When General Chao Phraya Chakri heard of the instability in the capital while he was on a campaign against Cambodia, he returned to Thonburi to put down the rebellion. The general, who later became King Rama I and the founder of the current ruling Chakri dynasty, ordered an investigation, punished the rebels and, to prevent further chaos, ordered that King Taksin be executed.
There are a few possibilities as to how King Taksin’s reign came to a tragic end. One account revealed he was put in velvet bag and beaten to death with a scented sandalwood club in April 1782. Another account claimed that a stand-in was beaten to death in his place and he was sent to live in the Nakhon Si Thammarat province in the south of Thailand. Thai people still discuss the circumstances surrounding the demise of his 15-year reign.
The end of Thonburi ushered in the current era of Thailand, which is called Rattanakosin, and the kings of Chakri dynasty have ruled Thailand ever since.
At first the current kingdom adopted the same law codes used in Ayutthaya, although many were lost when the former capital was destroyed. The revision and collection of ancient laws took place following an unusual verdict. A man called Boonsri petitioned against the judge Phra Kasem for being unfair by awarding a divorce to his wife Amdaeng Pom, who had committed adultery with a man named Racha-at. However, the ancient law stipulated that a ‘woman who requests to be separated from her blameless man should be allowed to do so’. King Rama I expressed his concern that the ancient laws had become irrelevant and ordered them to be revised.
The real turning point for the Thai legal system came about as a result of Siam opening up to trade with western countries and facing the threat of colonisation in the 19th century. Great Britain was the first to demand extraterritoriality, which would make its subjects exempt from local laws, the reduction of import duties to three percent and the abolition of the Thai Royal Treasury’s monopoly of foreign trade as stated in the Bowring Treaty, signed in 1855 by King Rama IV or King Mongkut and Sir John Bowring, the fourth governor of Hong Kong.
Despite its official title as the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce, it could be seen as an unfair contract given that Britain had already demonstrated its military might during the First Opium War with the Qing Dynasty of China from 1839 to 1842. That war forced China to allow free trade in certain ports. Siam feared it was in no position to negotiate either.
In addition, five years before the Bowring Treaty, failed negotiations between King Rama III and Sir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak and British envoy, had served to heighten tensions. At that time, Brooke’s attempts to negotiate for more freedom of trade and exemption from Siamese laws for British subjects had come to nothing. This resulted in his advising that force be used to make Siam more open to foreign trade.
Before his passing, King Rama III reportedly stated that Siamese warfare with Burma or Yuan (Vietnam) would be no more but that the new threat came from westerners. ‘We should study their innovations for our own benefit but not to the degree of obsession or worshipping them,’ he said.
His parting words coincided with the subsequent capitulation of Burma and Vietnam to colonial rule by the British and the French, respectively.
After the Bowring Treaty, the next 13 bilateral treaties between Siam and western countries each imposed extraterritoriality as a condition. Under these agreements, disputes between Siamese and foreign subjects would be determined by the consul of their respective countries in amicable conjunction with Siamese officers. Foreign offenders were subject to their laws and Siamese offenders to Thai law. The consuls wouldn’t interfere in matters solely concerned with the Siamese, nor would the Siamese authorities interfere in questions that concerned only foreign subjects.
Back then, Siam had courts under each ministry though they were not the exact equivalent of their western counterparts, especially as trial by ordeal was still used. These courts were unique, questioning the defendant and acting as the judge.
Officials involved in the legal process could be divided into two groups. One group, called luk khun, specialised in law codes. The other group was made up of officials who either were involved in the court hearing or carried out specific duties as part of the legal proceedings.
A legal action began when a private accuser brought a complaint against someone. An accuser had to see an official who would write down his complaint. The official then passed it on to another official who would send the case to the luk khun, who then would decide if it had merit or not.
The accuser ran the risk of being punished if his complaint was found to be frivolous. If not, the nature of case would be assessed and it would be assigned to a court under a ministry deemed suitable to process it. The testimony would then be sent to the luk khun who decided whether the defendant or the plaintiff should lose the case or if it needed further investigation. The verdict was then sent to another official who gauged what kind of punishment would be handed down before the judge carried out the punishment. Besides having their own courts, many ministries also had their own jails.
During the reign of King Chulalongkorn, Siam reformed various aspects of its legal systems and abolished slavery, in order to appear as a civilised country and to avert colonisation.
His Majesty, the fifth king of the Chakri dynasty, managed to keep the country independent even as France and Britain controlled most of Southeast Asia. However, Siamese autonomy came with a price. Some of its territories, namely parts of what are now Laos, Cambodia and northern Malaysia, were handed to these two powers to save the majority of the country.
Prince Rabi, the ‘father of modern Thai law’ and King Chulalongkorn’s son, noted at the time that Siam’s legal system was ineffective. He wrote: ‘Under old criminal proceedings, those who faced criminal charges would suffer greatly. They would be detained before a court hearing could take place which took a long time, unlike today. Moreover, during a hearing, the accused was presumably viewed as a criminal. Court officials tended to hit or whip the accused to obtain evidence. If the accused could find a witness to testify of his innocence, he could be acquitted. In other words, the accused himself had to prove the charge levied against him was bogus. Today the accused is viewed as innocent until proven guilty.’
