Graphic design by zerotwostudio
In the past several years, whenever we announced a donation drive for the Ratsadonprasong Fund, we would begin with the headline khaw raeng ratsadon, calling people to pitch in. And that was really how we made it through crisis after crisis: with what people pitched in.
Last year, with the 2022 Report of the Ratsadonprasong Fund, Part 5: Donation Drives, we presented the uplifting story of crowdfunding where people helped keep the Fund afloat in four critical moments in 2022.
This year, we would like to present the underside of that story: how all our donation drives were in fact a maze. We show this through our four drives in a two-week period in March 2023, March being a festival of judgment days in the Thai judicial calendar.
First, a truth we must acknowledge: crowdfunding campaigns may very well signify the greatness of people power, but they come at the literal expense of people’s power to make a living. Operating under the inconsistency of bail prices and the substandard performance of legal professionals and officials of every level, our donation drives ended up reinforcing legal practitioners’ culture of obliviousness to the principle of equality. The more reliably successful a donation drive for affording people’s freedom and thus full access to the right to fight their case, the more entrenched the ugly truth of backward societies: prison is (thus) for the poor.
Operations behind the scenes from the marathon of drives and court dates in March 2023 are depicted in the slides “Moving Target” and “Drive in Circles.” Frantically the funds were sourced from the past (bail due to be returned from courts) to top up the present (current balance plus the amount crowdfunded) while the future was also up for extraction (money fronted by family and friends). One week after surviving the drive-athon, the Fund issued a communiqué demanding that “all parties and all segments professionally related to the judicial process” abide strictly by standard practice to help protect Thai people’s legal safeguards, and not take donations/bail money for granted or treat it as a sure bet. An excerpt from the communiqué is presented in the last slide “Demands.”
The phrasing “which is a credible guarantee” should no longer be used as a reason for requesting bail at a strategically overinflated price. And the question of whether there is “reason to change the order” should not be based on the weight of money; it should be based on the power of reason which one side has the clue to exercise and the other side has the clue to judge on the basis of facts and legal principles in a methodical and accountable manner. The setting of bail rates, meanwhile, should stick to the courts’ pre-established guidelines or “yitok”—as a bare minimum of a reliable standard until there is a much-needed overhaul.
The journey of the Ratsadonprasong Fund has been a lonely one in the company of many people. Looking back to our beginnings post-coup when civilians were tried at military courts that would accept bail in cash only and at military rates, then to our present at civilian courts that proclaim modern judicial principles whilst to keep fulfilling our obligations we have had to find a legal home for the Fund in the form of a foundation, we see a number of hard lessons. We cannot turn back time to undo the damage, but the bare minimum could be to debrief and conclude, via this annual report, that hopefully this was the last drive in circles in the maze of the law and its practitioners.
Stay tuned for the next installment, “Bailors in the Maze.”
Previously: