Rotting in the Bangkok Hilton: The Gruesome True Story of a Man Who Survived Thailand's Deadliest Prison (3 page)

Extending beyond the administration building on the eastern side was the small visiting room in its own building and next to it a barbershop. On the opposite, western end, behind a high wall was the decrepit three-story wooden box that housed the women prisoners.

The square was separated from these structures by an eight-foot-high chain-link fence. A concrete path led directly from the center of the
administration building to our patio behind the chain room. Crossing this near the gate, a second path led to the kitchen, which was hidden from sight and was used to take in cooking supplies. It was also the entrance for all vehicles, including the coroner’s truck, when they came to pick up the bodies of dead prisoners twice a week.

In the four rectangles formed by the cross of the paths were carefully tended hillocks of grass. Decorative trees had been artfully planted in pleasing groups, with little white enameled iron benches placed here and there, as if the square were a park.

One rectangle had a small fountain with ancient water stains that hadn’t worked in living memory. On it was a bronze statue of a woman twisting water from her hair—a figure from an old Thai myth about a faithful water nymph.

All this was normal enough, though it was alien to a prison. The crowning touch, however, was surreal. On all four grassy plots, life-sized plaster animals stood in various attitudes, from playful to comic.

A giraffe, its paint peeling and weathered, displayed an unnervingly toothy grin. A lioness was frozen, cradling her cubs in an anthropomorphic pose. A few of the inevitable pink flamingos tilted at odd angles on their scabrous metal legs. Completing this menagerie was a dispirited looking elephant, after which the city of Chiang Mai was named.

You’d sit on the patio until 7:00 AM, when two blue boys would hoist up the Thai flag on a pole and a tinny recording of a brass band played the cheery national anthem over the loudspeakers.

The Thais were all forced to stand (farangs were mercifully exempt) and sing along with the anthem. Afterwards, they’d join in a droning chant—the daily morning prayer, making promises of compassion and nonviolence to Buddha, which would promptly be broken within minutes. Once finished, the court-bound crowd was moved and lined up yet a third time, next to the high iron-plated gate in the administration building. Snatches of conversation, the wailing of babies, and potent unpleasant odors drifted over from
the women’s prison on the other side of the wall from where we squatted. As you’d wait, the daily supplies would be trundled in on dollies, except for the heavy bags of rice and vegetables, which were brought in by local farmers in their Chevy Luv pickup trucks, their proudest possessions.

The group of prisoners who worked outside the prison, sort of a furlough program, walked merrily by, sparing us their pitying glances.

The noises of the prison factories—dedicated to the processes of churning out teak furniture—sprang to life, which was painfully loud despite our distance and the intervening buildings.

Finally, the prison bus would pull up outside the front gate, and the driver would toot the horn, signaling his arrival. Prisoners passed through the middle of the administration building, out the gate, and then gingerly mounted the high steps onto the bus. Of all the torments experienced in Thai prison, the short trip to court was the worst.

The judges arranged court appearances for prisoners in custody so that the vast majority fell on one of two days a week to simplify things for the prison authorities in charge of transporting us to court. The officials normally took us on Mondays and Thursdays; the only exceptions were those going through trials. On normal court days, there were seldom fewer than a hundred at a time.

The vehicle used was an old school bus that had been gutted and had iron bars sloppily welded over the windows. The seats had been removed and thick iron plates formed the floor, polished to a gleam by the bare feet of prisoners. Windows had been welded shut and a single hole had been cut out of the roof for a smidgen of ventilation. The entrance was situated at the back of the bus and the former passenger section was walled off from the driver.

The bus had been designed to ferry thirty or forty children to school in comfort. Cramming ninety or one hundred men into the same space was nothing less than torture. The first dozen or two that entered always tried their best to form a buffer zone in the rear, taking up as much space as
possible. By the time thirty men had gone in, an objective observer would admit that the bus was filled to capacity, standing room only.

