Amnesty International urged Thailand to abolish the...

Amnesty International urged Thailand to abolish the death penalty and said its October 19, 2003 switch to execution by lethal injection instead of firing squad did not change the "inhumanity" of the penalty. "Whether people are shot or injected with chemicals, execution is still a judicial killing and a violation of the right to life," the rights group said in a statement. Amnesty said that with 1,000 men and women under sentence of death and 68 facing imminent execution after exhausting all legal appeals, Thailand had more people on death row than at any point in its history. "On the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty, Amnesty International calls on the Thai authorities... to impose a moratorium on executions and abolish the death penalty." Thailand has said the change to lethal injection was due to several reasons including a concern for human rights and to avoid "accidents" when prisoners did not die immediately. Amnesty said that while lethal injection was often seen as more humane, it did not necessarily deliver the swift and painless death claimed by its proponents. "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," it said. And it said there was no evidence to suggest that the death penalty had any unique deterrent effect on crime rates. Since 1935, 319 prisoners including three women were executed by firing squad in Thailand.