Injection as a way of death

Thailand is adopting a new method of killing the condemned. Lethal injection is replacing being shot by a single rifleman. The idea is that this method is more humane, although not everybody accepts this.

RICHARD S. EHRLICH
BANGKOK, Thailand

Thailand will soon kill people legally by pumping chemicals into their veins instead of shooting them, when Bangkok switches later this month to lethal injection, a change condemned by Amnesty International.

"A growing number of legal and medical experts in the United States have also recently expressed concern that the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injections may leave the condemned prisoner conscious, paralysed, suffocating and in intense pain before death," Amnesty International said on Thursday in a statement to mark World Day Against the Death Penalty.

"The number of people on death row in Thailand has reportedly nearly tripled in the last two years, and the majority of those recently sentenced have been convicted for drug offences. Scores of people may imminently face execution, and, with nearly 1,000 men and women under sentence of death, Amnesty International believes that Thailand has more people on death row than at any point in the country's history."

"Confessions are frequently used as evidence in capital trials, and defendants have maintained in court that police used force to make them confess. We urge the Thai government to stop executions and to fight crime without taking lives," the London-based human rights group said.

Up until 1932, Thai executioners forced condemned people to sit on the ground, bare chested, with legs extended and arms tied behind their backs to a thick bamboo pole.

According to hand drawn illustrations, an assistant held the victims' legs at the ankles while the executioner leaped into the air and swung a long sword, chopping off the person's head.

If sliced correctly, the head reportedly rolled into a deep hole dug next to the prisoner.

Royalty and other high society personalities did not suffer beheading because they were too respectable to die in a mess of blood, so instead they would be beaten to death with a big piece of sweet smelling wood.

In 1932, Thailand upgraded its system by roping or chaining common convicts to a post.

A lone rifleman would then shoot a burst of a dozen or so bullets across a room into the standing victim from behind.

By shooting a blindfolded person from behind, it was thought that the dead person's departing spirit could not see the executioner, who would then be safe from a possibly revengeful ghost.

Thai firing squads have reportedly shot dead about 320 people, including at least three women, during the past 70 years.

They executed their last victim, a man convicted of murder, in December.

On Oct 19, Bangkok will again alter its method of meting out death and activate lethal injection, which pumps chemicals into a person -- who is strapped prone on a hospital stretcher -- until they die.

Death follows three staggered shots: a general anaesthetic such as sodium pentothal, then a "paralysing agent" or pancuronium bromide, and finally a heart-stopper such as potassium chloride, a colourless crystalline salt.

Thai officials recently showed journalists the new injection system by pretending to kill a volunteer at Bangkok's notorious Bang Kwang Maximum Security Prison.

The intravenous injections, in a white room under fluorescent light, will reportedly work through a ruse of three buttons pushed simultaneously by three prison staff, so they will not know which single button actually releases the chemicals.

The subterfuge was designed to lessen the staff's feelings of guilt or fear.

The Thai government defended its use of the death penalty when it told Amnesty International last year that most Thais favour the punishment as a frightening "deterrent" that protects society from criminals.

Throughout the world, however, opponents argue that the death penalty does not deter crime and occasionally innocent people are killed due to imperfections in judicial systems.

"This is a risk that Thailand should not be prepared to take," Amnesty said.

A government crackdown on methamphetamines and other illegal drugs meanwhile has resulted in the mysterious killing of more than 2,200 people nationwide this year -- in city streets and rural areas -- which officials insist are drug dealers killing other drug dealers.

Thai and foreign human rights activists however warned that the high death rate was extremely unusual and could be "extra-judicial killings" by security forces because most cases were never fully investigated.

After the United States and other countries cited Thailand over the drug war's skyrocketing death toll, officials stopped counting the corpses and updating the total publicly.

"The death sentence is mandatory in Thailand for premeditated murder, the killing of an official on government business, regicide and the production and importation of heroin," Amnesty said.

"It is discretionary for a number of offences including robbery, rape, kidnapping, arson and bombing, insurrection, treason and espionage, and possession of more than 100 grammes of heroin or amphetamines, and aircraft hijacking."

Starting in 1977, several US states have embraced lethal injections.

Chemical contraptions are also available for governments to legally kill people in China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Guatemala.

Electrocution, shooting, hanging, gassing, stoning and beheading remain popular options elsewhere.

* Richard S. Ehrlich is a former UPI correspondent who has reported from Asia for the past 25 years.