Such an observer would be sorely mistaken. Blue boys with night sticks at the ready shoved new prisoners past the iron grill of the entrance. Meeting resistance, two or three of them forced the prisoners in against the others, using elbows, fists, and feet. By the time seventy or eighty had been jammed in, every man on the bus was tightly pressed together. The heat generated by so many bodies in so small a space soaked us in sweat, and the rancid smell of unwashed skin made you want to gag and yearn for fresh air that didn’t exist.

If your luck was especially bad, you’d be at the back of the line when the last few prisoners were pushed in. As it wasn’t possible for any others to fit, the blue boys randomly swung their clubs through the open door, whacking prisoners’ legs and backs until shrieking men climbed over each other to escape the blows. Before they could resume their places, another lot was forced in, and the cage was locked.

The women would then be crowded onto the back seat just behind the cage, but they seldom numbered more than ten.

With its old gears protesting and grinding and choking fumes rising through the gaps in the shoddily laid floor plates, the bus would make its way from Chiang Mai Remand Prison to a court along the narrow streets of the city.

The unbearable crush and stink of humanity sent the mildest of people into a rage. Feet stomped and smashed other feet; elbows, arms and fists struck into other limbs and torsos; sweat dripped from one onto another; foul breath and intestinal gas polluted the air; skin rubbed raw by shackles was further wounded. Those pressed tightly against the windows were banged and injured by slamming their flesh on unyielding metal with every bump in the road.

The court complex was fifteen kilometers outside the city. It was on a two-lane road, pot-holed and ragged from too much use without repair. The
twenty minute ride in the morning seemed to last for hours. When the bus pulled in to the court parking lot, every soul on that hellish conveyance struggled to reach the gate first.

The women were escorted out, and after them, the cage flew open, releasing a deluge of men. A little satisfaction was felt by all of us, for no matter how careful they might be, the blue boys that opened the cage were invariably struck hard repeatedly by the door bars as the prisoners tumbled out in a rush.

Cool air was a benediction and room to move was a blessing not lost on anyone. A steep concrete stairway led down to the underground cell beneath the courthouse where prisoners were kept throughout the day. The fierce morning sunlight of the tropics was cut off as you were herded into the darkness of the stairway. Temporarily blind, only the packed bodies of your erst-while comrades stopped you from falling to the concrete floor below.

At the bottom of the steps, passing through two sets of iron bars, you stepped into a chamber seventy feet long by forty feet wide. Dim light filtered into the room from slits of dirty glass set in a wall high above the cell floor. A concrete ledge for seating ringed the walls at chair height, which was an awkward three feet wide. The ledges were black with scum as the cell was never cleaned, save for the perfunctory job done by one or two prisoners ordered to pick up the trash before leaving in the afternoon. A thick film of betel nut juice, stubbed out cigarettes, phlegm, and other substances kept all but the most degraded prisoners from sitting on the ledge. Thus, the competition was brutal for space on the five long wooden benches resembling church pews scattered around the cell. To leave your seat for a second was to lose it.

The ‘toilets’ were three noisome holes in a corner of the room, ankle-deep in human waste. A puddle of urine spread out from the holes, another barrier for those desperate to relieve themselves. A rusty pipe stuck out from the wall next to the waste pits, dripping oily, metallic-tasting water.

The women prisoners were locked in an adjacent cell, separated from the men by a barred gate.

The prison guards handed over their paperwork to the courthouse cops and headed off to points unknown for the day. The court guards made their own count. Satisfied that all were present and accounted for, the court guards examined those that had been seriously injured or those that had collapsed during the bus ride for signs of life. Those prisoners unable to respond to the roll call were laid out on a bench near the door, making it easier to move them if they died or experienced a medical crisis.

The rest of the day at hourly intervals, the guards called out four or five prisoners at a time and led them upstairs to the courtrooms.

Rather than using the outer staircase leading to the parking lot, the guards led the prisoners through a short tunnel directly off the holding cells. The tunnel terminated at the foot of a switch-back concrete staircase inside the court building.

