Dusadee says he’ll fight for the people
People who have been treated unfairly often turn to the secretary of justice, writes King-oua Laohong
To those fighting for justice in criminal cases, Dusadee Arayawuth is a symbol of justice. He is helping victims of loan sharks and thugs. He has also helped innocent suspects in a probe into the alleged destruction of natural resources.
To his colleagues at the ministry, deputy permanent secretary for justice Pol Col Dusadee is known as “Brother Tong” — he has only recently made the ministry known as an organisation where the underprivileged and people unfairly treated by state officials can turn to for help.
Sometimes, the ministry’s handling of complaints lodged by these people has resulted in conflicts between the ministry and police, i ncluding t wo recent investigations.
In one case, the ministry has been at odds with the Royal Thai Police after the ministry attempted to help Jomsap Saenmuangkhot, a former Sakon Nakhon female teacher, who is seeking a retrial of the 2005 hit-and-run killing case in which she was sentenced to three years and two months in prison by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Jomsap was released following a royal pardon in April 2015. She pursued a wrongful conviction case with the Justice Ministry, which eventually agreed to seek a retrial. The Nakhon Phanom provincial court has completed a three-day hearing of witnesses and is in the process of inspecting witnesses’ statements and evidence submitted before it decides on Jomsap’s petition for a retrial of the 2005 case.
Another case that has recently earned the ministry an even better reputation among low-income people is the crackdown on what is believed to be the country’s biggest loan shark network.
As a result, assets worth at least 400 million baht from Wichai Pangngam, the 47-year-old alleged leader of the network, have been seized. The crackdown was led by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI).
Since 2013, the ministry’s centre for helping people encountering injustice in criminal cases has received 147 complaints ranging from an alleged wrongful conviction in a drug case to a murder saga.
Despite the existence of this centre, one common sight every Monday morning in front of Pol Col Dusadee’s office is large numbers of people holding documents and waiting to file their petitions directly to him. They know they have to submit their petition to the centre but they simply feel more confident in Pol Col Dusadee than in the organisation.
“Most of them are poor, unable to gain access to assistance with their legal battles. They have enough on their plates, so simply listening to their complaints can bring a great deal of relief to their pain,” Pol Col Dusadee said.
“Whether we will be able to help them or not depends on the evidence that will be processed in accordance with the legal process and judicial procedure.
However, if in the end we cannot help them, we have take time to explain it to them.”
Most of the people facing injustice are normally those who are poor and with no or very limited knowledge about the law, he said, adding some of them don’t even know what the statute of limitations is and what to begin with in fighting for justice.
“All they know is they have the dignity of being a human and they have to seek justice,” he said.
Pol Col Dusadee’s path to his current ministerial executive job began when he started out as a police officer working at Mae Ping police station in the northern province of Chiang Mai where his main responsibility was drug suppression in the North.
Despite his clean work record, he had not really been successful when it came to career advancement. He blamed that on the regular unfair treatment he had encountered in reshuffle after reshuffle which eventually made him “call it quits”.
He decided to switch to a new job at the DSI where he was seen by some critics as being a civil servant with a lot of connections with politicians in power backing him at work.
But he insisted he isn’t a type of person who likes to approach people with power or politicians and please them for favours in return.
On the other hand, he said, he disliked bosses who only like to flex their muscles through demanding orders and he won’t tolerate such a behaviour unless such an order is given for the sake of protecting the public interest.
He has never bowed to any self-serving or nepotism type of orders.
“King Rama IX has said it’s the duty of all civil servants to enable justice and ensure justice for all members of the public. So, no matter where I have been transferred to, I can still maintain my duty,” he said.
There was a time when he was transferred to be a ministerial general inspector, a position seen as being an inactive post given as a punishment.
He took that opportunity to do the
inspection job and help people complaining about them being affected by state officials allegedly failing to do their duties.
Pol Col Dusadee is now an executive directing the ministry’s policy on enabling justice and oversees the DSI and the Central Institute of Forensic Science (CIFS).
According to his observation, he said, each agency under the Justice Ministry still works separately and they rarely communicate with one another, except in cases when they are formally ordered to do so.
In the Jomsap case, for instance, he had to order the DSI and the CIFS to work more closely together to obtain evidence to assist the former teacher in her attempt to petition for a retrial of the hit-and-run case.
“Before they are able to ensure justice for anyone, these organisations have to shift from a mindset in which they always see themselves as being most important and their organisations as having the most dignity to realising that if those people weren’t really suffering, they wouldn’t come to us,” he said.
With a background in police
investigation and drug suppression, Pol Col Dusadee has in hand both a useful database of information and a network of former colleagues, which always help him get a broader and clearer view on every single case he handles.
He knows too well that many police investigators tend to rush in to wrap up cases they are handling when suspects are caught and can’t be bothered asking themselves an important question — are the detained suspects the real culprits?
This may happen more often in highprofile cases as police are under a lot of pressure to get the investigation done as soon as possible, he said. And if they get the wrong suspects and wrong evidence, the court can rarely be blamed for any wrongful conviction as it has to judge every case based on the prosecution’s conclusion of the police file, he said.
“When I was a police investigator, I was proud of myself anytime I killed one in a gun battle ... and now that my work deals with ensuring justice for the people, I’m even more proud of myself if I can help,” he said.
When I was a police investigator, I was proud of myself anytime I arrested a suspect or killed one in a gun battle.