for them. After the allowance was reduced to three pieces, the prisoners protested. The directors then filed a request to make the prisoners get five pieces. The thing is that in winter,  even five is not enough because they are bad quality. But they cannot provide more because the prisons have a tight budget.”

...............

Chartchai Suthiklom, the former director of the Department of Correction — now a National Human Rights Commissioner — said that in principle, prisons are obliged to provide basic necessities to prisoners.

The ‘Prisoners’ Manual’ published on the prison’s website states that inmates are entitled to:

1. The right to get food that is nutritious and fulfils the body’s needs. The Department of Correction guarantees that every prisoner will receive three meals a day for free from the first day they enter prison until the last day.
2. The right to clothing suitable to the weather. Many inmates may have their own clothing from relatives. For those who cannot get their own, prison authorities should provide them with personal items, including clothes and blankets.
3. The right to hygienic conditions. All prisons are obliged to provide a hygienic sleeping area for inmates.
4. The right to receive free health care. Every prison has its own medical facilities and nurses that should provide appropriate care to the inmates. If the inmate is seriously ill, he/she may be sent to an external hospital or sent to the prison’s hospital in Bangkok.

Despite these regulations, it’s clear that the reality does not reflect the ideals.

...............

Why is it that prisons are overflowing with inmates? Does it mean that our society has more criminals or bad people than others? Or is there something wrong with our justice system?

Are atrocious prison conditions the fault of the Correction Department or the prisons? Obviously both share some responsibility. Yet prisons are just small jigsaws in the bigger picture of an inefficient justice system. Problems faced by female prisoners do not derive solely entrenched hierarchies within the prisons, they are caused at root by the Correction Department’s measly budget.

84.58 per cent of female inmates were sentenced from drugs cases. As of 1 June 2016, out of 35,768 convicted criminals, 30,821 were convicted from violating drug laws.

It is obvious that Thailand’s overly harsh drug laws are putting more and more people into sub-par prisons.

Note: This article was originally published on Prachatai Thai. It was translated from Thai to English by Suluck Lamubol.

She would not let the death of her uncle be forgotten as insignificant and has braved legal, physical and psychological threats in her fight against military-backed torture. Prachatai introduces Naritsarawan ‘May’ Keawnopparat, our Person of the Year 2016.   

Bravery in the face of bullets 

“My uncle’s life must not be valueless”

“We talked by phone. My little brother talked for me, I didn’t talk to her myself (laughs). After more than a week, I went to pick her up to live with me, and then I proposed to her. I can’t really pinpoint why she’s so nice. I like her for how hard-working she is, waking up early to do housework and taking care of the kids. When I took her to my uncle for him to look her over, he said I could have her if I want. Before, I took many girls for my uncle to look at but he said this one got up late, or was too lazy to wash the dishes.  Once the meal was over they hid the dirty dishes. Lazy. But Sim is hard-working. She gets up to do laundry at 4 and 5 am. Uncle sneaked in to watch her.”

This is what a disabled husband said about his disabled wife when we asked him how they met.

These answers may be really common if we ask abled people. However, very few people can even imagine disabled people having a married life. Some probably think that disabled people don’t even have boyfriends/girlfriends because in the past “sex” and “disability” are completely separated from each other. Most abled people do not understand and are not in a position to understand disabled people because the worlds of the two groups are extremely distant from each other.

Therefore, disabled people themselves have received no sex education. Some are kept away from it and fed only with fear-inducing information, causing many to stay away from these matters as much as possible, and there are quite a number who escape from it through sterilization.

How is sterilization physically harmful? Many disabled women undergo forced sterilization, many without being informed and many more because their families persuade them. We found that this phenomenon is widespread because people believe it will cut short the process of producing more disability from giving birth to disabled children.

Some teenaged disabled girls have been sterilized since childhood. After they grow up they are able to take care of themselves may want a family, but sadly there will never come a day when they will be mothers and have their own children.

Read Part 1: Disabled women, doubly cursed, raped, sterilized

“Love”

In the middle of the overlapping roofs of a small community, in one blue house, a wicker cradle holds a sleeping short-haired girl. Although the size of the cradle doesn’t let her extend her legs or stretch her arms above her head, the stifling silence and heat of midday easily put her to sleep.

Aran and Prachum’s family

Aran Namab or “Sim,” a 39-year-old woman rocks the child’s cradle with a smile on her face. She’s a mother of two daughters: one is asleep in the cradle and the other is just now playing behind her.

Aran is a plump woman with short hair and a broad smile on her face. She speaks a bit slowly and takes a lot of time to think of her replies when we ask her questions. On the surface, she looks a bit like she has Down’s Syndrome from the look in her eyes, but more than that is her sight is blurred to the point where she can hardly see and the left side of her body is paralyzed, which makes it hard for her to walk about.

“Actually, the doctor in Nakhon Pathom told her not to have children, but she wanted to. The doctor injected her with a contraceptive, but she stopped the injections because she wanted children. She only went to the doctor once when pregnant. If the doctor knew she was disabled, they would take it out. Her eldest child is disabled too. She can sit up for a little bit before falling over. She is always twisted and stiff. She can’t stand,” her neighbour interjected when I started talking about Aran’s family life.

Although Aran and her husband, Prachum Khongkhem, 41, were aware of the risks as the neighbour said, the couple were still determined to have children and build a family life of their own. “We just let it go, luk thung [rural folk] style. After three to four years, we had our first child. When we had our second child, we didn’t intend it. Sometimes she took contraceptives, sometimes not. But the injectable contraceptive, I even asked a doctor friend, what kind of fucking medicine did you inject into my wife? I suspect it was expired. So we had the second child, and then after that we got sterilized,” Prachum said.

Their two daughters are aged 5 and 3. Saeng, the older one, is a white-skinned, short-haired girl who looks slightly more like a boy. She’s small, has small limbs, and is thinner than most 5-year-olds. She can’t sit up and is always stiff. Both her hands and feet are turned inwards. Saeng can’t communicate. She just has small reactions, which is all she can express, like opening her mouth when she’s hungry or crying when she’s displeased, so she has to lie in the cradle almost all day. Aran’s little one, Donut, aged 3, is able to walk and run, and looks quite clever. Although she seems to be able to walk normally, you can clearly see that her legs are and they are gradually getting worse, according to what Aran says.

Still, Donut is a cheerful, talkative, smart girl, even a bit hyperactive who often shows love toward her sister by feeding her sweets every time she eats one herself. When Saeng cries, Donut doesn’t hesitate to hug her and pat her chest. During the interview, Donut ran all over the place, asking me for sweets, rummaging through my bag, and so on — no different from most 3-year-olds.

Aran and Prachum’s love story started over 10 years ago. Prachum said that he was quite old when he first met her. He had a wife before her, but they divorced after he had an accident when his motorcycle hit a 10-wheeler. Prachum became disabled when the bones in his ankles were deformed and he couldn’t walk. When he was sad and lonely from the divorce, a relative introduced him to Aran through the phone, and that was the start of their life together which has lasted 10 years.

“Before this, I had a wife from Yasothon. But after the accident, and my legs were gone and I was broke, she left me. After I broke up with her, I lived alone with a dog. When the dog died, I got Sim.”

“We talked by phone. My little brother talked for me, I didn’t talk to her myself (laughs). After more than a week, I went to pick her up to live with me, and then I proposed to her. I can’t really pinpoint why she’s so nice. I like her for how hard-working she is, waking up early to do housework and taking care of the kids. When I took her to my uncle for him to look her over, he said I could have her if I want. Before, I took many girls for my uncle to look at but he said this one got up late, or was too lazy to wash the dishes.  Once the meal was over they hid the dirty dishes. Lazy. But Sim is hard-working. She gets up to do laundry at 4 and 5 am. Uncle sneaked in to watch her.”

“Now after I get home from work in the middle of the night, I ache all over because of all the bones missing from my legs because of the accident almost 10 years ago. My collar bones are completely gone. Even if I can’t work, I still have to. No matter how much it hurts, I have to put up with it for my children. She’s going to go to school soon,” said Prachum.

While he was talking, several neighbours who were listening with us cut in on each other with stories about Aran’s life.

“It’s like the parent’s aren’t all there 100%. They didn’t even finish Grade 1 at school. Their brains are no good. They don’t even know when their kids pooped into their diapers,” said an auntie neighbour.

“Although everyone told them that their children would be at risk of being disabled, they still wanted to have children. I see staff from local medical centre visiting them often, but they never give advice about raising children,” said another neighbour.

“She is protective of her older sister. Whenever someone looks like they’re going to take her sister, oh! she cries. No one can take her sister. Whenever someone picks up her older sister, she runs after them and says she won’t let them. So I tell her that if anyone comes to take her, we’re around all day. Sometimes something’s up and we wait and take care of her all the time. I don’t work, so I can stay close by. Sometimes [the mother] sits looking and can’t find them so she comes to me and asks me to help her look for her children. She can’t see very well. When her kid’s diaper is full, she knows nothing about it,” added another neighbour.

“Before, someone once asked for Saeng to bring her up because they didn’t have children. But I didn’t let them. I would rather starve to death than do that. Still, people keep asking for her. Donut often hears them, so she’s afraid and very protective of her sister.”

Aran’s household uses red groundwater for drinking and showering, so the house isn’t very sanitary. Before, an official from the district health centre would visit weekly and bring required medication. Both times Aran was pregnant, she didn’t go to hospital for check-ups because she had no money. But she experienced toxaemia late in both pregnancies and had to deliver by C-section both times. Although Prachum can work, it is still hard for him because one of his legs doesn’t work. Even today he still has to bandage it because the wound is still tender.

On her disability card, Aran’s disability is categorized as impaired vision. Because it’s only that, her other disabilities are not looked after or treated properly and she has not been properly diagnosed by a doctor. Neither Aran and nor husband have the knowledge or financial resources or understand enough to contact the hospital.

After we sat and talked awhile, the neighbours in the room with us started to leave one by one until they were all gone. Both husband and wife relaxed considerably and began telling their stories from a different angle.

“The family had enough money before, but it was all taken by my mother. But because we had to stay in this house close to the hospital that our children go to, we didn’t have much alternative. When I ask her for it back, she asks in return, ‘When did I take your damn money?’ My brothers and sisters are no help. I want to move back to Ratchaburi, but we have no money because I sold everything to get married and move here. After I have some money, I want to go back so bad. Soon I’ll change to a construction job so I’ll take my wife and kids with me to the camp. If they stay here, I can’t manage running back and forth from work to see them,” Prachum said.

Almost every day, Prachum has to go out to a construction job outside, leaving Aran and her children alone. When feeding her children, Aran misses their mouths and it sometimes goes into their noses or ears because she can’t see. Prachum is very worried and often comes home during the day to get food and water for his wife and feed the two children.