The criminal courts were on the third and fourth floor. The building hallway filled with prisoner’s families, lawyers, clerks, and others, a throng of interested bystanders. The courts were built around roofless central courtyards, which allowed light and air to penetrate the hallways. The building itself was modern, everything made with cement polished to a high gloss. Inside the courtrooms, heavy, darkly-stained teak panels and furniture lent a somber air to the chambers. A gilt, royal coat of arms hung under a glittering, brightly colored, touched-up photo portrait of the King that dominated the room.

Thai law theoretically follows the Napoleonic Code, where the judge decides guilt or innocence, and the court chambers reflected this. The judge’s position was in the center rear of the room, raised over ten feet from the floor. The broad and heavy teak barrier that doubled as the judge’s desk faced a low lectern directly in front of it. Witnesses stood at the podium when addressing the court. On either side of the podium were heavy tables where the prosecutor’s staff and the defense lawyers sat. Nearest the doors, behind the podium and the tables, were rows of benches for the public.

Unless you were going through trial, where you’d be separated from others in court, criminal defendants were always handcuffed to each other. You’d sit on a bench in the front row on the side next to the public defender’s staff.

Thai law stipulates that the prosecution has twelve days to bring criminal charges against a defendant. However, the prosecutor may ask for extensions every twelve days, for up to 180 days. If charges are not formally lodged within that six month period, they must be dropped.

As a matter of course, defendants are brought to court every twelve days as a mere formality. Five or ten at a time, prisoners are brought into the courtroom to stand before the judge and hear the prosecutor rattle off a formulaic plea for a filing time extension, which is automatically granted. A sheaf of papers passed from the court secretary’s hand to the court guards’, who in turn collected signatures from the prisoners as their names were called.

In the delay between entering the courtroom and the judge’s appearance, the court guards would look the other way as a prisoner’s family and friends bustled up with gifts and greetings.

It was always an embarrassing moment. Grimy, reeking of perspiration, chains clanking with every move, you were forced into intimacy with a fellow prisoner’s near and dear ones by the shortness of the handcuffs. Worse off, farangs are still an object of curiosity in the north, unlike in Bangkok where tourism has made Westerners a common sight. Looking and feeling your worst, you had to endure the stares and comments of irate Thai strangers, seldom favorable and never polite.

After the formalities were completed, prisoners were taken back down to the dungeon.

Whenever the guards of the holding cell felt like it, merchants and family members were allowed in, and the dungeon became a small (and very dirty) bazaar. Unlike guards at the prison, who only interacted with visitors
if they’d been assigned visiting room jobs, the court guards had a steady and ongoing relationship with the public.

In Asia, every human contact and every human need is scrutinized as a potential source of income. Coldly calculated to yield the maximum benefit, visitors are forced to pay a bribe to meet with prisoners, unless the meeting is an official one.

Merchants are obligated to pay a percentage of their sales to the guards, generally a very profitable arrangement, since prisoners are the ultimate “captive market.”

The guards’ room was situated between the foot of the staircase leading to the parking lot and the holding cell. Desks and chairs had been moved against the far wall, leaving a generous space for visitors. No mesh or other device separated prisoners and visitors, save for broadly spaced iron bars. Once the bribe was paid, the guards lost all interest in whatever took place between prisoners and loved ones, or merchants.

‘Contraband’ is a concept with a different meaning in Asia from that held in the West. Rather than something which must be taken away from prisoners by force, if necessary, in the Far East (excluding the Japanese, who have a different culture, uninfluenced by the mercenary Chinese), anything denied prisoners is seen as an opportunity to extort money from them. Orientals by and large are not as moralistic as Westerners, or as concerned with the behavior of wards of the state. So long as escape was not a danger, any item desired by prisoners was a way to earn extra money for prison employees.

From morning ‘til afternoon, the holding cell hummed with activity. Several kinds of food were being offered, packaged snacks were on sale, cigarettes and liquor could be purchased, and every millimeter of its length, the cell’s bars swarmed with visitors.