Hotel Kerobokan
Page 1
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
FOREWORD
1 WELCOME TO HOTEL KEROBOKAN
2 THOMAS
3 THE HEADLESS CORPSE
4 THE GREAT ESCAPE
5 LET’S PLAY
6 NO STAR TO FIVE STAR
7 TOUCHING PARADISE
8 THE WOMEN’S BLOCK
9 THE BLUE ROOM
10 PLASTICINE GUARDS
11 TERRORISTS CHECK IN
12 THE DEALERS
13 ROLLING THE DICE
14 ANIMAL FARM
15 WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
16 AN EYE FOR AN EYE
17 SEX ON THE BEACH
18 RAIDS
19 KEROBOKAN CREW
20 ROOM 13
21 NO MORE TOMORROWS
22 OPERATION TRANSFER
EPILOGUE: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Since studying journalism at RMIT in Melbourne, Kathryn Bonella has worked as a journalist in television and print. She moved to London eighteen months after graduating and spent several years freelancing for 60 Minutes as well as numerous English and American television programs, magazines and newspapers. She returned to Australia in 2000 to work as a full-time producer for 60 Minutes. She moved to Bali in 2005 to research and write Schapelle Corby’s autobiography, My Story.
www.kathrynbonella.com
Also by Kathryn Bonella
Schapelle Corby – My Story
KATHRYN BONELLA
HOTEL
KEROBOKAN
First published 2009 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney
Copyright © Kathryn Bonella 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Bonella, Kathryn.
Hotel Kerobokan : the shocking inside story of Bali’s most
notorious jail / Kathryn Bonella.
9781405039369 (pbk.)
Kerobokan Prison (Bali Island, Indonesia)
Prisons—Indonesia—Bali Island.
Prisoners—Indonesia—Bali Island—Social life and customs.
Convicts—Indonesia—Bali Island—Social life and customs.
Bali Island—Indonesia.
365.9598.
Typeset in 12.5/16 pt Janson by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group
Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Hotel Kerobokan
Kathryn Bonella
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This book is dedicated to anyone travelling to the tropical paradise Bali.
Be careful. It could be a holiday you never forget. Even one ecstasy pill could cost you tens of thousands of dollars and a stint in the hellhole Hotel Kerobokan.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Because of the nature of the revelations contained in this book, some names had to be changed in order to protect former and current inmates from further prosecution or retribution.
FOREWORD
The first time I went inside Kerobokan Jail was in December 2005 with Schapelle Corby’s sister, Mercedes. We were starting work on Schapelle’s book – My Story. As we walked past intimidating-looking guards and prisoners, I felt slightly uneasy. Out of the blue a prisoner sprinted past chasing another with a chair held above his head. Standing against a wall a few metres in front of me, wearing oversized pink sunglasses, was a girl who I thought was a visitor. I did a double take. It was Schapelle – immaculately groomed and looking like a fish out of water in a maximum-security jail. That morning we started our months of twice-daily interview sessions.
It didn’t take long for Kerobokan and its cast of characters to become very familiar. The guards were always keen for a packet of cigarettes, or asking me to bring in a copy of Penthouse; the prisoners, including a couple of murderers, asking for my phone number so they could get permission to get out of jail on a Saturday night by me ensuring their return. Things that at first seemed unbelievable fast became ordinary; like inmates acting as doormen and freely walking in and out of the jail.
Prisoners were usually loitering around during visits, drunk and stoned, and would come and sit with us. Like Schapelle, I quickly learned not to judge anyone by their crimes. One Indonesian inmate regularly came over to chat. I asked him what his crime was – ‘Killer’. He seemed nice. Not in the least bit threatening, although we later saw him poised with his hand in the air ready to bash another inmate, only stopping when he saw us watching. But he was chivalrous and became an ally. If he was returning to jail from a workout at the local gym as I was leaving, he’d hail me a cab or call for one on his mobile phone, then stand outside chatting with me until it arrived. One afternoon an Australian journalist was hanging about just outside the front door for hours, after a story had broken on the Bali Nine. I didn’t want to walk out and expose myself since the book was still a secret at that stage. Visiting time was finished, but the killer took me back inside to an office. We sat and talked, and every twenty minutes or so he’d go and take a look outside to see if the journalist had left. When the coast was clear, he rang a taxi and walked me out. Strangely, the killers were often the inmates with the most freedom.
Courteous killer doormen were only one of the reasons that Schapelle and I dubbed the jail Hotel Kerobokan in her book. With its tennis court, its manicured gardens, trimmed grass, Hindu temples and green sports area, the jail resembled a low-budget hotel – on first impression. Prisoners came around like hosts during visiting times, selling drinks and home-baked cakes, and handing out straw mats to sit on for 5000 rupiah (70 cents). The jail also sat on four hectares of prime real estate in Bali’s tourist precinct of Kuta, surrounded by exclusive hotels and villas. You could also buy services like in any hotel: you could pay guards to deliver pizza to your cell, to deliver drugs, to bring in alcohol, to arrange a hooker, and even to let you out for a day at the beach – although most of the high-profile prisoners, such as Schapelle, never got that luxury.