“When she was born and went into the oven [incubator], her body was so green. I had to come home every noon to feed my child milk. Although now Saeng can hold the milk bottle up and feed herself, it’s still pretty messy and goes all over the place, into her ears and eyes. Donut is always watching and guarding her sister because she’s afraid someone will take Saeng. Before, someone once asked for Saeng to bring her up because they didn’t have children. But I didn’t let them. I would rather starve to death than do that. Still, people keep asking for her. Donut often hears them, so she’s afraid and very protective of her sister.” Prachum says.

Saeng used to eat through a tube to her stomach, but it was a problem because the tube kept breaking and falling out, so they had to go to the hospital so many times it was a joke. So Prachum decided to pull the feeding tube out, bandage the hole, and change to feeding her by mouth instead.

“Sometimes Saeng stiffens up and stops breathing. Her face and eyes get all green. When she can breathe again, she laughs like nothing happened. It’s so tiring, but we have to keep fighting. Once I took her to physical therapy and she resisted. She held her breath until she turned green. If we have to go to the doctor every day, we won’t have any money, no money for gas. Although we don’t pay medical expenses, there’s no hospital near here that we can get to.”

“I see her gradually improving, not getting worse. Before, she couldn’t sit, but now she can. She’s getting better at speaking, and can make some sounds. I have motivation to work. I want to be at home, because when I go out it’s too much. It’s better to stay at home. I don’t want to bother with anyone. I’ll save up a bit of money from work, wait until my kids can go to school, and then we’ll move from here to Ratchaburi, my old home,” said Prachum.

“Worried”

Next, we move into the city centre, within the labyrinth of sois within sois. Most houses around here are one-storied, colourful. Most have an open area in front where some sit and some sell things. Warisara Uppatha’s house does sewing. The loud noise of the sewing machines doesn’t stop with piles of variously coloured cloth scattered around the room.

Warisara is the youngest person interviewed for this article. She has short hair and was wearing a blue t-shirt with long black pants. She’s a girl with a nice face and a sense of humour. Because of her weak muscles caused by cerebral palsy, she sits in a wheelchair.

Wirachat Uppatha, her dad, said that Warisara is talkative and clever. Before, his daughter studied at the special education school, but is now home-schooling using materials from the school.

“My wife and I were advised to sterilize our daughter as soon as she started her periods. But at that time we just wanted her to get sterilized in the least painful way possible, so we wanted to work and save up money first because it would be more expensive than normal. We talked to our child, and she agreed. I went to seminars before and I understood that this kind of thing can’t be decided by the parents.”

“The doctor advised us to do it. Just do it. The reason was about taking care of herself and protecting herself in case her parents and relatives are not around, then it may be one level of protection. But if you ask if it’s 100%, then it’s not. I changed my mind because I thought a lot about it. Now wasn’t the only chance to be sterilized, there’ll be more in the future, but if we do it now then there’s no going back.”

“Sometimes, [sterilization] is just for the convenience of the parents.  When I looked at it, that’s all it was,” said Wirachat.

Warisara, however, said that she wanted to get sterilized because she was afraid she would be a burden to her mother, so when her mother asked, she agreed even though she was scared and never knew how sterilization was done. Still, Warisara was determined to do it, partly because she saw many disabled children near her house do it and get better, leaving only a small scar. Her friends at the special education centre where she studied also did it, so Warisara heard only about the pros and benefits of being sterilized.

“Sterilization is a tunnel-visioned solution, but outside, it’s wide open. If you don’t get out more, you don’t see what’s what. I once went for training about the rights of disabled women, so I know that in fact you have to ask the disabled person themselves and their family. Sterilization doesn’t solve the problem 100%. There’re still problems, only fewer. Nowadays we as parents aren’t in difficulty, but the thought of sterilization pops into our heads every now and then,” said her dad.

Warisara Uppatha

Although Warisara’s parents have a relatively clear stance on sterilization, they still can’t help but worry. The more they see the constant news about sexual assaults on disabled women, the more it makes them worried about their daughter’s future.

“A doctor from Nakhon Chai Si came to our house and asked if we had sterilized our daughter, and we answered, not yet. So he signed a form to go ahead and do it and even wrote on it ‘mentally retarded’. I’m very against this. My daughter isn’t retarded, but disabled with regard to mobility.”

“I look at her and can’t help but think what she’ll do if later her parents are not there. If we were better off, I’d be less worried than this. Once we enrolled her in Sri Sangwan School and I went to spy on her. My daughter is all there, but she can’t help herself in daily life. Other students had missing legs, arms. They brushed their teeth and raced up the stairs.”

“I told myself that no matter what, I would not put my daughter in that place. There’re 300 students and 3 care-givers. Think, when she’s stubborn, we hit her or leave her alone for an hour or two. If she went there, it would be like this, so we brought her back. If she stayed there, a care-giver would have to stay too, and we would have to pay the cost ourselves. So we decided that we should only do what we could manage,” the father continued.

Information from the Special Education Bureau says that there are less than 50 schools for the disabled nationwide, most scattered across the provinces. Although these special education schools help disabled children to enter the education system like other kids, the level of educational in many is much lower than the standard, and is not really adapted to fit individual students.

In Warisara’s condition, the muscles throughout the body will become distorted and stiff. She won’t be able to hold things or speak easily. Even though she can feed herself with one hand, the other is too stiff to do anything. Her parents are well used to the situation and understand what the doctors always say, that they should not expect much from a child like this.

“But I told the doctor, no matter what she’s like, it’s okay. Being beautiful is more important,” he said, smiling.

Warisara and her family

“I’ve never been embarrassed to take her places. I hope that if she knows lots of people, one day after we’re gone, there may still be other people to ask.  It’s a way to find people to support her.”

“Now on a good day, a government agency brings us gifts, smiling prettily and taking photos and then leaving. Still, my daughter has never gotten any closer to getting more rights. She’s lucky to have found a good environment, with her dad, mom, siblings, aunties, and uncles. There is no one who objects to taking her out. When she was young, we went even more often. But now that she’s too big for her mother to carry her, we don’t take her out as much,” say her parents, taking turns telling Warisara’s story.

At this point, readers may be surprised why I chose to interview Warisara’s family, when it looks like there are no problems in terms of their daughter and sexual issues. It would be — if not for the visit of a health worker a few days before.

“A doctor from Nakhon Chai Si came to our house and asked if we had sterilized our daughter, and we answered, not yet. So he signed a form to go ahead and do it and even wrote on it ‘mentally retarded’. I’m very against this. My daughter isn’t retarded, but disabled with regard to mobility,” the father said.

The community of parents of disabled children know each other well, especially in smaller areas in neighbourhoods like this. Warisara’s parents have the opportunity to talk often to other families and found out that almost all the families made their daughters undergo sterilization, sometimes as early as 9 years old. Some families wait until their daughter’s second or third period. So this issue has become normal by implication.

“From the doctor’s perspective, if you’re disabled you all should be sterilized. Big-name doctors, however, won’t talk about this unless the guardian asks. Lower-ranked doctors, like those in the district clinics, will cut to the chase and say that sterilization must be done. I think the problem they’re afraid of is pregnancy. It’s not a burden for us to take care of this issue, but think if we are old, what will we do?” said the father.

The main worry that the parents have about Warisara is if they are not there and Warisara has to stay with her older brother. Even though they have faith in him, because he has helped take care of her since she was little, they feel unsettled and don’t feel as confident as if they were taking care of her themselves .

“If mom isn’t at home, I can do everything: help her shower, dress, change her Pampers, and sanitary pads. When she was taken to camp, she had to be separated from the other kids, and dad was always spying on her from afar. He thought ‘hey, how can they do this to her? I was worried (laughs). Still, I felt good about her getting into society because she seemed happy and was having fun, so dad’s happy too,” he said.

Yet even happy days may be overshadowed with suffering because we still cannot see a way for the future. And the system for looking after people with a difference in Thai society still cannot make it clear how they can have a life when they have no family to rely on. Warisara’s mom often tells her that she wants her daughter to go before her, because she can’t handle the anxiety if she merely thinks how Warisara will live with no parents.

“I’m scared when my parents say that it would be good for me to die before them. I’m scared they won’t take care of me.”

“If in the future we’re not here but our daughter still is, there probably has to be something done. I would probably have to leave her with some relatives who I can rely on, and I’d leave my property and house to them too. But if it’s possible, it would be good if she went first. Sometimes when I’m washing her, she speaks up that she wants to die before us. I’m sad to hear that.”

“Sometimes she’s naughty, so I hit her. She says ‘Hit me until I die, dad.’ When I hear her talk like that, it really gets to me,” added dad.

“I’m scared when my parents say that it would be good for me to die before them. I’m scared they won’t take care of me,” said Warisara.

Although her parents believe that Warisara can make a life by herself in the future, Warisara’s age is over the limit for a rehabilitation centre or other schools, so this option was wrapped up a few years ago. Since then, dad has been her trainer.

As far as I could see, Warisara is a modest person — she does not dare to ask anyone other than her parents to give her a hand with anything. This might be because she doesn’t get to go out and meet people very much. Her father also often forbids it. When she speaks to ask someone for help, she’s not used to it if she gets help from others and many times when she wants to do something, what she hears from her father tends to be “Don’t go bothering your sister.” Apart from preventing Warisara from learning to interact with others, the sense of being denied the chance to appeal to others means that she has never received help.

While we were talking about this, Warisara nodded at intervals and said “yes” all the time whenever we were talking about her father, the person who never lets her out of the house alone.

“Whenever I go out, I like people saying that this man’s skilled, he can do anything for his child. But really, I just want her to meet a group of her own, develop a close relationship with doctors, get access to various rights. That’s better than just lying down, twisted, without any sort of development. I want my daughter to have a social life. When I meet other parents whose children can make their own lives, I feel a fighting spirit and strength and I think my daughter must do that.”

“She’s a very considerate person. If we’re with other people I’m afraid she’s too considerate. But I do think that she can take care of herself if we let her. Our family have set limits and rules for her. I cannot come to terms with it but I have to accept letting her go now (smiles),” said the father with a resolute tone of voice.

‘Possessive’

We travel into the green fields of Sisa Thong District. Nuanphan Bandit’s house is behind two large houses. It is a low wooden house with a parking spot on the side and another hidden in the innermost part of the property. We sit in front of the house, where a deafening factory-sized fan is swinging from side to side.

Nuanphan is a disabled woman with a thin body, long hair and dark skin. Although no one can accurately determine what her disability is, from her appearance it’s not hard to see that she is not normal. She does everything slowly, she answers and talks slowly. Her mom says that Nuanphan only started walking when she was seven.

Sunan Kanyawong, her mother, said that Nuanphan was sterilized at 10 years of age, because at that time her parents had to go to work and leave her home alone with a younger brother with a similar condition.

“We did it because we were afraid she would get pregnant. We work outside. When she’s with other people, I don’t trust them. I see people with similar conditions getting sterilized, so I brought my daughter to do it too, so she would be safe. If she got pregnant it would be a burden for me as well,” said the mother.

Surasak Bandit (left), Sunan Kanyawong (center) and Nuanphan Bandit (right)

Although Nuanphan can communicate slowly in a way that she can understand, she has never been informed about her rights over her own body. Even when she was sterilized, she was not at all aware of the procedure or the effects it would have.

