Pranee Danwatthananusorn is running a campaign to collect signatures in support of her petition to seek royal pardons for lèse majesté convicts including her husband Surachai.

On 2 Dec, Pranee introduced her campaign to those who came to join the Declaration of Street Justice Group in its weekly activity on the footpath in front of the Criminal Court on Ratchadaphisek Rd in Bangkok.

Pranee Danwatthananusorn

The Declaration of Street Justice Group or กลุ่มปฏิญญาหน้าศาล in Thai, led by Chulalongkorn lecturer Suda Rangkupan, has organized activities and public forums calling for justice for political prisoners, on every Sunday in front of the court for several months now.

Pranee said that the campaign is needed by the lèse majesté convicts themselves, including her husband.  

She said that she had started to collect signatures since the previous week, and had distributed the petition form in several places, but had yet to receive them back.  So far, she had acquired only just over a hundred.  

She set an initial target of about 500 signatures, and would submit them to the Bureau of the Royal Household early next year, with additional signatures to be submitted periodically later on.  

Surachai has originally been convicted to 25 years in prison in 5 cases, but due to his guilty pleas the prison term has been reduced by half, and further reduced to 10 years and 9 months as a result of the 2012 Royal Decree on Royal Pardons.

According to her petition to the King, ‘prisoner Surachai Danwatthananusorn and other prisoners convicted for offences under Section 112 of the Criminal Code committed their crimes because of the currently acute divisive political situation in the country which made them confused in their thinking to the extent that they committed the offensive acts, in violation of the law, for which they presently repent.’

Surachai, for example, has pleaded guilty in all the cases to receive punishment with repentance, she said in the petition.

Now that his cases have been completed, she therefore submits this petition to HM the King, at the advice of the current government which ‘wants redress for those convicted under Section 112 of the Criminal Code, currently in prison, through the seeking of royal pardons in accordance with the law.’

‘I and other petitioners hope to receive the kindness from Your Majesty in extending mercy, without taking offence, towards those subjects who erred when they lost their mind,’ she said in the petition.   

‘Once they receive Your Majesty’s kindness and mercy, being granted freedom, they will feel grateful until they die, and they will never again do anything irritable to the throne,’ the petition says.

Source: http://prachatai.com/journal/2012/12/44025