The Senate's main amendment to the so-called "amnesty bill" -- excluding Section 112 offences, including cases involving juveniles -- raises some solid questions: Have political conflicts really come to an end? And is Thailand really heading towards reconciliation?
The legislation, titled the Peaceful Society Promotion Bill, is the latest attempt by parliamentarians to secure pardons for political prisoners. The House of Representatives approved the Senate's amendments to the bill on Wednesday, and the law now inches towards reality.
In principle, around 6,000 political inmates -- people in legal trouble over politically motivated activities, most of them street protests dating back to the mid-2000s, along with those who opposed the military regime -- are to be set free once the law is promulgated, which is expected soon.
However, the amnesty law does not cover three categories of offence: those under Section 112, corruption and serious violent crimes causing death or severe injury.
Yet the compromise reached on the long-awaited bill -- first drafted after the now-dissolved Future Forward Party's breakthrough in the 2019 election -- is an upset, particularly where young offenders in lese majeste cases are concerned.
Several observers see that, with such an exclusion, the legislation may not fully address the country's political divisions. In other words, the bill can hardly bring genuine reconciliation to the country.
The lese majeste law, or Section 112 of the Criminal Code, has been the tough part of the amnesty bill from the beginning.
To get the law passed, those in the progressive camp saw to it that the bill provided a mechanism, placed under Section 11, to consider relief for juveniles prosecuted under the lese majeste law.
With such a mechanism, at least juvenile offenders -- those under 18 when they pushed for reform of the monarchy, an act considered a breach of Section 112 -- might have had a second chance through a rehabilitation process. But the Senate scrapped it during its June 30 session with an overwhelming vote. Bhumjaithai (BJT) and Pheu Thai endorsed the Section 112 exclusion even though it contradicts the idea of reconciliation, and the bill was approved this week by 306 votes to 104.
According to iLaw, a non-profit organisation advocating democratic rights, at least 291 people have been prosecuted in more than 300 lese majeste cases since 2020. Among them, more than a dozen are juveniles.
Looking back, in April 1980 Thailand pardoned people of different political ideologies: the landmark 66/2523 policy issued by the Prem Tinsulanonda government paved the way for those who had joined the now-defunct Communist Party to return to society.
The main concept of the policy was to end political division by bringing back those of a different political ideology from the jungle. With such a concept, the state simply chose to embrace reconciliation so that the country could move forward. A number of those pardoned under the policy are now prominent academics and politicians.
Such an idea was possible in the Prem Tinsulanonda era, but not now, since the Senate, as well as BJT, known for its far-right leanings, hold to a tough stance. They exclude those seeking monarchical reform from reconciliation, regarding them as "enemies of the state" regardless of their young age.
They refuse to give it a second thought, even though Section 11 of the amnesty bill would not have applied automatically to every young offender. Instead, each offender would have had to go through the court again to ensure that he or she deserved amnesty.
It is unfortunate that they have no intention of learning from the key policy that enabled the country to transcend political conflict, or from the late Gen Prem, who treasured reconciliation and peace so that society could return to normalcy.
This can be considered a double standard of justice. People who committed much more serious crimes -- some of which caused damage to the country -- could be granted amnesty, but young people who might have lacked maturity at the time of their offence will not have a chance to start anew. Such discrimination means conflicts will run deep.
If the law really aims to restore peace, the state has no choice but to give the young offenders an opportunity to enter the rehabilitation process for the sake of reconciliation.
On top of that, while it is widely believed that no major culprits will be held accountable for major crimes -- such as the notorious exam fraud and the Senate poll that compromised the checks and balances of the democratic system -- the young activists with aspirations for reform and progress are just left out in the cold. What an irony.
Chairith Yonpiam is assistant news editor, Bangkok Post.
