Prayut uses Section 44 to fight brawls

Prayut uses Section 44 to fight brawls

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha decreed with his Section 44 powers that students like these caught brawling last November will suffer twice the cash and detention penalties - and their parents will have to put up money to keep them in school. (Bangkok Post file photo)
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha decreed with his Section 44 powers that students like these caught brawling last November will suffer twice the cash and detention penalties - and their parents will have to put up money to keep them in school. (Bangkok Post file photo)

Student violence between rival schools has become the latest target for Prayut Chan-o-cha as the prime minister decided on Tuesday to exercise his special authority to try to clamp it down.

The National Council for Peace and Order chairman signed an order by the special authority granted him under the interim charter to prevent future brawls. The order took effect after it was published in the Royal Gazette on Tuesday.

It allowed authorities to detain students planning to fight their rival schools for no more than six hours before sending them to police, teachers or their parents.

The parents will then be held accountable for future brawls as they will be required to put up some money with authorities as a guarantee for no more than two years. If their children commit violence again during the period, the money will be seized and sent to the Child Protection Fund.

Under the new rules, students involved in a brawl leading to injuries will be put in jail for no more than six months and fined 60,000 baht, or both. The jail term will double and a fine will increase to 100,000 baht if the brawl is fatal.

Schools and police have tried to prevent brawls but violence among rival schools has showed no signs of abating.

At least four major brawls took place this year, including the one on June 8, when two students of Pathumthani Technological College were seriously injured after they were shot and stabbed by another group of vocational students believed to be from another college.

The Metropolitan Police Bureau has come up with an idea to launch a relationship-building project for vocational school students in a bid to forge unity and reduce violence among them.

The Education Ministry has mooted another plan to put them in a training camp to improve their behaviours.

But Gen Prayut said in the order that all these measures did not work. The new rules were necessary as "all legal measures cannot effectively prevent and resolve brawls," the order read.

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