About trial by ordeal, he said, ‘It was open to abuse by the judges, resulting in people losing respect for them and seeing them as demons.’ He pointed out that the judges didn’t exercise any lenience because low-ranking judges were under pressure to perform and answer to their superiors.
Prince Rabi exposed another glaring flaw in the system of old, that of limitless imprisonment. Under the old law, imprisonment was for life—unless the king graciously pardoned the convicts or reduced the term of the sentence. ‘The courts always bring petitions seeking clemency from the king. His Majesty is always diligent to commute a period of imprisonment case by case for criminals from all over the country. However, such a task is simply too overwhelming to be carried out alone.’
Many prisoners were imprisoned for years without proper cause or judgment. In an 1891 letter to King Rama V, the chief prison doctor wrote that he had met a patient who had been imprisoned for 28 years for a petty offence and, on top of this, he had yet to be told whether he had been found guilty. Another account said a man named Ai Rung had been imprisoned for gang robbery along with nine other men. After 14 years, only Ai Rung survived, though he still did not know either what offence he was supposed to have committed or the limit of his sentence.
An 1890 account by Prince Damrong Rajanupab, King Mongkut’s son, told of a case of royal pardon. At a meeting, King Rama V told those present that he had received a rather unusual petition letter from a prisoner named Ai Tim from Intaburi town. Ai Tim had been incarcerated for 10 years for robbery. In the letter, he said that throughout his imprisonment, he had been trained in the craft of making rattan wares. He had made it his mission to create a masterpiece in the hope of giving it to His Maje
sty. Should King Chulalongkorn be pleased with his work, he would beg His Majesty to kindly grant him a pardon. Ai Tim said, if freed, he intended to be a monk for the rest of his life and never return to his old ways. At the end of his letter, he vowed that if his message contained any false information, he would be willing to receive capital punishment from His Majesty.
Not every prisoner would be granted a pardon if his petition reached the king; any good deeds performed and the time served in jail would be taken into consideration as well. Ten years in jail made Ai Tim eligible for consideration for a royal pardon. After verifying Ai Tim’s words, at the next meeting, His Majesty was presented with one of his pieces of rattan handicraft. His Majesty took a look at the meticulous work and said, ‘He spoke the truth. I shall make him see the result of being truthful.’
Ai Tim was released and ordained at the Wat Pho temple in Bangkok. In 1893, at the time of a dispute between France and Siam, Phra (monk) Tim expressed his intention to leave the temple in order to volunteer to fight against the French to repay His Majesty’s kindness. He said when he was young he had learnt some magic that could be useful against the French and, if he survived the war, he would resume his monastic life.
His Majesty was pleased to hear of Ai Tim’s offer but turned him down and told him to continue his monastic life instead, as he was too old for warfare. Ai Tim returned to his temple and died several years later as a monk.
In 1896, King Chulalongkorn granted the metropolitan court and provincial courts the power to put limits on sentences. He also entrusted Prince Rabi to work on older cases where a prison term had yet to be specified.
In terms of prison management, King Chulalongkorn assigned an official to survey prisons and hospitals in Singapore, which was a British colony at the time. This led to the construction of the Kong Mahantatot Prison on Mahachai Road in Bangkok by a British contractor. This was the first modern prison. It had a kitchen, four buildings for holding prisoners and seven towers on its walls. The prisoners were transferred to this new prison on 28 July 1891 after ten Buddhist monks had chanted blessings, performed rituals and thrown holy water and sand around the walls to ward off any illnesses.
Overcrowding was a problem, as mentioned by Momchao Sa-nga Ngam (Momchao is a title given to a king’s grandchild) in a report on a prison named Taranglahutot, in Bangkok, dated April 29, 1893. At that time, the prison held inmates who had been sentenced to less than six months and those awaiting trial. It had seventeen cells for male and female inmates. Two of them held 205 female inmates in total while the rest were supposedly built to hold 120 men each, though there were 2,019 male inmates in total. This means the number of the male inmates exceeded the prison’s capacity by 219 and more were being sent from the courts. Some prisoners were asked to sleep on the brick floors in the halls in front of their cells.
Overcrowding remains a problem in Thai prisons. The Bangkok Hilton holds the record, as it once housed almost 8,000 inmates when its actual capacity was half that number. In recent years, the inmates have been sent out to other major prisons to reduce overcrowding.
King Chulalongkorn declared that as the country had become increasingly progressive, the unsightly prisons should be located outside Bangkok. So a large plot of land on the east side of the Chao Phraya River in Nonthaburi province was purchased with the intention of building a new facility. A law school and the city hall of Nonthaburi were built on the land later, however, leaving not enough space for a prison.