“I’m afraid other people will bully her but I don’t know what to do. When she got sterilized I told her. She knew, but it wasn’t her decision. She didn’t understand about this. Once before, someone came and did something to her. She was scared. She didn’t tell me. I had to find out on my own.”

“Once one of the employees at a garage did something to her. I caught him and pressed charges. He’s in jail. His little brother saw. When I asked him, I found out the truth. Then the worker quickly left home but the police caught him and he confessed. After that I was very cautious, so I had her sterilized,” said the mother.

“I didn’t know I was sterilized. I only knew I was in hospital. The doctor didn’t tell me,” said Nuanphan. Did she want to get sterilized? “I wanted to because I can’t take care of myself. I will get hurt” she said. Who told you? “No one told me. I don’t know either.” Nuanphan looks like she is about to cry. “It’s nice to live the three of us, mother and children.”

When Nuanphan was a little girl, she went to school but with her appearance and slow thinking, her teacher told her to drop out of school after the second grade to practise making handicrafts at home instead. Although studying isn’t really for her, Nuanphan is surprisingly good at housework.

“Now she can do everything for herself. When she wakes in the morning she helps her mother do housework: sweeping the floors, washing dishes, and all other housework. She’s afraid of getting electrocuted, though, so she’s too scared to cook the rice. This might be because she’s always at home. She might go out of the house once per month. She rarely leaves home, so she’s great at housework.”

“Now she goes to the non-formal education centre near our house. She just started and is in secondary school,” said her mother.

Although Nuanphan is sterilized now and her mother is much more relieved, her mom still does not dare leave her alone. Ever since Nuanphan’s dad died many years ago, the three-person family has stayed together from morning till night. Mom also does not leave the two children alone together.

After chatting for a while, Nuanphan, who has been listening quietly to the conversation with her mother, spoke up.

“I didn’t know I was sterilized. I only knew I was in hospital. The doctor didn’t tell me,” said Nuanphan. Did she want to get sterilized? “I wanted to because I can’t take care of myself. I will get hurt” she said. Who told you? “No one told me. I don’t know either.” Nuanphan looks like she is about to cry. “It’s nice to live the three of us, mother and her two children.”

When you look into the future, it’s really dim. The mother still can’t see how her two children can live in the future if she herself cannot be there to look after them, since she won’t even dare to let her children try life on their own. She brought up a Disability Services Centre in the community a lot and wants to get involved in founding a centre that hasn’t happened yet, because she hopes that after she’s gone there will still be a community ready to support her children.

“We can survive, us two siblings. We can grow and sell earthworms or find other work for hire. I want to drive a taxi. I can’t drive yet, but I will soon,” said Surasak Bandit, Nuanphan’s younger brother.

“Surasak wants to be a mechanic. Nuanphan can do work, but it’s not neat and tidy. If you work, you have to be neat and tidy, and put up with it, not just get tired and quit,” said the mother.

“I can sweep and mop floors,” said Nuanphan.

If we were to ask what’s the difference between “normal people” and Nuanphan and her brother, I would just say that the pair of them talk slowly. Other than that, Nuanphan is a woman whose body is complete and it would not be strange if she had an admirer who wanted to make a family with her in the future.

“If he got a wife, I’m afraid they wouldn’t survive. If they had a child, they would just dump the child on me and it would be such a burden. If I die, how are they going to make a living? And if Nuanphan has someone who wants her and likes her, I would have to look at him first. Is there anyone who would really like her?” said the mother.

‘Regret’

Away from the fields, in front there is a row of houses with coloured roofs. Most of the houses are single-storied as is common in rural areas. Even though the house of Yui (not her real name) is not so far from those houses, it still has quite a lot of personal space in proportion compared to other houses.

Yui is a teenage girl of 17 with a round face and pitch black hair, and looks younger than most girls her age. Samroeng Chuenklinthup, her mother, said that Yui was sterilized because of her neurological condition that started after she fell off a bed when she was little. This meant that Yui cannot really communicate using language. She was sterilized when she was 14, about a year after she got her period and could not take care of her personal hygiene. Because she was worried about what would happen in the future, Samroeng thought that sterilization was likely to be the best option at that time, so that Yui would not be a burden to whoever would take care of her after her mother. Because of this worry, Yui has never gone out anywhere or been apart from her parents even once.

“When she was little, she fell off the bed. Her body didn’t have any strength, like a paralyzed person. She’s been having constant seizures since. She’s not having seizures right now because she takes medicine for it. Before, I was working and had to take care of her myself. When she just started, she couldn’t recognize her parents, but now she gradually knows more.”

“About sterilization, the doctor is always asking me if I’m ready yet to do it. If something goes wrong, not only will I have to take care of my daughter, but also a grandchild,” said the mother.

Even though so far there has never been a problem about Yui being sexually assaulted, part of it is because she is always with her mother. Before, Yui often had the chance to attend a special education class in her community for children with developmental problems to come together to learn. However, the relatively high monthly fees added to costs of traveling back and forth indirectly put an end to her studying.

“You tell her (about being sterilized) and she’s probably not aware because she doesn’t understand. One part of me doesn’t want her to do it. I pity her. I want her to stay in her natural state. But I’m also scared of the future. I’m not sure if later I’m not here, it will be difficult. I’m afraid that if she’s with other people, something might happen. So, I decided to do it.”

“At school they never taught about sex at all. I never let her be with anyone else. Normally if I have to go out and she can’t go, I lock her inside the house.”

“I get stressed if I think about the future. I don’t know what to do. She has no siblings. Nowadays she can take care of herself a lot, showering, dressing, feeding herself, going to the bathroom. Sometimes she asks me if she’s put her clothes on correctly. Before, I always had to dress her because she couldn’t tell the front from the back. But now she can do it herself, which is the front and the back even and if the seam is on the inside or outside.

“I teach her things, like when she has a shower, wrapping her sarong under her arms. Before she comes out of the bathroom she has to wrap her sarong under her arms so that she’s not indecent. She remembers stuff and knows more than before. She understands when I teach her things, and can remember what I told her before,” the mother said.

“At school they never taught about sex at all. I never let her be with anyone else. Normally if I have to go out and she can’t go, I lock her inside the house.”

Although Yui has improved from before, her mom still sees her as a little girl. Of course, it’s not just in families with disabled children. Parents often continue to see their offspring as little children you have to carry. So this has meant that Yui’s mother has never planned for Yui’s and her own future.

“If I’m not here anymore, maybe my older sister can take care of her. On her dad’s side he only has younger sisters or brothers. On the surface, they get along, but if I leave them to take care of her, probably not. Sometimes I think that, if I know in advance what will happen, I would probably take her with me.”

“Still another part of me believes that she has got to survive. Sometimes she asks me, ‘Mom, do you eat like?’ Which is her way of saying, ‘Mom, do you want to eat?’ If I say yes, she will bring two plates, one for her and one for me. If I say not yet, she brings just one plate.”

“If I get the chance, I’d like to take her outside but I’m afraid she will make a scene and I’m afraid other people will be bothered. Some people give us strange looks. Still, I have to keep trying. If she reaches a point where she can help herself day in day out, then I won’t let her get sterilized,” the mother said in the end.

““If I get the chance, I’d like to take her outside but I’m afraid she will make a scene and I’m afraid other people will be bothered. Some people give us strange looks. Still, I have to keep trying. If she reaches a point where she can help herself day in day out, then I won’t let her get sterilized,” the mother said in the end.

Translated into English by Asaree Thaitrakulpanich

In October 2016, there was a minor news report that at an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of 6 October 1976 and coincidentally the 10th anniversary of the 2006 coup, a film named Democracy After Death: The Tragedy of Uncle Nuamthong Praiwan was shown with no real marketing. After that showing, there does not appear to have been any screenings or distribution anywhere else. There were only rumours that the organizing committee was warned by security officials that some of the film’s content might constitute a violation of the lèse-majesté law.

Democracy After Death: the film that went almost completely unmentioned

Most recently, Democracy After Death was screened again at the Screening of Thai Political Films event organized by the ASEAN Friends Group last Nov. 5 at Sungkonghoe University in South Korea.

The film mixes several presentation formats, including animation, performances, and a large amount of actual news footage. Overall, Democracy After Death could be called one of the most colourful and complete Thai political documentaries ever. The documentary not only commemorates the story of the struggle and death of Nuamthong Praiwan, the elderly taxi driver who drove his taxi into a tank to protest the 2006 coup and eventually hanged himself to affirm there are those who are ready to sacrifice their lives to oppose the coup. It also reviews the beginning of the political conflicts of 2006, which can be seen as the beginning of the now-10-year-long political turmoil that shows no signs of stopping.

Images of violence, cruelty, anger and debilitating hopelessness are shown over the hour and a half. Instead of the normal film credits rolling at the end, the word “Anonymous” appears repeatedly. There is only the name of the director: Neti Wichiansaen. He is a director of advertisements that had to flee Thailand because of some posts he made on a political webboard. The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) arrested him, saying that his photos and comments broke the lèse-majesté law.

People may not know him by his real name, but his pseudonym, Pruay Saltihead, is likely to be well-known among politically-active internet users from 2006 on.

Who is Pruay?

“When I posted my opinions on the webboard, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I didn’t abuse anyone too much. I didn’t attack any individual. I never thought this country would reach this point.

“I started getting interested in politics probably because my dad is a lawyer and was once a candidate for the New Power Party in Kalasin Province. We had a lot of books at home and no TV, so I read a lot, especially about Oct. 6. My curiosity really began when I saw dad burn some political books in the oven. I also read books about the death of Rama VIII around that time.

“I have an account called ‘Loves Movies’ in Pantip [a popular Thai webboard]. I use it to comment about movies and even write some fiction. When the events in ‘06 happened, I posted about Nepalese politics in the Ratchadamnoen webboard, so my account was suspended. My old articles and writings were all gone. I had to move to the Prachatai webboard and the Fa Diew Kan webboard.

“My username Pruay came from political awareness at the time when Thaksin was being hounded out. At that time I understood that the President of the Privy Council supported kicking Thaksin out, so I created a spoonerism of “Pruay” from Gen. Prem’s name. Not long after the 2006 coup though, I knew there was more to it than that.”

Pruay Saltihead

Arrest

“I was arrested on 31 May 2010 while I was driving out of my neighbourhood. There was a car parked at the entrance of my neighbourhood. It looked like it had broken down, so I got out of my car to look. The driver was a woman. Then suddenly cars and DSI officers were surrounding me and asked me if I was Pruay or not. I said yes, and they arrested me under Article 112.

“Since then and until today, I have no idea what exactly I wrote that was wrong. I didn’t have Facebook at that time, I was only on the Prachatai and Fa Diew Kan webboards. When they took me, they had a thick file full of evidence against me. They showed me some of it. It was photos of the National Security Council meeting the King on the night of the coup on 19 September 2006, with a sarcastic comment along the lines of, ‘It’s nice to be a soldier. When you stage a coup there’s always someone to countersign it for you.’

