2 months after the parliamentary approval, the bill preventing state-led torture and enforced disappearance has been enforced.
File photo
The bill was published in the Royal Gazette on 24 October 2022, marking the official implementation of the first law of its kind in the Kingdom.
The law provides clear legal benchmarks to end the impunity that the authorities have enjoyed from the absence of any clear criminal punishments for torturing people to extract information or confessions, or for making people disappear.
The enforced bill, which has seen back-and-forth amendment, can be considered a watered-down version of the best draft ever had by the junta-appointed senate. For example, it made the appointment of an anti-torture and enforced disappearance commission the responsibility of bureaucrats as opposed to parliament; stripped the committee of its authority to inspect detention sites; and decreased jail term punishments from 40 to 20 years.
Although Thailand became a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2007 and signed off on the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2012, the first attempt to pass implementing legislation did not come until 2014.
Thereafter, the legislative process shuffled back and forth between the junta-appointed National Legislation Assembly and the Ministry of Justice until September 2021, when a draft bill based upon a proposal from a CSO was finally submitted to Parliament along with 3 other bills from the Democrat Party, the Prachachart Party, and the House Committee on Legal Affairs, Justice, and Human Rights.
Recognised as the best version, the combined draft passed the lower house only to be amended in the Senate as it currently is. During the Senate debate, senators could be seen voicing out concerns that the officials would find it difficult to enforce the lower house version bill.
On 23 February 2022, the combined draft act passed the lower house, and was sent to the Senate for further debate. It has taken more than five months for this watered down version to emerge.
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