Pol Col Naras Savestanan, director-general of the Corrections Department.

The Corrections Department has dismissed talk that prisoners were allowed to hold birthday parties in prison compounds and brushed aside calls for new prisons to be set up to take political prisoners.

Pol Col Naras Savestanan, director-general of the department, made the remarks on Saturday after some former co-leaders of the now-defunct People’s Alliance for Democracy recounted their life behind bars at a seminar, organised recently by Rangsit University’s College of Social Innovation and Thailand Reform Institute.