Punishment in Laos

Last updated

This page is about the Laotian Penal System.

Trials

In 2002, it was reported that the normal function of a defence lawyer in a Laotian court was to argue mitigating circumstances and the extent of the defendant's co-operation before asking for clemency. [1]

Contents

Types of prisoners

In Laos, there are four categories of persons imprisoned: 1) common criminals, 2) political deviants, 3) social deviants and 4) ideological deviants. [2] The LPDR established four different types of detention centers: prisons, re-education centers or seminar camps, rehabilitation camps, and remolding centers. Social deviants or common criminals were considered less threatening to the regime than persons accused of political crimes, who were considered potential counter-revolutionaries. Social deviants were confined in rehabilitation camps. [2]

According to MacAlister Brown and Joseph J. Zasloff, prisons were primarily for common criminals, but political prisoners also were held there for short periods, usually six to twelve months. [2] Ideologically suspect persons were sent to remolding centers. Re-education centers were for those deemed politically risky, usually former RLG officials. [2] Political prisoners usually served three- to five-year terms or longer. As at the prisons, inmates worked hard under rugged conditions and had limited supplies of food. [2] There was little political indoctrination. Bribery in order to secure food and medicine was reported. [2]

Penal system history

[2] In 1986, Brown and Zasloff also reported that prisoners were not tried but were incarcerated simply by administrative fiat. [2] Former inmates said that they were arrested, informed by the security officials that they had been charged with crimes, and then sent off to camps for indeterminate periods. [2] Typically, prisoners were told one day prior to their release to prepare for departure. [2]

The status of the detention centers also is vague. [2] In 1984, Vientiane declared that all reeducation centers had been closed. [2] At that time, Amnesty International estimated 6,000 to 7,000 political prisoners held in these centers. [2] The government acknowledged that there were some former inmates in remote areas but claimed that their confinement was voluntary. [2] In the late 1980s, the government closed some of the reeducation centers and released most of the detainees. [2]

In 1989, Laos took steps to reduce the number of political prisoners, many of whom had been held since 1975. [2] Several hundred detainees, including many high-ranking officials and officers from the former United States-backed RLG and Royal Lao Army, were released from reeducation centers in the northeastern province of Houaphan. [2] Released prisoners reported that hundreds of individuals remained in custody in as many as eight camps, including at least six generals and former high-ranking members of the RLG. [2]

These individuals reportedly performed manual labor such as log cutting, repairing roads, and building irrigation systems. [2] In 1993 Amnesty International reported human rights violations in the continued detention of three "prisoners of conscience" detained since 1975—but not sentenced until 1992—as well as those held under restrictions or, according to international standards, the subjects of unfair trials. [2]

In 1993, reports indicated that some high-ranking officials of the RLG and military remained in state custody. [2] Those accused of hostility to the regime were subject to arrest and confinement for long periods of time. [2] Prison conditions were harsh, and prisoners were routinely denied family visitation and proper medical care. [2]

Prisons

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Re-education through labor</span> System of administrative detention in Mainland China

Re-education through labor, abbreviated laojiao was a system of administrative detention on mainland China. Active from 1957 to 2013, the system was used to detain persons who were accused of committing minor crimes such as petty theft, prostitution, and trafficking of illegal drugs, as well as political dissidents, petitioners, and Falun Gong followers. It was separated from the much larger laogai system of prison labor camps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solitary confinement</span> Strict form of imprisonment

Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to discipline or separate incarcerated individuals who are considered to be security risks to other incarcerated individuals or prison staff, as well as those who violate facility rules or are deemed disruptive. However, it is also used as protective custody on incarcerated individuals whose safety is threatened by others in order to separate them from the general prison population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abu Ghraib prison</span> 1950s–2014 prison in central Iraq

Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison. From the 1970s, the prison was used by Saddam Hussein to hold political prisoners and later the United States to hold Iraqi prisoners. It developed a reputation for torture and extrajudicial killing, and was closed in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prisoner abuse</span> Mistreatment of imprisoned people by authorities

Prisoner abuse is the mistreatment of persons while they are under arrest or incarcerated. Prisoner abuse can include physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, torture, or other acts such as refusal of essential medication, and it can be perpetuated by either fellow inmates or prison faculty.

Re-education camps were prison camps operated by the Communist government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In these camps, the government imprisoned at least 200,000-300,000 former military officers, government workers and supporters of the former government of South Vietnam. Other estimates put the number of inmates who passed through "re-education" as high as 500,000 to 1 million. The high end estimate of 1 million is often attributed to a mistranslated statement by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, and is considered excessive by many scholars. "Re-education" as it was implemented in Vietnam was seen as both a means of revenge and as a sophisticated technique of repression and indoctrination. Torture was common in the re-education camps. Prisoners were incarcerated for periods ranging from weeks to 18 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pul-e-Charkhi prison</span> Maximum security prison located in Kabul, Afghanistan

Pul-e-Charkhi Prison, also known as the Afghan National Detention Facility, is a maximum security prison located next to the Ahmad Shah Baba Mina neighborhood in the eastern part of Kabul, Afghanistan. It has the capacity to house between 5,000 and 14,000 inmates, but as of February 2023 it only has between 2,000 and 2,500 inmates, most of whom have been arrested and convicted within the jurisdiction of Kabul Province. It is considered the country's largest prison.

Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism or rebellion, to control illegal immigration, or to otherwise protect the ruling regime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pitești Prison</span> Former prison in Romania

Pitești Prison was a penal facility in Pitești, Romania, best remembered for the reeducation experiment which was carried out between December 1949 and September 1951, during Communist party rule. The experiment, which was implemented by a group of prisoners under the guidance of the prison administration, was designed as an attempt to violently "reeducate" the mostly young political prisoners, who were primarily supporters of the fascist Iron Guard, as well as Zionist members of the Romanian Jewish community. The Romanian People's Republic adhered to a doctrine of state atheism and the inmates who were held at Pitești Prison included religious believers, such as Christian seminarians. According to writer Romulus Rusan, the experiment's goal was to re-educate prisoners to discard past religious convictions and ideology, and, eventually, to alter their personalities to the point of absolute obedience. Estimates for the total number of people who passed through the experiment range from at least 780 to up to 1,000, to 2,000, to 5,000. Journalist Laurențiu Dologa estimates almost 200 inmates died at Pitești, while historian Mircea Stănescu accounts for 22 deaths during the period, 16 of them with documented participation in the "re-education".

Jon Mohammad Barakzai is an Afghan man who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Mohammed was repatriated in October 2002, together with three elderly men, two Afghanis and a Pakistani. The men described being chained, for hours, during their interrogations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kresty Prison</span> Prison in Russia

Kresty prison, officially Investigative Isolator No. 1 of the Administration of the Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments for the city of Saint Petersburg, was a detention center in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The prison consists of two cross-shaped buildings and the Orthodox Church of St. Alexander Nevsky. The prison has 960 cells and was originally designed for 1,150 detainees.

The Laotian legal system is not determined by a democratic parliament or by legal precedent, but by the arbitrary rule of Laos's single party. The main source of law is legislation. There are two types of legislation: legislation of general application and legislation of specific application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immigration detention in the United States</span>

The United States government holds tens of thousands of immigrants in detention under the control of Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Immigrants are detained for unlawful entry to the United States, when their claims for asylum are received, and in the process of deportation and removal from the country. During Fiscal Year 2018, 396,448 people were booked into ICE custody: 242,778 of whom were detained by CBP and 153,670 by ICE's own enforcement operations. A daily average of 42,188 immigrants were held by ICE in that year. In addition, over twelve thousand immigrant children are housed by facilities under the supervision of the Office of Refugee Resettlement's program for Unaccompanied Alien Children. Prior to referral to these other agencies, the CBP holds immigrants at processing centers; between mid-May and mid-June 2019, it held between 14,000 and 18,000 immigrants.

Prisons in North Korea have conditions that are unsanitary, life-threatening and are comparable to historical concentration camps. A significant number of inmates have died each year, since they are subject to torture and inhumane treatment. Public and secret executions of inmates, even children, especially in cases of attempted escape, are commonplace. Infanticides also often occur. The mortality rate is exceptionally high, because many prisoners die of starvation, illnesses, work accidents, or torture.

Thongsouk Saysangkhi was a political prisoner and a former Vice Minister of Science and Technology in the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, a communist political party that has governed Laos since 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prisoner</span> Person who is deprived of liberty against their will

A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement or captivity in a prison, or forcible restraint. The term usually applies to one serving a sentence in a prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sednaya Prison</span> Syrian military jail, near Damascus

Sednaya Prison, nicknamed the "Human Slaughterhouse" is a military prison near Damascus in Syria operated by the Syrian government. The prison has been used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilian detainees and anti-government rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees have perished in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015."

Re-education in Romanian communist prisons was a series of processes initiated after the establishment of the communist regime at the end of World War II that targeted people who were considered hostile to the Romanian Communist Party, primarily members of the fascist Iron Guard, as well as other political prisoners, both from established prisons and from labor camps. The purpose of the process was the indoctrination of the hostile elements with the Marxist–Leninist ideology, that would lead to the crushing of any active or passive resistance movement. Reeducation was either non-violent – e.g., via communist propaganda – or violent, as it was done at the Pitești and Gherla prisons.

Secret prisons of SBU are secret detention facilities operated by Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Eastern Ukraine to incarcerate Russian-backed separatists.

References

  1. ↑ "On Their Honour (Transcript)". Australian Story . Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 18 March 2002. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Auclair, Nicholas C. (1995). "Detention Centers". In Savada, Andrea Matles (ed.). Laos: a country study (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. pp. 290–292. ISBN   0-8444-0832-8. OCLC   32394600. PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  3. ↑ Harman, Harriet (May 2009). "Fighting for a fair trial" . Retrieved 2009-05-05.
  4. ↑ "Lawyer to visit pregnant prisoner". BBC News. 2009-05-04. Retrieved 2009-05-05.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.