“So I don’t know what evidence they used against me because they had such a big file. Some of the evidence they showed me was from 2008. I couldn’t remember if I had posted it or not because it was so long ago.

“On posts about the monarchy, mostly I didn’t specify any specific person but used the word ‘monarchical institution.’ They were critiques of the institution itself, not of specific personages in a political role.

“They caught me by tracking my IP Address because I didn’t conceal anything. My house, car, and phone are all under my name.

You can clearly see that I was caught because of lèse-majesté. When they arrested me, they showed me a list of names and asked me who I knew, who I went protesting with, and do I have red shirts at home. I replied that I didn’t know anyone, I went protesting alone, and that I don’t like to wear red coloured shirts. I really didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know what to say.

“They took me for interrogation me for around five hours before releasing me. At first I said I would call a lawyer but the leader of the people who arrested me asked if we could talk formally first. So we agreed to talk first without a lawyer yet. We talked and then the officers escorted me home, and took my hard disk, computer, and political books. It seemed like I had a few privileges when they saw my living conditions as an employee.  The estate where I live looks middle-class. Sometimes I feel sorry for poor red shirts people who got caught, like Uncle SMS, A Kong, who got caught and locked up.

“The officials were probably confused, because most people who are arrested deny posting anything. But I said that I did post those things. The reason why I accepted it is because I thought that I’d definitely get caught. If I denied it, then I was afraid of creating more confusion. And I thought It was a good opportunity for me to say what I wanted directly to the state. They asked, what do you think of the [monarchical] institution, so I answered straightforwardly.

“On the day they arrested me, they also arrested and interrogated my mother and younger sister. We were in the same meeting room, but interrogated in different corners. My mother is a yellow shirt and used to teach in a private school. I overheard them asking her why she didn’t warn me. My mother replied that I was a grown man, and we can’t have the same opinions on everything. I heard her and thought, if all yellow shirts were like her, our country would be a nice place to live.”

The reason for fleeing

“That night, they let me go. They told me that they were compiling evidence to prosecute me. An official called me repeatedly to check if I was still using the Internet, and I said that I wasn’t. Every Monday, they called me in to get back my stuff, one item at a time. I understood it was to check if I was still there. On the third week, they called me in to pick up my hard disk. They said that they had taken all of my data. I thought that it was dangerous that they had done it without me being present. So I decided to get out of the country.

“I cannot accept the state of being locked up. At that time, the red-shirt protestors were being hunted down and were escaping to neighbouring countries in droves. There was news that some were shot dead. I didn’t know anybody so I decided to get out. I got on the train at Sam Sen, with a good chance of getting through immigration.

“When the train moved away from the Thai border, I knew that I was safe. I had simultaneous feelings rushing up in me:  I was worried about my mother, little sister, and our home. But when I got away, damn, it was the most amazing feeling…

“I’m a filmmaker. So the day before I escaped, I took my SLR camera and pawned it to get a newer model that can take good videos. It became my weapon. Part of the footage for ‘Uncle Nuamthong’ was filmed with that very camera I took when I escaped.

“Before I had to escape the country, I had an income of 1–2 million from making ads. This income wasn’t certain. Just think, there’s not an ad to make every month. I got 150,000 per ad roughly. When I fled the country I had around 400,000–500,000 baht with me, and it lasted me two years.

“When I left home I told my mother that after five years I could come back. At the time I thought that there would be elections and everything would be settled. But now it’s been 6–7 years and I don’t see any future.

“I don’t know anyone. When I was arrested and interrogated, the officials told me not to post on the web boards, but instead talk face-to-face with friends. But I have nobody, all my friends are friggin’ yellow shirts.”

“No one knew me until there began to be news after I had escaped the country. I began to use the Internet to search for information on asylum and started posting on Facebook again. Then people started contacting me behind the scene. The DSI arrest warrant then reached my house in Thailand, charging me with 112.’

Requesting refugee status

“I went to Nepal next because I found out through Google that Nepal grants 5-month tourist visas, and there was also a UNHCR office there. I had travelled there before, staying for months at a time, so I decided to go there. After I found a place to stay, I looked for a way to contact my mother to reassure her that I was safe.

“Then I had to explain to the UNHCR to make them understand what the problem is with the lèse-majesté law. They didn’t understand; they were only used to dealing with war refugees. They also had a prejudice against refugees because some are economic refugees. Things were resolved, however, when the DSI issued a warrant for me. I got a copy of it and translated it for them, and then they understood.

“When I went to contact the UNHCR, an official got someone who has dealt for a long time with people seeking asylum to take me to find a place to rent and stay. When I saw the place, I knew I couldn’t live there. After that they took me to a hospital. I saw the state of the hospital and thought to myself, ‘dammit! I can’t let myself get sick here!’

“The interview procedures in fact were completed in four months. The next stage was approval of my refugee status so I could contact a third country. I waited, my visa ran out and I still hadn’t got it. It was then 2011, and I had to exit the country and wait until I could re-enter in 2012. I decided not to wait. I asked Sudanese, Somalis, Afghanis who had come to ask for asylum. Some had been living in Nepal for 3, 4, 7 years. It was like living in a large prison.

“One limitation for those seeking asylum outside the country where they are seeking asylum is that their refugee status can continue pending for as long as six months. So I asked the UNHCR to move to another country closer to Thailand.

“When I came to this country neighbouring Thailand, a friend had suggested that I re-enter Thailand, but keep quiet and not make any moves. But I didn’t want this because there was no insurance at all. My life at home was lost anyway. I think I made the right decision because after the coup, dormant [lèse-majesté] cases were all summoned.

“At that time I was trying to contact one other embassy to get refugee status. They agreed to take the issue to their government, and said that they would arrange an interview. The UNHCR said they would grant me refugee status because the interview process was completed in Nepal, but I never saw it. Someone pointed it out to me that they may see me travelling about, so it looks like I’m not yet in any difficulty. I don’t look like a ‘victim’, so they don’t give me the status.

The problem for refugees is that visas expire, but some people disagree that it’s something normal and an indicator that those seeking asylum have really been driven to the limit of their struggle. If you come to Malaysia then you have to cross the border to extend your visa in Singapore. When you extend your visa a second time, you have problems with Malaysian immigration. They call you for questioning since they suspect that you’ve come to do something. Have you come to get work? Why haven’t you gone back to Thailand? I explained that I was a documentary filmmaker and showed them the website with a collection of my work, so I was able to pass.  But when I left, I decided not to go back again.

“When I left the country I had 400,000–500,000 baht, which lasted 2 years. But I have skills, knowledge, and friends so I could still find some work.

“Since I came to live here, you could say I’ve gotten a pretty good start. Getting a visa and other procedures is fairly easy, so I started work. It’s good that I still have a passport so I can travel. The work runs from designing logos, book covers, and odds and ends (laughs). I still have enough income. Friends in many countries help me get work too. I also have the equipment. When there’s work in Malaysia or Singapore, I fly there. I take photographs, do apartment renovation design jobs, make slideshows, all kinds of work (laughs).”

The future

“I didn’t think of settling down here. I still hope to get asylum from the embassy I contacted in June 2011. Acknowledgement came in September 2013. They contacted me for an interview in one country I could go to. After the interview, I came back to wait for the results. About 6 months passed and in 2014 they said they would not accept my case because 1) no one knew me there and 2) my life wasn’t in a crisis, I could still travel from place to place. I appealed. By chance this was right after the 2014 coup, so I explained to them that the situation had changed for the worse and the reason I applied for refugee status there even though no one knew me there was because that country allowed people to seek asylum from outside the country.

“In answer to the claim that I wasn’t in trouble, I appealed by asking how being forced to live a quiet clandestine life where I could not reveal my location is a normal untroubled life. Although I’m a refugee from a third-world country, I want to live like people in civilized countries and to be able to express myself and my opinions like normal people. In the end they still refused me.

“I will say that when I appealed I annoyed them. I argued on the issue of basic rights that all humans should enjoy equally. I didn’t act to make them to take pity on me.

To be honest, when I fled the country, I met an NGO friend who told me that if I was a journalist or activist, I would get protection. So I wonder why ordinary citizens don’t get the same protection.

“The refugee process became clear in 2014, that a request for asylum from outside the country would not work. It was very hard. This coincided with the increased violence in our country. Getting home is not likely to be.”

Troubles

“The house where I lived with my mother and sister I bought on instalments. I paid off about 2 million. When I first left the country, I tried to continue paying but in the end I couldn’t afford it, so we decided to sell the house so that at least we could get back the money we’d paid to spend. But the flood at the end of 2011 came and we couldn’t sell it. In the end the bank foreclosed on the house and we didn’t get back a single baht.”

“Another awful period was when I didn’t have a passport. To live, you need a job, and to travel. If you can’t travel, you have less work. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I have fun with being on the set, making movies.”

“I began to lose hope that I would ever come home as I had anticipated during the Yingluck administration. For the social changes or amendments to outdated laws which will cause a popular revolution, MPs are our hope, but there is not a single MP who is brave enough to stand up and suggest amending this set of laws. I’ve begun to think we’ve been too optimistic in the past.

“There is no future.”

About the Uncle Nuamthong film

“First I must explain, to prevent any misunderstanding, that this documentary is unrelated to the project to make a Nuamthong movie which fell through. This documentary didn’t use much funding. It used a crew of only 3–4 people, and was filmed in two countries. It used a lot of footage which we asked permission for or in some cases paid for.  It wasn’t expensive.

“It’s like not all the events that were important points were included. I admit that it was a limitation. We abbreviated 10 years into a little more than an hour. That’s difficult. I think that if the film has the goal of stimulating the interest of the audience to explore further, that should be enough.”

When no one dared to screen it

“I didn’t really think anything. I didn’t want to create trouble for anyone. Basically I think I’ve finished my job. Some university students contacted me saying they wanted to screen it in educational institutions. It should be OK like that, showing it secretly in small groups.”

What kind of film reveals only the director’s name?

“For me as director, I have nothing to lose. There’s a summons from the DSI, the news has spread, but I’ve been able to flee the country, so I thought it would be okay to reveal my name.

“As for the rest of the team, they’re still in this industry. If their names are revealed, there may be problems in the future in including their names. So they have to stay anonymous.”

Thais in Exile: The Next Documentary Project

“At first I wanted to make a documentary about political and lèse-majesté refugees all over the world in order to make a record of their stories to present a different perspective of the truth to the audience. Then it’s up to them to fight over which model they want, a republic or a democracy like Japan’s. But after the latest coup in Thailand, many people fled the country so it was a good opportunity. There were many celebrities for us to film easily. The project started to take shape. Now it wasn’t just lèse majesté, but also about people who were political refugees the coup.

“I tried travelling around, pitching the project to businessmen interested in politics, trying to sell it. After a few interviews, I edited a preview and sent it to ask for funding to make the documentary from various funders. I sent it to 6–7 in case I could get travel expenses to film the stories of refugees who lived really far. But I didn’t get funds from anywhere at all. It was like a lottery (laughs).”