Like any hotel you could also pay for a room upgrade at check-in. After
police scared Schapelle with stories of sexual attacks, she paid $100 to be put into a room that wasn’t too crowded or full of predatory lesbians. A guy from California gave the guards $950 for a room upgrade, overpaying and pushing up prices for subsequent male prisoners. But he’d been desperate to avoid time in the men’s initiation cells where up to twenty-five prisoners were jammed into a single cell. So it became ‘Hotel Kerobokan’ – where westerners from across the globe continually check-in and out, most desperately trying to pay the judges and prosecutors to deal their way to a shorter stay.
As a visitor, I got used to going into Hotel K, but still felt in need of a shower every time I left. I was fascinated with this crazy world of drugs, sex and gambling – where paedophiles, serial killers and rapists sleep alongside card sharks, petty thieves and unlucky tourists caught at a club with one or two ecstasy pills in their pocket. I was intrigued by what time in Hotel K did to people; how they coped with being locked in tiny, crowded cells for up to fifteen hours a day and what they did to fill the interminable hours. My interest in and access to prisoners sparked the idea to write Hotel Kerobokan. I wanted to tell the story of this jail.
I flew to Indonesia in January 2008 and spent the next eighteen months talking to prisoners inside Hotel K, to former prisoners who are now in other jails across Indonesia and also to people who were free – although several of those are now back inside. It was an incredible adventure. I spoke to around one hundred people about life inside Hotel K, including murderers, drug bosses, petty thieves, gang members, international drug traffickers and prison guards.
To ensure the stories were as accurate as possible, I often asked several prisoners to tell me their version of the same story. Almost always, the versions tallied. The inmates didn’t need to embellish. The truth is graphic and shocking enough. There are specific tales that several westerners told unprompted; ones that resonated deeply and often painfully with them all; usually of westerners getting badly bashed, trying to escape or overdosing. They all knew that it could have so easily been them.
To establish the authenticity of the stories, I also spent weeks at the Bali Post newspaper office in its filthy archives rooms in Denpasar, going through hundreds of local Denpost and Bali Post newspapers. In the dusty newspaper offices, my Balinese researcher and I struck gold; stories about the stories I’d been told, confirming the confidence I had in my prisoner sources.
Most of the people I approached were happy to talk and tell their tales. For those still locked up, it broke the monotony and gave them a fresh face to talk to. Often an interview with one prisoner led me to another. It took a while to track down some prisoners, who’d been transferred out of Hotel K to prisons in other parts of Indonesia. I then travelled for weeks at a time to jails in far-flung parts of Muslim-dominated Java, and to Jakarta, meeting up with former Hotel K prisoners, almost always taking in a digital recorder to record our chats. I talked to the main characters in this book at length over days, often returning for second and third series of interviews.
One of the jails I went to was on Nusakambangan Island, off the west coast of Java, where the Bali bombing terrorists were being held. The first time I went there was just before they were killed. The little harbour in Cilicap was filled with journalists watching for any sign of family members taking the wooden boat across to the island to say goodbye. I avoided the journalists and climbed into an old motor boat filled with jail visitors, motorbikes and prison wardens on the way to work. It took us about ten minutes to cross the water.
I hired a local guy, Agung, to come with me. Agung didn’t speak any English but had a motorbike and knew where I wanted to go. After getting off the boat I had to show my passport and papers at the first police checkpoint. Then I climbed on the back of Agung’s bike, and we rode up the bitumen along the edge of the water to the second police check point where I showed my passport and papers again to a bunch of police. Most were jovial and rifled through the bags of shopping I’d brought, holding up bars of chocolate or packets of cigarettes and pointing to themselves, illustrating they wanted them. I gave them a couple of packets of cigarettes. Then Agung and I tore off on the bike. We were usually alone on the road apart from the odd cow or a local walking his herd across the road. There is nothing on this island, accept a few local homes for workers and seven maximum-security jails stretched along its coastal road. Agung pointed as we passed Amrozi’s prison, then we passed several more, until we finally came to the jail that incarcerated the prisoners I was going to interview.
Once inside the men’s jail, one of the prisoners I interviewed gave me a tour; to the small shop, the gym, the Hindu temple where a priest was holding a service, and then the small Christian church. Standing at the back was a young good-looking Brazilian guy; charming and softly spoken. He asked where I came from in Australia. He had an aura of deep sadness about him and huge black circles under his eyes. He’d been crying all morning. He usually did. He was on death row. A few months earlier he’d set himself alight to end the slow, drawn-out torture. Like most of those around him, his life was just a waiting game for the twelve-man firing squad to squeeze its triggers.