After additional land had been purchased, in the reign of King Rama VII, the first phase of the construction of what was later dubbed the Bangkok Hilton began in 1927, with the aim of establishing Thailand’s first maximum-security prison.
A Frenchman named Charles was the architect of this project. His design was based on European and American prisons and includes a 30-metre-high tower that allows guards to oversee all activities on the prison grounds. Four years later, in July 1931, prisoners from Kong Mahantatot in Bangkok were transferred to this new prison.
Originally Bang Kwang was for prisoners sentenced to more than 10 years in jail or to death. Now it holds prisoners sentenced to more than thirty years in jail from every corner of the country. It has long been notorious for holding the worst offenders in Thailand.
Chapter 3
Introducing Lethal Injections
One of earliest accounts of capital punishment appears in an Ayutthayan law code issued in 1435. It lists the 21 horrific forms of death penalty handed down to the perpetrators of such serious crimes as rebellion, killing of monks or teachers, parenticide, vandalising of images of Buddha, abducting and dismembering an infant in order to remove accessories from its body. These included being eaten alive by starving dogs, getting cut to death little by little, having heated metal dropped onto their exposed brains, or having their skin peeled off from neck to waist in vertical strips that were left to drape over the lower halves of their bodies. Given the unfathomable amount of pain, it is highly unlikely that anyone could survive these barbaric retributions.
Following a homicide, the convict would be brought before the head of the victim’s family, who had a say in whether he should be killed or not, though the authority to order capital punishment belonged to the king alone. Sometimes, the victim’s family forgave the murderer and asked him to become a monk for the rest of his life to make merit on behalf of the dead person.
In 1908, decapitation by sword was officially declared the only form of capital punishment acceptable under Thai law. It usually took place within the holy precincts of a Buddhist monastery in front of an audience. The public beheading served to discourage others from wrongdoing. Some accounts say cemeteries were used as execution venues too.
The beheadings involved a series of steps, all with their own rituals and superstition. It also required special equipment. At that time, the shackles put on convicts’ legs had no locks. So a postmortem knife, which was like a butcher’s knife, was used specifically to cut the heels off the feet of the headless corpses so the irons could be removed. This knife became obsolete after removable shackles were introduced in 1894. A second knife, called mitmo (sorcerer’s magic knife), was believed to be infused with occult power. It was used solely to cut the yarn that designated the area reserved for the execution.
There are three known types of execution sword. They were made by the execution master, who decided which one to use on a case by case basis.
A wooden cross was fixed firmly into the ground. The master executioner made a hole in the ground, called Phra Mae Thorani (earth personified as female deity) next to it and asked from her forgiveness for the transgression that was about to transpire—spilling blood over her. The master then wrote in occult script on the ground at the cross, marking the spot where the convict would sit, and placed a banana leaf over it.
The convict sat with his back to the cross and his legs extended forward. He was secured there with white string. He put his hands together in the prayer position with flowers between his palms. Mud was used to cover his ears and mouth, and to mark the spot on his neck where the sword would cut through.
Before and after every beheading, the executioner’s team sprinkled their bodies with holy water to repel angry spirits of decapitated convicts who might try to harm or possess them. Red flags were stuck in the ground to mark the execution area and those who weren’t involved in the act weren’t allowed to enter. Convicts would be taken out of the prison in the early hours of the morning and transferred to the execution venue by boat.
A makeshift altar, which looked like a split-level table, was erected. The higher level was for the offerings and the lower level was for the swords and knives. A big ornate brass tray, for example, was filled such offerings as a pig’s head and a fish. The master executioner performed a ritual to pay his respects to the spirits and higher beings, inviting them all to preside over the proceedings. Then the primary
and secondary executioners joined him in more rituals. The master then anointed them with sacred flour on their foreheads before handing them the blessed swords. The executioners paid their respects to their teachers and deities they held in high regard, to gain moral support before proceeding. The convict was then offered his last meal.
The executioners wore special red outfits, which were designed to conform with superstition. Their uniforms consisted of a vest, a waist sash, knee-length shorts and a garland of yarn for the head. Occult symbols on these items were believed to imbue them with power. They served the same purpose as holy water: protecting the executioners from the vengeful spirits of the beheaded.
Branches were gathered to make an arch called pratu pee (ghost door), which served as entrance to and exit from the site of the decapitation for the executioners. It was destroyed immediately afterwards to prevent the spirits of the decapitated from returning to their homes or following the executioners to harm.
Before the beheading, the team would stay within a sacred circle marked with white yarn called saisin. The primary executioner put holy water in a big bowl behind the condemned while the secondary executioner sat in front. A band played the flute and drums as they began. The primary executioner performed the highest form of respect, as if the king were presiding over the proceedings.
The executioner then lifted his sword and moved slowly towards the convict. It was said that then he would stamp on the ground but, if the sound startled the convict, he would lower his weapon and wait. He would strike only when his stomp received no response.
A Secret History of the Bangkok Hilton Page 3