The need to communicate

“I want to show how strange Thai society is in tourism ads that Thais make for foreigners. They get to see peace and happiness with monks, temples, good food, Thai boxing, a beloved king, and Patpong. But what they don’t know is that our country has refugees, and the reason we have to flee is so damn funny. Other countries have wars, and people have to flee because they’re killing each other. They have to carry their families to escape death. But our country has refugees just because of expressing opinions. Some are actors, some are musicians. We all have to flee just because we say things that one group of people don’t want to hear. It’s really a sick joke (laughs).

“The kind of political problems that creates Thai political refugees, when compared to other countries, may seem petty. But I want to say that the problems of Thai political refugees are problems they should be interested in giving the same kind of importance to.

“If you ask if what I’m doing is call ‘fighting,’ that’s too much. Maybe you could say I’m doing what I’m good at as a member of one faction of society that feels that it wants to see justice in Thailand. I’ve made ads before. That’s what I’m skilled at. In the neighbouring countries I filmed all the footage. The rest I got friends who are working in those countries to help shoot footage. Now what’s left is only asylum-seekers in distant countries that I’m still looking for a way to film.”

A recurring dream that haunts me

“I may be a lucky guy. In my life I do what I love (make movies), and I get paid a lot of money for it. It’s like someone hiring me to do something I want to do anyway. I’m always thinking about what might be the reason for this recurring dream I have these days. It recurs at least 3–4 times a month with the same pattern. I dream that I accept a job, film a movie, edit it, and do other technical work on it. The location is in Thailand. But every time, I never complete it because the police come and arrest me every time. Sometimes, it’s even a dream within a dream. I argue with myself that I’m dreaming.

“So far I’m still trying to do what I’m good at. I like it, so I’m totally into it, like this refugee documentary. Doubly so. I tell a story about injustice in the medium I like. It’s the best.”

What did you think after watching Democracy After Death?

Pattaporn Phutong - A crew member for the film Memory | Soundless and With Respect got to watch Democracy After Death in South Korea and talks about the atmosphere at the screening.

“Let me first say that I’m not a film fanatic or expert or professional filmmaker. My opinions will be that of a regular moviegoer, a person who can’t stand political and systematic violence, and someone who picks sides [politically].”

“I think with all of its limitations, telling the story through news footage is really a cool option he chose to do. I can clearly see the cause and effect and the order of events. The storytelling draws us to the truth, no matter how painful and horrific it is. During the film, I was too scared to watch many parts. I’m scared of blood and gore, but at the same time, I thought to myself that if I was too scared to face the truth, then I was fooling myself that everything was alright.”

“Another good thing about the film is that it made me see that ‘heart,’ ‘ideals,’ and ‘hope’ really do exist. Although the ending is sad, I didn’t feel abandoned and alone at the end. (What I didn’t like was the male narrator. I felt he was out-of-place, and why did he have to smoke and drink beer so much? I felt that was too on-the-nose. It made me not want to smoke, and many times he appeared unnecessarily.)”

“I don’t think it’s a movie that you watch for fun or watch alone. As an audience member, I chose to watch in a group. Some movies aren’t suitable for watching alone. This movie leaves us questions for us to discuss with other audience members. If you watch alone, the questions will just run around in your head.”

“At first, the event organizer and I were considering and discussing whether we should screen this film. I had to travel back to Thailand and had no plans to live overseas. I felt disturbed and worried. I hated feeling this way, like I was scared and quietly violated. The most uncomfortable thing was feeling scared when I was talking or discussing this topic with others, even though the things I was talking about weren’t wrong, and should even be brought into the open.”

“Nevertheless, if I didn’t hold the film festival or screen this film, I would feel guilty for the rest of my life, because it would go against my values. I don’t want to feel guilty for bowing my head down to stupidity. When it was the time to hold the event, I discussed with my Thai colleague whether we should ask the audience not to discuss topics sensitive to the Thai military and forbid recordings or photos of the event, because it could be dangerous to me and the colleagues who would return to Thailand after their studies.”

“After Pruay’s movie ended, the whole room was silent. Everyone was speechless.”

“During the discussion time, we agreed that people should be able to discuss whatever they want. A space of freedom is rare for us, therefore, everyone should be able to say and ask whatever they want.”

“Most of the people attending were shocked at Pruay’s movie. They (and even myself) weren’t expecting such violence and cruelty. On the screen, we saw people who viewed other people as inhuman creatures, eyewitnesses of injustice, and the ‘opened eyes’ phenomenon. We saw all the events that made us understand what happened in Thailand in the past ten years in the space of a little over an hour.”

“The audience asked Pruay about the country’s future, his opinions on the current situation, his hopes for democracy, and what caused him to flee the country. I myself was really excited to see Pruay up-close after having only seen him through Facebook for a long time. When he was answering questions, it seemed to me like he didn’t have much hope. But still, I think that if he didn’t have any hope, he probably wouldn’t have the strength to make Democracy After Death.”

Remark

The ASEAN’s Friends group is made up of university students and those interested in the societies, cultures, and politics of countries in Southeast Asia. On 5 Nov. 2016, the group organized a “Screening of Thai Political Films”, which screened Democracy After Death, Memory | Soundless, With Respect, and Missa Marjat at Songkunghoe University. The event included Skype disucssions with directors who could not attend, including Pruay.

News of police scapegoating innocent victims has inspired public calls for police reform. But amidst announcements by the junta that it will push ahead with planned reforms to the police force, some believe the initiatives will only increase the regime’s grip over the nation’s law enforcers. 

On 1 February 2017, Tanachai Yanu, a former post office worker in Chonburi Province, was released after one year and eight months in prison. The police had accused him of robbing employees from a cash delivery company at a Siam Commercial Bank ATM in Chonburi, along with four other suspects. Later, both the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal dismissed charges against him due to a lack of concrete evidence.

But the damage had already been done. Tanachai said that he was tortured by police officers, adding that he will file complaints against the officers who arrested him.

According to the Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Pol Col Dusadee Arayawut, between 2015 and 2016 authorities received complaints regarding some 250 criminal cases warranting reinvestigation. In many cases, the suspects, like Tanachai, claimed that they were prosecuted for crimes they did not commit.   

With Thailand’s Royal Thai Police (RTP) regularly criticised for a lack of transparency in appointments and promotions, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) declared when it took power in 2014 that police reform was one of its top priorities. The regime stated that the primary goal is to rid the police force of ‘political influences’ especially in the investigation department where police inquiry officers are key.

However, many people, including police officers themselves, are skeptical of whether the junta’s reform initiatives will increase the efficiency and accountability of the RTP or merely bring the force more firmly under the military’s control.  

Preventing interference through junta intervention?

Tanachai’s acquittal, and the claim of former teacher Jomsap Saenmuangkhot that she was wrongfully jailed as a scapegoat for a fatal car accident in 2005, have renewed calls for police reform.

The Thai police on 1 February 2017 announced that they will accept the junta leader’s decision on whether or not to use Section 44 of the Interim Constitution for reform of the RTP. Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, the junta leader and Prime Minister, has said in turn that the NCPO currently has no plans to use its absolute power under Section 44.

“It is true that the work of inquiry officers is easily influenced by their superiors, government officials, politicians, and other influential figures,” Pol Col Dr Mana Pochauy, Superintendent of Thung Song Hong Police Station and Secretary General of the Police Inquiry Officer Association, told Prachatai.

He added that police inquiry officers, like other public servants in Thailand, work under strict lines of command. When there are orders from above to investigate or not investigate, officers are put in a very difficult position where most choose to follow orders to avoid trouble. Pol Col Mana told Prachatai that the majority of inquiry officers want to become more independent from the Central Investigation Bureau to ensuring checks and balance in safeguarding justice.

Agreeing with Pol Col Mana, a public prosecutor who requested anonymity proposed that a separate interrogation department should be established to ensure the independency of the investigation process. The idea is similar to a suggestion from Police Watch (PW), a civil society group campaigning for police reform. More radically, however, the group argued that this independent interrogation department should be established under the Ministry of Justice.

Contrary to what inquiry officers and other experts have suggested, the junta leader has centralised the police force further, creating obstacles to independent justice. On February 2016, the junta leader used his absolute power under Section 44 to abolish the position of inquiry officers, despite the role being semi-independent from the command of police station directors.

The junta leader reasoned that bringing all departments under the same structure would increase the force’s efficiency. “So far, we have not seen any sign that the authorities will make the investigation department of the force more independent from the centralised RTP administrative system,” said Pol Col Mana.

A mid-ranking police officer, who requested to be referred to by the pseudonym ‘Top’, told Prachatai that the NCPO’s top-down use of power to reform the police force will not bring about positive changes.

“They said that the appointments and promotions of the police force are too political, which is true. But we have witnessed the second coup d’état in the span of less than a decade. Isn’t the military playing with politics themselves?”

Pointing out the hypocrisy of the regime, he said that after the 2014 coup d’état, the military themselves have been the ones intervening in the investigative and inquiry work of the police, especially in cases related to political dissidents.  

Top added that after the 2006 coup d’état, there was a similar proposal to reform the RTP and a committee to reform the police force was set up for the task. However, except for a report on how the force should be reformed, nothing was done.

“If reform policies are going to be implemented, I think they are going to be policies to increase the power of the junta over the police force.”  

In an interview with the Bangkok Post, Wasan Luangprapat, a political scientist from Thammasat University, agreed reform is only a distant dream because the regime seems to exploit the police for self-interest.  

"The NCPO uses the police as a mechanism to implement its policies and stabilise its power. The regime has done nothing at all, be it on salaries or welfare benefits, skills development and or human resources (HR) administration," the Bangkok Post quoted Wasan as saying.

Dealing with lack of resources and transparency  

According to Police Watch, in order to make the inquiry procedures more accountable and transparent, public prosecutors should be allowed to monitor or to take part in the procedure together with inquiry officers.

Agreeing with the suggestion, Pol Col Mana said that cooperation between inquiry officers and prosecutors could bring positive changes. But he does not think the suggestion can be easily transformed into reality.

“Most public prosecutors are routine public servants who are used to working on documents during normal office hours. I don’t think that most of them would like to join the police in interrogating crime suspects at odd hours of the day,” said Pol Col Mana.

The prosecutor, however, told Prachatai, “But many would also be happy to work with police officers to make the interrogation process more accountable. If the suggestion is made a law, then of course it could easily become reality.”

The prosecutor said miscarriages of justice also occur when prosecutors do not do their jobs carefully.

“In certain cases, although more evidence was needed, the prosecutors did not send case files back to the police to ask for more evidence, but proceeded with the indictment.”

The prosecutor added that these oversights sometimes occur because the police submit case files to the prosecutors only when the pre-indictment custody period of 84 days permitted by the Criminal Procedure Code is about to run out. Therefore, the prosecutors feel pressured to proceed with the indictment.

