Letters from prison

Clipped from a Reuters report

In Foreign Affairs, Andrew J. Nathan has a short review of Arnon Nampa’s Letters From Prison, volumes 1 and 2, which have been translated by The Article 112 Project and published by Justice in Translation:

The Thai lèse majesté law known as Article 112 has been applied with escalating severity in response to the growing resistance to the country’s ten-year-old military regime. The lawyer and human rights activist Arnon Nampa is serving two consecutive four-year terms for speech acts that ostensibly fall afoul of the law. With more cases against him still pending, he writes to his children, “Daddy’s . . . punishment might be imprisonment of more than 80 years.” Nonetheless, he tells them, “What Daddy is going through now is the process of being punished and accepting the punishment, but not accepting guilt.” On the contrary, “Going to prison this time is full of honor because it is part of the struggle for rights, freedom, and democracy.” He is terrified to think that his young son might not remember him. But at least, he hopes, his letters will help his two children learn about their father and understand why they cannot all be together. Meanwhile, his happiest moments are when he is asleep, dreaming of driving his daughter to school or bathing his son. The missives join a venerable tradition of prison letters that seek to influence events beyond the confining walls through their eloquence and humanity.

To assist readers in getting copies of these two volumes, we have uploaded them to PPT.