For the second time yesterday, Thailand executed prisoners by lethal injection. Six prisoners have now been executed in this manner. Up until December 2002, the method of execution was by machine gun. In 2003 this was changed to lethal injection and the first execution of four prisoners took place in December of that year. For the following six years there have been no executions despite the fact that there are now 832 prisoners on death row. Out of these, 127 prisoners have exhausted their rights of appeal and could be executed at any time with little or no notice. They are given a chance to telephone relatives but can only speak for one minute.
Early this morning, relatives of the two executed prisoners came to collect the bodies from the execution chamber. For some reason, 80 students from a local Junior High school were allowed into the prison. The teacher said that she wanted to show the students the consequence of doing bad things. The small parade, led by a monk, left the morgue next to the execution chamber and headed towards Wat Bang Praek Tai. The only way that prisoners on Death Row can leave Bang Kwang is through a small red door behind the execution chamber. They leave here in coffins. This door hasn’t been opened for a while so they had to spray oil on the hinges and use a crowbar to get it open.
Visit Thai Prison Life for more information about prisons in Thailand. Also, click here to see newspaper pictures of the two prisoners praying before their execution. This was on the front page of Daily News this morning. These pictures were from Manager Newspaper.