Adding to the suggestions, Pol Col Mana said more financial and human resources should be allocated to the investigative and interrogation work of the police. “Although investigative and interrogation work plays a very significant role in influencing the fundamental justice process, the budget for it is very limited. So most police officers do not want to do this work. They get only a little extra payment on top of their police salaries, which are known to be rather low anyhow,” Pol Col Mana told Prachatai.

He further stated that the lack of skills and training is another problem. He said the budget for police training is very limited and on top of that most training programs designed by the Police Education Bureau are oriented towards delivering training certificates needed for promotion, rather than genuinely improving the skills of the force. When faced with high-profile criminal cases with tremendous pressure from the public, some police officers do their work hastily.

Culture of impunity

During the notorious war on drugs during Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration, at least 2,500 drug suspects were killed extrajudicially and many more alleged that they were tortured by paramilitary troops or police officers. Although it has been more than a decade since the war on drugs was scrapped when Thaksin was ousted by the coup d’état in 2006, not a single police officer has been prosecuted or arrested.

Throughout Thai history, state officials have engaged in torture and enforced disappearances and never been punished. Part of the reason is the lack of any law which criminalises torture and enforced disappearance. In fact, some officers who committed these crimes have been promoted while civilians who spoke out were punished.

In 2014, the Army filed a libel suit against Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a human rights lawyer and Director of the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF) of Thailand. Pornpen was accused of causing damage to the reputation of the army by submitting a report to the UN about alleged torture committed by the army.

In 2011, Suderueman Maleh was sentenced to two years in jail for reporting torture allegedly inflicted upon him by police. The lawyer representing Suderueman in this torture case was abducted and disappeared in 2004. Yes, that lawyer was the prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit.

The current judicial process and apparatus have created huge obstacles to bringing to justice perpetrators of these two extraordinary crimes. Currently, Thai law does not recognise or criminalise enforced disappearance and torture. If a person is tortured by a police officer, they have to start the judicial process by filing a complaint with the police themselves.

In 2016, almost a decade after Thailand signed the UN conventions against torture and enforced disappearances, the Justice Ministry submitted a bill against torture and enforced disappearance to the junta-appointed National Legislative Assembly. If enacted, the law will be the first to recognise and criminalise torture by Thai authorities. It will also recognise and criminalise enforced disappearance even in cases where the body of the victim is missing.

However, under the military junta which itself has utilised torture and enforced disappearance to suppress dissent, people are sceptical about the fate of the bill.

Under the bill, any government official or employee of the state who commits torture must serve a jail term of from five to 20 years. If the torture leads to serious injury, they may face 10-30 years in jail. If a person is tortured to death, the official will face life imprisonment and a fine of 600,000 to one million baht. It also states that officials who commit enforced disappearance will face five to 20 years in jail. If the enforced disappearance leads to serious injury, the officials will face seven to thirty years, but officials will face life imprisonment if the act leads to the death of the victim.

For Top, however, in a country like Thailand where reality usually varies greatly from rhetoric, we will have to wait and see if the bill brings justice to people who suffer torture and ill-treatment at the hands of public officials.

Sexual release is a basic human need but it has always been subject to social norms, law and morality. In Thai prisons, regulations place even the internal needs of inmates under the state’s vigorous control.But the state can never fully control the force of human desire. Sexual activities happen in the everyday reality of prison life, though consensual sexual activities are largely limited to partners of the same sex. Sexual activities in prisons occur both among lovers and as pragmatic commerce.

According to the Department of Corrections Thailand’s prisons house some 269,745 inmates whose gender does not correspond to their biological sex as of 24 December 2015. These are stories that ‘outsiders’ may have never heard.

What are the dreams of families who migrated from Shan State and currently reside in Thailand? Many families hope to be reunited with family members in their home country; but there are many families who hope to begin new lives here, in Thailand.  While Shan children have been growing up in Thai society and feel that Thailand is their home, how should the Thai policies on citizenship and the status of stateless people be adjusted to the needs of this cross-border population?  These issues are addressed in the following report.

For many decades, many Shan people have decided to cross the border to northern Thailand where they used their skills and hard work to earn a living and support their families. They consider Thailand as their second home. The young generation has attentively and devotedly studied in the Thai education system and hopes to repay society; but the rights to residence and citizenship are still restricted.

At the end of a housing village in a Chiang Mai suburb is located a community of construction workers who work on the housing project. The owner of the project provided this land to house construction workers who are mostly Shan from Shan State. The residents pay only utility fees for electricity and water.

Visiting the community of migrant labourers from Shan State

A walkway in front of the construction workers’ community behind a housing village in a Chiang Mai suburb.

An evening market in the community yard as a travelling vendor sells groceries and fresh and preserved food from a pickup truck.

The houses in the community are made of wooden or bamboo walls with galvanized roofs, built in 3 rows and each of 10 houses. A four-metre wide walkway runs between the rows, there was about where people can pass with their bicycles. Electric wires running along wooden poles radiated from a main pole in front of the community. The elevated porch in front of each house contains water containers and is used for cooking and washing dishes.

About 5 o’clock in the evening, community members come home from construction sites. Parents buy fresh food and essential groceries from the travelling vendor.  Some parents ride motorcycles with their children who they have just picked up from school in Chiang Mai city.

After arriving home, some families start cooking in front of their houses while others take a shower at two outdoor wells, and then most families have dinner.

A married couple, Mr. Song and Mrs. Sang, have just finished dinner. The couple do construction work for the housing estate project.  Mr. Song, a 43-year-old Shan, was born at Ban Ngong Kong, Amphoe Wiang Haeng, Chiang Mai Province. He holds a card for highland people from. According to the announcement of Interior Ministry dated 15^th June 2016, card holders must obtain permission from the District Officer to travel outside of their designated area.

Mrs. Sang, 36, came from Lai Kha, a southern district of Shan State, Burma. She has worked in Thailand since 1999 and currently holds a work permit as a Burmese worker. She told us that most families in the community migrated from Lai Kha by word of mouth from family members to work for the housing estate project.

Lai Kha geography in warfare and conflict

Lai Kha location (pink area) and a map showing the enforced relocation of villagers from 1,478 villages in 11 districts of Shan State in 1996-1998.  More than 300,000 villagers became homeless. In Lai Kha more than 8,735 families were affected. (Source: Report of Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF)-April 1998)

In the past, Lai Kha was considered a conflict area in Shan State with frequent attacks between the Burmese military and the Shan State Army (SSA). The Burmese military used a strategy of ‘four disruptions’: news, food, manpower and funds.    

A report of Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) indicated that from 1996-1998, Shan people from 11 villages from southern Shan State migrated to the city, leaving more than 1,478 villages abandoned and more than 300,000 villagers homeless. In Lai Kha district, people from 201 villages were forcibly relocated and 8,735 families were affected. (See SHRF report)

In addition, in 2009, there was a report that the Burmese military had forced more than 30 families in Lai Kha to Maklang district to disrupt support for the minority group. (See relevant news)

A survey of Burmese migrant labourers in Thailand in 2015 by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) shows that for most economic factors were the major reason for migrating to Thailand, while 7% indicated that political conflict and oppressive government were the reasons.

If we classify responses by hometown, the survey shows that more than 50% of migrants from Shan State gave insecurity as a reason for migrating to Thailand.

There was a similar armed conflict in Karen State and 21% of Karen respondents also gave insecurity as a reason for migrating to Thailand.

A factor that significantly affected the results of the IOM survey of Shan and Karen labour is that there is a refugee camp located on the Thai border adjacent to Karen state whereas there is none on the border with Shan State. As a result, Karen refugees may stay at the camp or work outside, while most Shan refugees have no choice other than to become migrant labourers in Thailand.     

Skilled labourers and the education of daughters

Song and Sang met each other working at a construction company for the housing estate project in Chiang Mai. The company has continuously has projects, so the couple continued working for the company. They get paid bi-monthly, at the beginning and middle of the month.

Song works as a plasterer which is skilled work with an inadequate supply of labour. Song said that the daily wage depends on workload.  When asked for an estimated daily wage, Song said not less than 500 baht per day. “For example, today, there is 20 square metres to plaster and he gets paid at 70 baht per square meter.” However, he does not get the same work and pay every day.

Sang works as a general labourer and earns about 350-400 baht per day depending on workload, less than skilled workers.

They have two daughters. The elder is 16 years old studying at Matthayom 3 in a high school in Chiang Mai city. The younger daughter has just started kindergarten level 3. They reside in a small wooden house in the construction community. Sang said that their elder daughter was good at studying and was considering whether further her studies in a vocational or academic stream.

When asked if they planned to return to their home in Lai Kha, Sang replied that she wants to. However, having children here and their children growing up, they feel that they belong here.

The 2015 IOM survey (See report) showed that there were about 3.5 million migrants in Thailand of whom 3 million were in the labour market.  This represents about 7% of the labour force in Thailand. About 2.3 million of the migrants were from Myanmar.

The IOM survey showed that workers from Myanmar remitted home approximately USD 962 each annually. The annual total remittances from workers was estimated at about USD 1.7 million and USD 1.4 million of this was remitted to ethnic states in Myanmar such as, Mon, Shan, Karen and Tanintharyi.

Shan workers remitted about USD 545 each annually with an estimated annual total of USD 197.67 million.

Money was remitted every few months through unofficial channels of middlemen, families or friends.   These channels were used because of the upcountry location of their hometown and because formal banking processes requiring an identification card or bank account.

A single Shan mother with a four-year-old son

In a small house in the construction workers’ community, Mrs. Mung (assumed name), a Shan from Lai Kha, aged 39, was feeding her four year old son, Nong Yo (assumed name). Mrs. Mung was divorced from her husband who left her with the burden of taking care of their son.

Mrs. Mung has four siblings; two are still in Lai Kha. Her family back home earns a living from growing rice and garlic. They also plant sticky rice for making desserts.  Mrs. Mung’s elder sister lives in Tambon Piang Luang, Amphoe Wiang Haeng, on the northern border of Chiang Mai Province with Shan State. Mrs. Mung previously worked in Chiang Mai in 2003 for about a year, moved back home and then returned to work in Thailand in 2006 with an alien work permit.     

At the construction site, Mrs. Mung works as a plasterer and cement floor polisher. In addition to a daily wage of about 300 baht, Mrs. Mung works 3-4 hours overtime a day and earns about 9,000-10,000 baht a month.  Currently, her main expenses are food and her son’s nursery fees at a private kindergarten, costing about 1,600 baht per month.  Mrs. Mung also has the instalment payments on a motorcycle used to take her son to school. She spends only about 100 baht a month on gasoline as she only rides the motorcycle to and from her son’s school not far from her home.          

Mrs. Mung said that she previously transferred money to her parents in Shan State. But now that she has to take care of her son alone, she has to save for her son’s future education.  Mrs. Mung’s future dream is different from that of Song and Sang’s family; she hopes to save a big amount of money and return home with her son who has started talking and practising Thai language from television and school.  

Extra Classroom and Volunteer Teachers for Workers’ Children

Students in extra classroom together with volunteer teachers from Shan Youth Power

“Children of Shan born in Chiang Mai are able to speak Shan to communicate with their parents, the local language for neighbours and can speak Thai language only when studying in class”, said Sang Muang, a Shan volunteer teacher for construction workers’ children.

