A Thai judge shot himself in a courtroom after delivering a rare speech railing against the country’s justice system.<\/p>\n
Kanakorn Pianchana worked at the Yala court in the insurgency-hit south of Thailand.<\/p>\n
After acquitting the five Musllim men of murder and firearms offences, he addressed the court with an impassioned speech that he broadcast live on Facebook.<\/p>\n
“You need clear and credible evidence to punish someone. So if you’re not sure, don’t punish them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m not saying that the five defendants didn’t commit the crimes, they might have done so,” he added.<\/p>\n
Further, he posted on Facebook “[If] I cannot keep my oath of office, I’d rather die than live without honour.”<\/p>\n
He then recited a legal oath, pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the chest.<\/p>\n
But he was rushed to hospital where he is reported to be in a stable condition and is recovering from\u00a0 injuries.<\/p>\n
A statement believed to have been written by the judge before giving his ruling suggests that his suicide attempt could have been related to alleged interference in the case.<\/p>\n
Criticism of the judicial system by judges is extremely rare in Thailand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Thai judge shot himself in a courtroom after delivering a rare speech railing against the country’s justice system. Kanakorn Pianchana worked at the Yala court in the insurgency-hit south of Thailand. After acquitting the five Musllim men of murder and firearms offences, he addressed the court with an impassioned speech that he broadcast live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1461,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10442,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10440\/revisions\/10442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}