Original Story July 2004 HILLTRIBE POPULATION: 1.7% JAIL POPULATION: 25%
A petition has been sent to His Majesty the King on behalf of the massive proportion of prisoners in Thailand belonging to hilltribes. “Correctional institutions in Thailand hold disproportionately large numbers of hilltribe people. Many face the death penalty or life in prison. Not a few suffer from gross miscarriages of justice against which they are unable to defend themselves due to their disadvantages of general poverty, cultural differences and social discrimination” reads the introduction. Sent to His Majesty on June 15th, the petition says that the desperation of poverty often drives hilltribe people into crimes including drugs and prostitution. They have very little defence, very few family visits to poverty and distance, must somehow buy basic necessities including soap, clothes and medicines, work with basic pay of 10b per month and suffer from physical abuse and chronic overcrowding. The petition also calls for the withdrawal of the death penalty, which it claims is ineffective as a deterrent. 25% in Chiangmai Information collated by British journalist Paul Hunt during 4 years of prison visiting in Thailand shows that around 25% of the 4,066 men in Chiangmai’s new central prison at Mae Rim are hilltribe, while 206 of the 2,000-plus women prisoners in the old jail in the city centre are hilltribe, mostly Lahu. Overcrowding is the main complaint at the 100 year old jail, formerly a Prince’s palace, and the director told Hunt that 50% of the income needed to run it had to come from their own resources, such as making clothing and running a massage school. A 30 year old Akha woman from Burma joined the list of inmates who die in prison last month. Sree Pen Khruea was jailed for life in Mae Sai in 1998 for drug trafficking and her husband died of AIDS there the following year. Sree went into prison hospital after her transfer to Bangkok where most life sentences are served. Hunt estimates that between 3,000 and 10,000 hilltribe people are among Thailand’s total prison population of over 200,000. See comment in ‘My Chiangmai’.
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