Sang Muang is now a volunteer teacher from Shan Youth Power, a youth network from Shan State working on education and communication. The network has sent its members as volunteer teachers to support education among Shan communities in Chiang Mai by teaching the Shan language, English and other subjects as extra to the classes for Shan children. The target areas are construction site communities and agricultural villages where parents help to provide places for these volunteers.

In Chiang Mai, there are four classes in communities of Shan workers from Shan State. Each class has 20-30 students with 11 teachers in total, 8 full-time and 3 volunteers.

At the construction site, people built a simple raised room from bamboo, roofed with thatch and with two walls made from galvanized sheeting. The other sides are open. The floor is covered with reed mats and three to four floor tables are placed at one corner of the room and there is one blackboard. When class starts, both teachers and children put the tables at the centre of the room. The class is separated into three groups: teenagers, older children and small children. Each group sits in a circle around a table.

For that evening, the class was Shan language. Two volunteer teachers separated the children into three groups by age. The teenagers learned advanced Shan, the older children had beginners’ lessons but for the small children the main job of the volunteer teachers was to make them sit still and teach them to read and write the Shan consonants and vowels while going back and forth to teach the teenagers and older children.

Sang Muang said that in the past the school drop-out rate of children following their families to Chiang Mai was high. Only a few decided to finish compulsory schooling. That was why education became critical for the children of Shan workers. At present, most Tai Yai stay longer in Chiang Mai and are willing to pay for their children’s education. Therefore, the education work of the Shan Youth Power volunteers turned into teaching extra courses required by the children in the community.

Sang Muang also said that Tai Yai students have recently decided to study further in vocational schools and universities. Some students study in non-formal education schools while some take the Equivalence Test to study in university. Most applied using Myanmar passports, but if they have a highlander’s card issued by the Thai government they could use that.

According to Sang Muang’s survey, two to three main factors influence the choice of higher education of Shan youth in Chiang Mai. The first is distance. If the higher education institutions are far from their parents’ work or home, either the children decide to end their education or the parents will not send them to school as the cost of transportation is a priority.

The second are their parents. If they decide to move back to Shan State, their education will end. However, most of them will allow children in Mathayom 3 or Mathayom 6 to finish the year and then encourage them to return to their hometown.

Financial support from families is also an important factor, even though many Shan youths are trying to finish gain a certificate and then work to support themselves. Some drop out for a year to work and then go back to finish their course.

On the choice of between high schools and vocational schools, Sang Muang pointed out that Shan boys would like to study technical fields in vocational schools, whether construction, mechanics or architecture, because of the job opportunities; girls are interested in vocational schools for accounting, the hospitality industry and nutrition. Though girls can take the same industrial subjects as boys, cultural norms frame the choice of careers for girls.  

Sang Muang said that there was a case of a child who wanted to study in high school, but after counselling from a teacher changed their mind despite not wanting to study in a vocational school. There was also a child who wanted to study nursing, but a teacher said that the nursing profession was prohibited to foreign workers. In fact, this is not the case according to the Professional Nursing and Midwifery Act. What is prohibited is work as a government official. However, the child decided to study accounting instead.

Sang Muang also disclosed that parents’ relocation back to Shan State is still a big challenge to the decision of their children about further study. “Sometimes they’ve been back to their hometown. In one way they thought it was great to be home. In another way they thought it was so hard to think how they could live there. This was because they grew up and got used to the way of life in Chiang Mai”. Sang Muang proposed that children who had grown up in Chiang Mai could actually go back and live in Shan State if they could adapt, but he thought that when it was time for families to make a decision on settling in Chiang Mai or moving back to Shan State, it was very difficult choice.

Family Relocation for Better Lives and Citizenship

A dormitory at the foot of Doi Suthep behind Chiang Mai University where Phi Nuan lives

A Tai Yai-style Buddhist Altar at Phi Nuan’s place

One evening in the middle of a garden and dormitories at the foot of Doi Suthep, we had an appointment with Phi Nuan, a 43-year-old Shan woman who was just back from her job as a cook in the restaurant of a medium-sized hotel in Chiang Mai.

Phi Nuan told us that her parents were Shan from Loy Leam. She is the fourth child of six. She moved to Chiang Mai with her parents in 1975 when she was two years old. Their first destination was Ban Yang, Tambon Mae Ngon, Amphoe Fang, Chiang Mai, a Yunnan community which was evacuated here with the Chinese Nationalist 93rd division. Her parents moved to Thailand thinking that earning a living here was better than staying in Shan State. They worked and also had savings. Therefore, they decided to sell all their land in Shan to fund moving the entire family to Ban Yang. All her family members held a highlander card (pink card) from the Ministry of Interior.

In 1996 when she was 23 years old, her family moved to Amphoe Fang. Before she became a cook in 2012, she applied as a dishwasher and kitchen cleaner at a hotel. The hotel owner suggested learning what to do from a cook in the kitchen, so that she could move to another job or career. Even though she was illiterate, she remembered the suggestions of the former cook by heart. She knew the quantity of ingredients in each dish.

“So I tried to make many dishes and have them tasted. My boss trusted me. He told me to stay focussed and try, not to worry about wasting things. If things were not good, no worry. I cooked and have the dishes tasted. My boss was very kind”, Phi Nuan recounted.

Phi Nuan became a cook in the hotel in 2014. Now her monthly salary is 11,000 baht or 10,500 baht after the social security deduction. The hotel has two full-time cooks and one helper.

Phi Nuan’s daily duty is to prepare enough breakfast for the guests each day. If there is a group of 30 guests, a buffet breakfast will be prepared. If fewer, the breakfast can be just enough for everyone or à la carte. “I don’t have to worry about anything. If I want to cook a curry, I just tell the helper who can read and write to prepare the ingredients.”

“The hard part is certainly that I am afraid that it would be too salty, not good enough, over-cooked or smelly. Anyway, I use everything in me to make it as good as possible.” Phi Nuan told us her way to work.

“Whatever the boss teaches me, I remember. Because they pay me a full wage, I do everything whole-heartedly. Otherwise, we cannot do anything. My only way of doing things is by memory, as I cannot read or write.”

She married a Myanmar man from Yangon who works as a security guard for a private company in Chiang Mai and has two children; a 23-year-old daughter, who is now married to a Thai man from Lamphun, and a 15-year-old son who works in an orange grove after finishing Mathayom 3. He stays with his grandmother, Phi Nuan’s mother, in Amphoe Fang and still holds a highlander card.

When asked where her children feel is home, her answer was Thailand. Her husband used to ask them to visit Myanmar but they refused saying that they cannot speak the language.

Even after living in Thailand for almost 40 years, none of her family members have yet acquired Thai nationality. They still hold highlander cards and they are still recorded as living in the highlands, following a 1998-9 survey by the government.

When asked about the future, Phi Nuan said that she would keep working in Thailand. Her children grew up here while her mother has still lived in Amphoe Fang with a monthly allowance of 1,000-2,000 baht from her children. Phi Nuan has no worries about her daughter as she is married and has her own family. She just hopes that her son can study beyond Mathayom 3. The problem is just financial support.

None of Phi Nuan’s siblings received Thai nationality from their parents. But a 2012 Ministry of Interior announcement ‘on the granting of Thai citizenship in general and in individual cases to those without Thai citizenship born in the Kingdom of Thailand whose fathers and mothers are aliens’ applied to 14 ethnic groups and displaced persons without Thai nationality. At that time, the district officer recommended her to apply for citizenship. When the Government institutes a policy on citizenship, they can immediately process the case.

Population and Immigration Policies: When Thailand Moves to an Aging Society

Adisorn Kerdmongkol, Labour Researcher, Coordinator of Migrant Working Group (MWG)

Adisorn Kerdmongkol, Researcher and Coordinator of the Migrant Working Group (MWG) talked about Thai population policies. In the near future, Thailand will face a labour shortage in the construction industry, domestic services, manufacturing and agriculture. The government responded through a Prime Minister’s Office announcement on 15 November 2016 on “Categories of Work for which Aliens are Permitted to Acquire Work Permits according to the Alien Working Act, Section 13.” This meant that highlander card holders and their children can work in every occupation.

The Prime Minister’s Office announcement allowed people from ethnic minorities who hold highlander cards to fully utilize their abilities. In the past, even university or vocational college graduates were not able to work in some fields because of the restrictions in the Alien Working Act. However, some professions requiring special skills, such as government service and the legal profession, are still not open to ethnic minorities because they require Thai nationality.

On the long-term possibility that ethnic highlanders and their Thai-educated children will acquire Thai nationality, Adisorn said that it depended on government policy. Recently, however, the Thai birth rate has declined and the government is beginning to realize the importance of people born and raised in the country. So the government seems to be granting Thai citizenship to these people or permanent permission to stay.

The laws and regulations of the Ministry of Interior on granting Thai nationality can be categorized by recipients.

1: Parentage. Children automatically acquire Thai citizenship if either the father or mother has Thai citizenship.

2: Aliens who have resided in the Kingdom of Thailand for a long time who meet fully the legal qualifications can apply for citizenship for consideration by the Minister of Interior.

3: Thai citizenship can be granted by government policy, such as the 2012 announcement of the Ministry of Interior mentioned above which covers those in 14 ethnic groups born in Thailand to alien and stateless parents. The government also grants the Thai citizenship to the children of skilled specialists.

Adisorn added that according to recent Thai government policy “the Thai Government usually grants Thai Citizenship to those who have stayed in the Kingdom for a period of time and who already feel attachment to Thai society.”

There are many positive sides of granting Thai citizenship in such cases. The labour force is expanded; citizens have greater attachment to Thai society; improved accessibility to government services such as health services. The Government sees this as one of many steps in human development, hence the policies granting Thai citizenship.

“Special Status”; a Policy Proposal to Serve Cross-Border Populations and Future Thai-Myanmar Economic Links

Children whose parents are migrant workers with Myanmar citizenship and hold alien work permits are not granted Thai citizenship but grew up and were educated in Thailand. They are concerned about their status if they have to follow their parents back to Myanmar.

Adisorn said that there were two policy options: granting Thai citizenship to those educated in the Kingdom with qualification meeting future national requirements.

The second, in the case of children who feel connected to Thailand, is for the government to identify the citizenship of migrant parents and give the children a choice of citizenship. The government can also grant temporary and permanent permission to stay. In this case, the government does not grant Thai nationality but allows the right of residence. This option enables the government to decide either it wants to allow these people to stay temporarily or allow them to stay permanently. The government can use the Immigration Act to manage this.     

Adisorn also proposed the granting of “special status” to migrants’ children who grow up and study in Thailand. Even though these children hold Myanmar citizenship from their parentage, the Thai government can implement special measures in special cases, allowing them to stay in Thailand, the length of time depending on Thai policy. The advantage of this measure is that it allows these people to cross back and forth between Thailand and their home country and encourages future investment and trade connecting two countries.

