Volume 120, Issue 58A
Royal Gazette
20 June 2546
Note: The grounds for promulgation of this Act are as follows: At present, the provisions of the Penal Code which relate to the carrying out of the punishments of death and life imprisonment upon those who have committed offences whilst aged under eighteen years are still not consistent with paragraph 5 of article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, which designates that persons aged under eighteen years who have committed offences are not to be sentenced to death, and section 37 a) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child 1989, which designates that no child is to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and neither death nor life imprisonment without possibility of release is to be inflicted for offences committed by persons aged under eighteen years — [both being treaties] to which Thailand has become a party. In addition, the provisions of the Penal Code which relate to the shooting to death as a method of execution are still unsuitable for and inconsistent with the present circumstances, because it is a brutal, cruel, and inhuman method which the State should not employ against offenders. It is appropriate to amend the Penal Code in order that the application of the punishments of death and life imprisonment to those who have committed offences whilst aged under eighteen years would be prohibited, and the punishment of death or life imprisonment would be deemed to have been changed to fifty-year imprisonment in the event that the offences committed by the described persons carry such a punishment, and the method of execution would be changed from shooting to death to lethal injection of toxicants instead. Therefore, it is necessary to enact this Act.
