Paris, 13 September 2024. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1933 as Daniel Breen, he changed his name to Danthong Breen upon receiving Thai citizenship in 1992.
Danthong had a scientific background, having obtained a bachelor’s degree in physics from the National University of Ireland and a PhD in physics from the University of Oxford, UK. He served in various academic and managerial roles at universities in Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. He moved to Singapore in early 1970 and then relocated to Thailand from 1973.
Danthong was well known in international human rights circles for his passionate and tireless work for the abolition of the death penalty, actively participating in several editions of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty.
For several decades, Danthong led UCL’s work to seek an improvement in prison conditions, which included prison visits, assistance to inmates, and a steadfast drive and determination to pursue the abolition of the death penalty in Thailand. He authored various reports that documented conditions in Thai prisons and explored the multiple facets of capital punishment in the Kingdom, with a particular focus on the religious dimension of the death penalty, its application on women, and the disproportionate use of capital punishment in the ethnic Malay-Muslim southern border provinces.
Danthong inspired new generations of activists to work for the improvement of prison conditions, including through his support in recent years to the publication of several FIDH-UCL reports on prison conditions, which eventually led to the decision to publish an FIDH-UCL annual prison report for Thailand.
While much of his work concerned Thailand, Danthong was engaged in various human rights causes across Asia and beyond.
He co-founded the Southeast Asia Regional Institute for Community Education (SEARICE), a Philippines-based regional organization devoted to sustainable and community-based development.
In February 2013, Danthong attended the review organized by the government of Taiwan and a panel of international experts to assess Taiwan’s domestic implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Between February 2014 and February 2015, he travelled to Malaysia four times as a representative of FIDH to observe and report on the politically-motivated trial against former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, which eventually resulted in Anwar’s five-year jail sentence and subsequent imprisonment.
FIDH will always remember Danthong for his altruism, intellectual depth, sense of humor, and unwavering commitment to human rights. Danthong is gone, but his legacy will always be with us.