The 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service

Safeguarding human rights poses one of the key tests for every country. The state must insure its survival against threats from right and left, from political opportunists and even terrorists. Yet the rationale for governments is first and always to protect the rights and well-being of their citizens.

When codified legal systems and courts emerged they curbed the whims of rulers and sought to provide legal equality and justice for all. However those who could afford to pay for the services of able lawyers continued to enjoy an advantage. Their wealth and status often influenced the courts before which they appeared. Yearning of the poor for prompt administration of legal justice is universal, but attorneys who have responded faithfully to this need constitute only a small, but special, fraternity.

THONGBAI THONGPAO learned the hard way that life often is unfair. Born 58 years ago into the family of a poor farmer in northeastern Thailand, he was educated through primary school in a temple. He was orphaned by age nine and worked for two years in the family rice fields before attending secondary school. Living in a Bangkok temple, working at various jobs, and with modest help from his siblings, he completed Suan Kularb College and graduated in law from Thammasat University in 1951. For the next seven years he worked as a reporter and political commentator for several Thai newspapers.

THONGBAI found his mission when his own rights were ground down by the wheels of authority. In 1958 he and a group of writers and journalists visited the People's Republic of China,with which Thailand had no diplomatic relations. Upon their return Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who had seized power in a coup, ordered the travelers arrested as communist suspects. Detained without trial for eight years in Laad Yao prison, THONGBAI finally was acquitted by a military court in mid-1966 after Sarit had been posthumously discredited.

During those prison years, as he wrote a book of the experience of his group, he determined to become the legal champion of the oppressed. Of the many, often obsolete, laws he has found on the books that can be employed to abuse the underprivileged, he has taken particular issue with those denying the right of the poor to remain on land they occupy. His other cases have ranged from defending men and women accused of crimes they had not committed but who could afford neither bail nor legal help, to activists arrested on false charges of ties to the Communist Party of Thailand.

THONGBAI lives simply above his office, and he and his seven young volunteer lawyers sometimes use their modest fees to pay expenses for the accused they defend. Taking cases other lawyers shun, he has successfully defended against libel a newspaper whose reporters exposed the corruption of the Lord Mayor of Bangkok in the purchase of several hundred acres of land for a housing project. After the October 1976 coup a committee of lawyers joined him in securing the release of 18 students whom they proved were wrongly arrested. Even Thais abroad have elicited his concern, including four workers in Kuwait who were sentenced to death for allegedly robbing and murdering a moneychanger. He is now challenging Thailand's proposed new Press Bill on grounds that it accords undue power to the director of police.

Despite his own struggles and his uphill battles for the rights of the needy, THONGBAI remains a warm, gregarious individual, devoted to his wife who works as a nurse, and their three children. In the finest tradition of the legal profession he maintains a strict care for accuracy and impartiality that compels respect even from many who may appear against him in court.

In electing THONGBAI THONGPAO to receive the 1984 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his effective and fair use of his legal skills and pen to defend those who have "less in life and thus need more in law."