Who gets an amnesty?
One of the things which makes forming a judgement on the wisdom and impact of the various amnesty bills before parliament is the absence of information on the numbers and categories of offenders to be forgiven. One cause of resistance is that we have no idea how big an exception to the rule of law we are making or how many people qualify.
The state of emergency covers the position of state officials, so long as they operated within its provisions. The DSI has stated no charges will be brought against soldiers which suggests that limits of authority were not exceeded and thus no further amnesty is needed.
Leaving aside the issue of Abhisit, Suthep and Thaksin, this means the prime focus of the amnesty bills is civilian offenders.
The bills seek to give special treatment to civilian protesters and this is the area where information should be provided.
The government should publish a simple analysis of the numbers of civilian offenders split by category of offence, ranging from minor to serious. It should be possible to group like offences into a small number of categories to give a broad but informative picture of who will benefit and the types of offences they committed.
For example, the categories might be: Protest leaders, causing death or serious injury, carrying or use of offensive weapons, arson or serious damage to property, minor non-violent public order offences, breach of the state of emergency only.
Which box each offender falls into should be determined by the most serious offence for which they are charged. It would be best if separate tables were provided for the yellow and red shirt protests, although understandable why this might not be attractive. Thus aggregate numbers across both incidents would be acceptable.
With this in hand the government can communicate to let Thais understand how big an exception to the rule of law we are making with these amnesty bills and just what offences we are allowing to go unpunished in the name of political action.
P JACKSON
Chon Buri