Further north in Jakarta’s Cipinang jail I visited a prisoner many times. Austrian inmate Thomas Borsitzki was happy to talk about life in Kerobokan jail, making lists of more than fifty possible topics. Like many prisoners, he also wrote pages and pages for me about his experiences. Getting inside Cipinang was expensive for all visitors – by far the most costly of all the jails I visited. The guards charged Thomas 200,000 rupiah ($27) to bring him out, me 50,000 rupiah ($7) to sit with him in a room face to face, rather than through a glass and metal screen, and I paid a further 10,000 rupiah ($1.30) to other prisoners to collect Thomas. I also had to pay an additional 50,000 rupiah ($7) to another inmate who walked around with a ledger book, but did nothing else. So my twice-daily visits cost me close to $85 per day.
None of the prisoners asked for money to tell their stories. I took them food, toiletries and books, or some baby clothes for Thomas’s newborn – conceived while he and his wife were sharing a prison cell when they were both on remand for drug trafficking. I also took Thomas bottles of Dettol and bars of antiseptic soap for his gaping sores. After a few days, I’d notice his sores clearing up, but when I returned after a stint away, his body would be riddled with them again. Most of the prisoners were just happy to have a visit. One of the prisoners in Nusakambangan told me that hearing a genuine laugh was ‘better than sex’, as it was so rare – the death row inmates surrounding him didn’t have much to be joyful about.
Now I realise how precious pure laughter is, it’s amazing. Even a smile is very rare here. A laugh is priceless.
– Inmate
Another prisoner I met in an East Javanese jail had only had one other visit in two years. With nothing but time on her hands, she wrote pages and pages of notes for me about her life in Hotel K.
Several times I met up with a man who had just been released from jail after being incarcerated for hacking off a man’s head with a machete. I met his daughters and he came to my Bali apartment for lunch. Saidin was an intriguing person. He’d done several years in Hotel K and was keen to talk; enjoying telling his stories and explaining how he was feared in Hotel K by many prisoners and guards. When I asked the source of his power over them, he slashed a finger across his throat and laughed. He had been one of the most powerful prisoners in Hotel K, promoted to the top job of Pemuka – in charge of all prisoners.
Guards were also a source of information. Several times I went out for drinks or dinner with a high-ranking guard. He relished telling me jail stories; laughing as he talked about a group of guards fawning over and kissing one particularly pretty new transvestite inmate, even showing me photos of him on his phone, as well as photos of piles of drugs confiscated from the cells. On one of the nights I was out with the guard, he phoned a couple of prisoners on their mobile phones and handed his phone to me for a chat. This was indicative of how casually
the guards colluded with prisoners.
Since starting My Story in 2005, I’ve spent hundreds of hours inside Hotel K. I’ve personally witnessed violence, drug deals and rampant sex. In a visit one day, I sat in a narrow passage opposite a couple and their newborn – undoubtedly conceived in Hotel K. He was holding the baby over his groin as a camouflage while his girlfriend masturbated him. The straw mats we sat on were often covered in semen stains. I’ve seen western men, often off their faces on drugs, sloppily kissing female visitors; one of the Bali Nine regularly entwined with his Indonesian fiancée, often obscenely, while his mum sat alongside them. And it wasn’t unusual to see girls straddling the laps of guys on the floor, thrusting back and forth. It looked like sex and it was.
Just as Hotel K holds a fascination to me, it clearly does for many others too. The jail is now a pit stop on Bali’s tourist trail. Taxi drivers are regularly asked to drive by the jail – just a little detour on the way to the beach or to a massage perhaps. Some tourists stand out the front taking photos. Others venture inside. Everyone from girls in micro minis to families with toddlers is among the endless stream of tourists who pay the 5000 rupiah (70 cent) fee – or more if they’re gullible – to go inside and meet one or two of the Bali Nine or Schapelle or just take a look around for a bit of holiday fun.
Hotel K might seem like a safe place to visit, because it’s Bali, and because it does regular PR stunts – pushing an image of a humane facility by flinging open its doors to cameras and journalists to show the likes of a tennis tournament, or prisoners doing choreographed exercise routines for Independence Day, or Schapelle Corby talking, in a slightly dazed state, about her hopes of opening a beauty salon in jail, giving a girl-next-door face to the jail. To the outside, it might not seem so dark, but the daily world of Hotel K is nothing like these flashes. It is a maximum-security jail, overcrowded with some of Indonesia’s worst psychopaths and sadistic criminals roaming freely. It’s a place that can numb a prisoner to their core and strip away their sanity by the things they continually see and endure. Three years ago in My Story, Schapelle described it as a soul-sucking dump and wrote this: