Thailand Law Journal 2010 Spring Issue 1 Volume 13

B. Thongbai Thongbao--The People's Lawyer

Thongbai Thongbao, a first generation cause lawyer, was born in 1926 to a family of poor rice farmers in Ubon Rachiatari (Thailand's poorest region located in the northeast) and raised by his five siblings. During his long career, he has become Thailand's best known human rights lawyer. He looks back to humble origins to explain his mission to fight on behalf of the poor and oppressed. Thongbai knew little about law and had never met a lawyer, but he was encouraged to choose law by a young law graduate from Thammasat who taught in his high school and put into practice the public service values he had learned at the university. The young teacher told him, "Even poor people like you can study in Bangkok. You can work to put yourself through school." With some help from his family, and by working and living like a pauper, Thongbai graduated from Thammasat in 1951 with a degree in law.

The Northeast is very poor and exploited by many people .... [W]ith my own eye, I have seen they have taken people's real estate, something like that. So I think if I study law I think I can do something good for the people .... I thought if I am a lawyer I can fight the police; I can fight many people. Because to be a lawyer, as a people's lawyer I can fight them.

Thongbai did not learn how to help poor people in law school, and he could not become a lawyer until he had served as an apprentice to a licensed lawyer. When he found an apprenticeship there was nothing for him to do, and he earned no money. He was forced to live in a Buddhist temple, which charged nothing. He worked as a reporter to support himself. Journalism, he said, was a good way to criticize the government and earn a living at the same time.

Work as a reporter led to his first arrest, not for his reporting, but because one of his friends was arrested under the anti-communist law for joining a peace movement. Thongbai had not participated in the peace movement and was released after three days. He then attempted to defend his friend in court but failed miserably, he says, and his friend was given a long jail term.

For the next seven years he worked primarily as a reporter. In 1958, Thongbai joined a group of journalists touring China. During his absence from Thailand, a coup brought to power a brutal and virulently anti-communist general. Thongbai was arrested when he returned from China, and spent the next eight years in jail fighting his own case and those of other prisoners. [FN107]
I enjoyed being in jail .... [A]s a political prisoner I could go on practicing law. I had applied for my license--I had it in 1958. In jail I was teaching law to the prisoners. They are farmers. Even if they graduated from university they knew nothing about the law.

Thongbai not only defended his fellow prisoners in court, he organized them to fight to improve the prison's abominable conditions by appealing to families for support, convincing prison officials to allow the prisoners to cultivate prison grounds so they could grow food and supplement their inadequate diet, organizing recreational activities, and forming a legal defense committee with seven other imprisoned lawyers. [FN108]

In 1960, while in jail, he filed a suit on behalf of all of the prisoners for false arrest under Thai law and also under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Three years later a civilian court ruled in the prisoners' favor under Thai law. All of the prisoners were released except Thongbai and two others who were charged with new offenses under the Anti-communist Act and brought before a military tribunal. Thongbai again brought a false arrest claim, initiating a four-year stalemate. When an acquittal seemed likely, following a regime change, the government offered to drop all charges against him and many similarly situated inmates if, in return, he dropped his suit for false arrest. If his freedom alone had been at stake, Thongbai would have continued the legal fight, but he could not refuse an offer which would benefit so many others.

Thongbai entered prison as a journalist and part-time lawyer, but he left with a mission to practice human rights law and with a reputation that brought him political, labor, and human rights cases. Over the next thirty years, many of the most celebrated cases involving political prisoners, social movement leaders, and outspoken critics of government found their way to him, enhancing his reputation.

Eventually he set up a small office in a poor section of Thon Buri (across the Chao Phraya River from Bangkok). He invited younger lawyers to join him as volunteer apprentices, and eventually the number grew to about twenty. He has worked with many contemporaries and younger lawyers, but few could sustain his level of commitment to practicing on behalf of the poor who often could pay very little for their services.

You should know that the Thai people are very kind people. They give me some money .... But the people who have no money ... when they come to see me they bring durian, when they come from the Northeast they come with a bag of rice or carrots .... So, I am happy. Maybe only in Thailand you can do that ... to live like that ... because they are Buddhist. They tell me "Thongbai if you practice law in the United States you will become a millionaire." But I did not want to do that. No lawyer practices like me at the time, or now. I think, how can I live like that? But I can live very easy at that time. We have rice to eat. We have everything. If you could see my house, it is a small room. One hundred fifty baht per month--five dollars at that time. Because I know nothing about the safety of the lawyer at that time.

Even in recent times, some Thai lawyers representing movements which officials deem threatening have been arrested, attacked, and even assassinated. But Thongbai has never been concerned about his safety as a defender of political prisoners.
I feel I did good things. People don't want to kill me. Even after all that, the military and the police were not against me. Because they recognize I do good things. I am for justice. Even after October 1976, people leave for the jungle. But I stay [in Bangkok] all the time. And I fight for the communists. I fight for the reporters [charged with] lèse-majesté. [FN109] I fight for the farmer and I fight for the communist.

Thongbai has at times stood carefully apart from politics. He did not join supporters of the student uprising in 1973, although he supported the opening for democracy in principle. "I did not join the uprising. So that is why I can stay [out of the jungle]. What can I do? That is why the police and high ranking military officer trust me .... I am free."

He led a team of lawyers who defended students that were arrested and charged with crimes during the reimposition of military rule in 1976, negotiating a spectacular retreat by the government. Having brought the case to near-victory, he forced the prime minister to refer the prisoners' fate to the Parliament which granted a broad amnesty to all who had fled to the jungles to avoid arrest and prosecution after 1976. [FN110]

After the October activists returned from the jungle, some were charged with offenses under the Anti-communist Act for their subsequent activities. Thongbai now had many cases in military court where he enjoyed practicing because the rules of evidence were more relaxed. After concern about communism declined, Thongbai continued to handle high profile cases for outspoken critics of government and made several trips abroad to defend the rights of ordinary Thai facing harsh criminal justice in other countries. [FN111]

Thongbai's defense of political prisoners made him famous, but the small law firm he maintained for most of his career was typical of the handful of social justice lawyers whose careers began near mid-century and took shape under repressive governments. The untold story of the social cause lawyers of his time, whether they represented poor people or opposed Thailand's first military dictatorships in court, is all the more interesting because of the absence of a colonial bar (as in Malaysia), a common law adversarial system (as in South Africa), or leadership by the judiciary (as in India). Of the 1700 lawyers reported in the 1960 census, only a handful were educated in Europe, and Thongbai was not one of them. Even without a tradition of professional independence or rule of law, Thai lawyers may nevertheless have been influenced indirectly by Western professional ideals or more directly by sources within Thai culture--or both. However, Thongbai's statements contrasting his law practice and the practices of New York lawyers, together with repeated mention of the importance of Buddhism in maintaining relationships with clients, complicate any such inference. Further, in 1984, he expressed a characteristic Thai rejection of mimicry of foreign social mores when he replied to a proselytizing North Korean communist at a conference.

I am a Buddhist and the Lord Buddha teaches us to make decisions on our own, from our own study of the situation, and not to decide by the word of others, even if they are old and scholarly. I agree that your way may be good for you, but for Thailand it is different. We have a different way.

Thongbai's professional mission could have many sources, including belief in Pridi's values of constitutional and public service or emulation of the lawyers in Western societies, but Thongbai's reference to Buddhism in that reply and in referring to his relationship with poor clients of his law practice is perhaps more suggestive. Buddhism is a core element of Thai identity. Thai Buddhism places a unique burden of moral leadership on Thai rulers, exemplified by their beloved king. Conversely, scholars have suggested that repugnance for immoral or corrupt leaders, more than desire for greater rule of law or participation, underlies the mass participation in the uprisings that have overthrown dictators (as well as the support for military coups which have served the same purpose). [FN112] Thongbai's idealism and particularly strong belief in resisting unjust, oppressive rulers, could have multiple sources, including his education at Thammasat (which inculcated moral leadership as well as rule of law), Buddhism, and perhaps least plausibly, emulation of Western professional independence.

After the October 1973 student uprising, Thongbai played an increasingly important role by training younger lawyers and defending victims of government abuse. The student uprising toppled the American-backed dictatorship, opening Thailand to popular dissent, encouraging social movements, and bringing back the possibility of constitutionalism--a government committed to basic principles of conduct. The political opening influenced the aspirations of new law graduates and created opportunities for them.

[FN107]. He won his case before a military court in 1966, but only after the death of the dictator and a public discrediting of his regime. 1984 Ramon Magasaysay Award For Public Service: Biography of Thongbai Thongpao, http:// www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyThongpaoTho.htm, (last visited Mar. 1, 2009) [hereinafter Thongbai Biography].

[FN108]. See id. In 1975, two years after a student-led uprising toppled the dictatorship, he published a best-selling account written during his Lad Praow prison years entitled Lad Praow Communists. Id.; see also REYNOLDS, supra note 80, at 36.

[FN109]. Lèse-majesté is a crime defined as affronting the dignity of the monarchy. The critical element is an affront to the monarchy, usually through speech, rather than the veracity of the representation. The crime has long since ceased to be meaningful in Europe, but continues to play a role in Thai politics. See David Streckfuss, Kings in the Age of Nations: The Paradox of Lèse-Majesté As Political Crime in Thailand, 37 Comp. Stud. Soc'y & Hist. 445 (1995).

[FN110]. See Thongbao Biography, supra note 107.

[FN111]. Id. He received the prestigious Ramon Magasaysay Award for Public Service in 1984. Id.

[FN112]. See, e.g., Reynolds, supra note 59, at 440-44.

Globalization, investing in law, and the careers of lawyers for social Causes: taking on rights in Thailand. Originally appeared in Volume 53 of the New York Law School Law Review (2009) .