Adisorn summarized that Thai policies on population and immigration tend to comply with dynamic conditions. Thailand is progressing to an aging society and demands an economically active labour force. The children of migrants are qualified; they were born, raised and educated in Thailand. Many are skilled and possess specialisms required by the nation. Thailand can learn from the population policies of Singapore, which is open for skilled foreigners to work and be granted permanent stay.

References:

International Organization for Migration. Supplementary Report – Assessing Potential Changes in Migration Patterns of Myanmar Migrants. 11 February 2016, https://goo.gl/Bu7Fji  

Shan Human Rights Foundation. DISPOSSESSED: A report on forced relocation and extrajudicial killings in Shan State, Burma. April 1998. https://goo.gl/4rkyrk

Ministry of Interior Announcement on the granting of Thai citizenship in general and in individual cases to those without Thai citizenship born in the Kingdom of Thailand whose fathers and mothers are aliens, Government Gazette, no. 129, special chapter 177 ง 23 November 2012.  http://www.ratchakitcha.soc.go.th/DATA/PDF/2555/E/177/50.PDF

War in which all humanity loses together. 

When the law is more important than a life

Reduce the burden and increase income for government

Great goal but problematic approach

It’s been more than 24 years since the media reform began in Thailand, but the state still refuses to give up its ownership of public frequencies. The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commissioners, over half of whom are military and police officers, has allowed state agencies to continue to own frequencies, and ignored the recommendations from an internal committee. To make matters worse, the NCPO recently made an order allowing state agencies to retain frequencies for further five years. Currently, the military still owns over 100 frequencies.

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) was due to organise auctions recently for telecommunication frequencies and digital television. The most urgent task of the NBCT, however, is to complete a reallocation of radio frequencies by 2017, as determined by the master plan.

The report will examine the progress of the recall and allocation of these radio frequencies.

Why do frequencies need to be recalled?

Before the social media era, ownership of media channels reached back to the 1990s. Radio and television stations are owned by the state. Private use is allowed through concessions which, of course, are easy to control.

When the political uprising took place in May 1992, people could not find credible news and information for consumption, leading to a call to reform the media.  

“Radio and television was used heavily as tool for political struggle. Aside from those propaganda that made certain people look like angels, these state media also manipulated information, and misrepresented democratic movements systematically,” said Boonrak Boonyakhetmala

This is similar to the view of Rattana Buosonte who wrote in Siamrath Weekly Review magazine that state control of information which prevents people from accessing credible news has caused doubts about state media. During the 1992 uprising, people living around Bangkok decided to go to the protest sites themselves to get direct formation since they were confused by the news and rumours from various news sources.

This incident led to reform of the military as well as the media. Accordingly, ITV was established. It also led to Article 40 of the 1997 constitution which determines that frequencies are public resources. Independent commissions were to be established to allocate and regulate television, radio, and telecommunications to ensure benefits to the public and free and fair competition.

These commissions never became operational and the structure changed after the 2006 coup. The original Broadcast and Radio Commission and Telecommunication Commission were merged into the NBTC under the 2007 constitution. The first set of commissioners began work in 2011.

The 10-member Commission includes six military and police personnel. Civil society representatives include Supinya Klangnarong, formerly the Secretary-General of the Media Reform Campaign Committee, and Dr. Prawit Leesatapornwongsa, former director of the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Institute. It has never been clear whether they would be able to pursue their people’s agenda within the commission or merely serve as “decoration” for the panel.

The Commission drafted a 2012 master plan to recall frequencies from state agencies, while those used commercially were to be recalled at the end of the concessions. Those operating without concessions were to return the frequencies within 5, 10, and 15 years for radio, broadcasting, and telecommunications respectively. Sections 82 and 83 of the 2010 Act on the Organization to Assign Radio frequency and to Regulate the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Services stipulate that state agencies owning frequencies have to justify the necessity for this. When necessary, state agencies would still be allowed to retain ownership, but for no longer than five years after the NBTC master plan was enacted.

According to the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association, most FM and AM frequencies (198 stations) are mostly controlled by the military (Air Force, Navy, Army and Armed Forces Headquarters). The government Public Relations Department has 145 stations; MCOT has 62; the Royal Thai Police has 44, the Secretariat of the House of Representatives has 6; the NBTC has 8, and the Thai Meteorological Department has 6.

Five years of no progress

In radio, where the frequency recall is due in April 2017, there is no visible progress. On October 17, 2016, the Radio Broadcasting Subcommittee agreed to let 27 state agencies with control of 537 frequencies to relinquish them on April 3, 2017, the latest date allowed in the master plan.

Supinya Klangnarong, one of the commissioners who has long worked on this issue, gave a dissenting opinion that the review should be on a case-by-case basis. The date for return of the frequencies should also be earlier, and the reallocation plan should also be determined after the recall.

Supinya points out that the NBTC Subcommittee may have given the benefit of the doubt to these state agencies by granting them the right to continued use, without reviewing the facts and justifications provided. In Supinya’s dissenting memo, she points out that only 18 agencies with 113 frequencies are deemed to be using them according to their agencies’ purposes, but 10 agencies with 425 frequencies are not.

Army takes 127 frequencies for “work mission”

The Royal Thai Army has 127 frequencies in its possession, consisting of 49 FM and 78 AM stations. The Army’s current broadcast master plan states the necessity of the stations to serve its mission and purpose.

“The Army as the main state mechanism to maintain national security upholds its mission to protect national sovereignty, uphold Buddhism, defend the monarchy, and serve the people in the best way it can. The Army aims to build capacity to prepare for all kinds of national threats, especially the use of authorized frequencies for public relations, psychological operations, and intelligence information to serve the mission of the Army...

“They are mainly used as an important tool to maintain good understanding and relationships between the state and the people. In the past, the Army has been able to give concrete support to solving various national crises.”

NBTC - useless existence?

The dissenting opinion within the NBTC viewed that in the first 1-2 years, it must be verified whether the usage of some frequencies is legitimate. For example, it has to be verified whether the educational radio stations run by universities are used by the universities for non-profit purposes and similarly whether the state agencies who are using frequencies for public information purposes should be allowed to continue to use them.

Another good example is 1 Por Nor that belongs to the NBTC. Thus should already have been recalled in the first year as there is no reason for the NBTC to hold the frequency. If they want to do digital radio, they can use those frequencies to do so. They can also allow bidding for frequencies or allocate them as public frequencies, according to the NBTC dissenting opinion.

“The value of frequencies has gone up so much now because globally, broadband or 700 MHz was long ago used for television. Nowadays, it is used as 4G or 5G in Europe and America, resulting in much higher prices. So these normal analogue frequencies that are about to expire now have really high values,” said Supinya.

“If it has been dragged on for 5 years, we wouldn’t have time for reallocation. It would be the duty of the next set of NBTC Commissioners. We can say that we have failed at allocating radio frequencies. We just came to maintain the status quo in radio. We have chosen to do nothing except granting approval to new station owners,” said Supinya, adding that there is not even plan on what to do after these frequencies are recalled.

“When we talk about media reform, it is not about recalling state frequencies any more. Instead it more concerns media ethics and media freedom. Once the narrative changes it is very hard to push for frequency recall as a public agenda. Frequencies are like treasure; they are valuable resources. So those who are in possession, of course they don’t want to return them.”

NCPO order: military keeps public frequencies

Before the NBTC could be labelled a failure in reallocating the frequencies, a hero on a white horse came to save it in the name of the NCPO. The junta employed Section 44 of the 2014 interim constitution to postpone the reallocation master plan for another 5 years.

Suwanna Sombatraksasook, Director of the Chulalongkorn University station, expressed her disappointment at this decision. She noted that the order allows the Army to maintain their interests as they still have many frequencies in their possession. They have also never declared the necessity or justification for this.

She also viewed the role of the NBTC to be limited as they have only been able to issue digital TV licences. For radio, Gen. Nathee Sakulrat, Vice Chair of the NBCT and Chair of the Television Broadcasting Subcommittee told Chula Radio that community radio ownership is considered quite decentralized already. However, this ownership is temporary, and mainstream radio should still be more fairly allocated.

“It is true that radio is not so popular any more these days, but things may change in the next five years, for example digital FM/AM radios. But what if the military still refuses to return these frequencies?” asked Suwanna.

She pointed out the consequence that in the next five years there will be no categorization of radio stations into public, commercial, or community radio. Those who identified themselves in the past five years as public radio, such as Chula Radio, would not survive if they don’t receive subsidies. At the same time, community radio will never be able to emerge as mainstream radio. The small radio stations will die out, while they could have collectively bid for mainstream frequencies. This is considered a distortion of market mechanisms.

Suwanna said that digital radio may already be useless within five years. Now everything is convergent. People can listen to their radio online or in their car. There’s no need to buy a radio. All the 30 something radio stations can be accessed online through Smart TV. If they plan to extend the current ownership structure for another five years, they will lag behind the technology.

They came back to turn back the clock  

Looking back at the time 0f the master plan to recall frequencies, Suthep Wilailert, former Secretary-General of the Campaign for Popular Media Reform, said that it might seem successful legally, but in practice, no organisation has ever accomplished it.

“We have the frequency allocation bill which stipulates that the state is not allowed to give concessions to private companies. The NBTC should specify the reallocation timeframe and categorize the use as public, private, and community at local and regional levels. State agencies must declare the need to use it. Overall, at least 20% of the frequencies must be allocated to civil society. Radio is clearer as it is closer to the people’s use, therefore community radio was born.”

But until now, that 20% of frequencies has never reached community and civil society organisations.

“Even though we have the internet and other communications channels, people have to buy internet services to get access. But that 20% is about reallocation of public goods. This is the right of people to directly access a resource for communication. Therefore, the frequency recall is very important and would be useful,” said Suthep.

Suthep pointed out that there is always procrastination. Even though NBTC exists, they are not able to recall frequencies. Instead, they allowed the existing situation for five years, and NCPO even extended it for five years more.

Compared to radio, he views that TV ownership has changed somewhat, as it has transferred to private ownership. Even though the state takes the auction fee, eventually the state shifts its role to become the service provider of a multiplexer (MUX). When a coup happens, for example, instead of shutting down TV, they can just shut down the MUX. In this way, the state can control content. Technically, it’s like a gateway. On another hand, the government also uses Section 37 of the 2008 Thai Public Broadcasting Service Act to regulate content. The guidelines for determining what content is wrong are quite vague, and they blame the media for not being able to regulate themselves.

“Lately, academics often said that media reform is content regulation, despite the fact that we have so little progress on the media ownership issue. This is a distraction away from the real problem.”

From these failures, Suthep raised questions about how each military coup has led to the exploitation and misuse of public resources by the state. This applies not only to frequencies but also other kinds of resource. If an election is to take place, we must think carefully how to prevent another coup d’état, he said.

He also raised the question of whether fair ownership of frequencies would also include telecommunications so that people can use without charge at least 20% of the available frequencies.

Note: This article was translated from Thai to English by Suluck Lamubol