Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  Did they always carry machine guns?

  Yeah. I’m a dangerous guy, man! Well, they made me that; I didn’t know I was dangerous fuck[ing] big dealer, four grams of hash. But they had to do it.

  – Ruggiero

  Days out were common enough for westerners, so long as they paid up. And it was a win-win situation for prisoners, guards and police. Prisoners could forget the hellhole that was jail for a few hours, while for the guards and police, it was an easy day’s work, with a free lunch and a nice cash bonus.

  The system was simple if the prisoner had cash to pay to the right people. To get out the door, they first had to pay the jail doctor between 200,000 ($27) and 500,000 rupiah ($67) for a dental referral letter and the head of security 200,000 rupiah ($27). The doctor’s certificate needed to be signed, and usually the inmate paid a local to do this. The dentist would charge a fee of about 300,000 rupiah ($40) for his signature. Nothing was free. But the biggest expense was the police. They took a fee of around 800,000 rupiah ($106) between them, and all their food, drinks and petrol expenses were paid for by the inmate. That was the deal.

  Inmate Juri had been outside several times. He had enjoyed a swim in a hotel pool, and a few drinks with his parents and his fiancée, Ade.

  I went to the hotel with my fiancée, one time with my sister. One time, my friend from Italy came. There’s a swimming pool, we make like a small party. I went to the beach one time … I went home first and at one o’clock in the afternoon, I say to the police, ‘Why you don’t take me to the beach?’

  And they say, ‘No, we cannot, we have uniforms’. They didn’t want other police to see them. I say, ‘No problem, I’ll give you T-shirts’. ‘Yeah, okay, if you give us a T-shirt’. I give them T-shirts, shorts, everything, and they used my father’s thongs. They put the guns in one bag, big beach bag. And my mum carries the bag with the two guns, and we go to the beach in a taxi. There were two police and one guard. They leave their uniform in my parents’ house, but the guns they bring. They give to my mum to put in her beach bag.

  – Juri

  Juri, his mum, his fiancée and the police in their casual gear, took a taxi down to Kuta’s busiest beach strip. Juri wasn’t sure if they would let him swim, as he’d heard from Ruggiero that the police didn’t often let prisoners go into the water. But, when they pulled up Juri asked, ‘Hey, can I go in to swim?’

  ‘Yeah, but can you swim?’ asked the policeman.

  They were concerned that they would be in trouble if he drowned.

  ‘Yeah, I can swim,’ he answered laughing.

  ‘Just go then, why you asking? Go!’

  That was it. Juri ran and dived into the ocean and for an hour or so, he felt like a free man, splashing about in the water, drinking beers, enjoying the tropical island like the tourists around him were doing. But, unlike them, he wouldn’t be going back to shower at a nice hotel.

  When Juri arrived back at Hotel K at about 6 pm, it was not easy for him to walk back through the door, into the dark, seedy world, while he was still smelling of sea salt, tingling from the thrill of the waves, and so freshly reminded of the beautiful life that was lost to him. But he would do it again; the days out were worth the torment of coming back.

  Mick spent many afternoons sitting in a bar in the tourist area of Sanur Beach, where he had often stayed on holiday. He would go there to drink with friends. Several times the police didn’t bother taking their guns – they handcuffed him until he got into the car and opened the cuffs as soon as they drove off. He enjoyed seeing the sea, drinking beer and talking, feeling like a normal human being again.

  I washed my face with seawater. Walked in the water a bit.

  – Mick

  Mick went out eight to nine times, all up. Sometimes he didn’t go to the beach, he just walked around the streets, soaking up life on the outside. He had several chances to escape from bars and clubs he went to, but a lack of money and the chance of getting caught stopped him.

  Twice I really could have escaped, but I didn’t have the money. I needed $US2000 or $3000. The point is, you have to set things up.

  – Mick

  Occasionally, things did go wrong for a prisoner and his or her minders. In a case that hit the news and embarrassed the jail, two of its guards and a prisoner were caught at a brothel, all three using its services.

  A prison inmate, who was supposed to be safely locked up in Bali’s Kerobokan penitentiary, was nabbed before dawn on Sunday at a brothel in the Sanur area, Denpasar. Apparently, the escapee had spent the night with a prostitute. In a strange turn of events, two prison guards were discovered to have not only helped the suspect escape from jail, but also participated in the night’s escapade.

  – Jakarta Post, November 2001

  In another incident, Taiwanese prisoner Tommy, who’d won the trust of the guards, paid the necessary fees for a day out. He didn’t have a police escort; only a guard and Pemuka inmate Saidin. The three of them broke the rules and split up, arranging to meet back up at 5 pm near the jail. Tommy had ridden off on a hired motorbike. They’d done this before. But on this day, Tommy didn’t return. Saidin and the guard spent two hours waiting for him to show. At 7 pm they walked back into the jail and broke the news. The security boss phoned local hospitals in case Tommy had crashed his motorbike. Finally, at 9 pm, they put out an escape alert. But Tommy had been a free man since 10 am and had already taken a flight to Jakarta. The Taiwanese man was never caught; he made it home. It was bad news for the westerners, with their days out aborted for a while.

  It was a lot easier for the Indonesian prisoners to go outside. Many, in fact, went in and out if they had a job outside. Several long-term prisoners, especially men, appeared to have free reign to walk in and out of the front doors whenever they liked, paying cash for the right to an unofficial day’s leave.

  In most prisons, you would think, those convicted of the most serious crimes would get the least freedom. But in the strange and chaotic world that is Hotel K, this seems to work in reverse. Often an inmate serving time for murder will stand at the front door, acting as doorman. The Laskars, Saidin, Ketut and Iwan all acted as though Hotel K was a normal hotel. Some of them had official licences to come and go for their jobs. One prisoner who was in for murder walked freely in and out to the gym around the corner from the jail every day.

  But when the wrong police caught him outside, he was severely punished.

  They took him to Polda [police station] and bashed and bashed and bashed him for twelve hours straight with big poles of wood with nails hanging out of them. They put a T-shirt over his head so he couldn’t see and fifteen policemen bashed him. He came and showed me his back and it was just like Jesus had come off the cross, it was just open wounds. He told me they hit him with a belt bucket on [the] back because he went outside. They didn’t break any bones, but they did hit him in the head. He was okay after a while.

  – Inmate

  Some of the ordinary Balinese prisoners were also allowed out for jobs such as sweeping the car park, buying cigarettes for the guards, or taking out excess slop prison food to give to someone to feed their pigs. Some worked cleaning the guards’ homes. Often these local inmates took the chance to go home to their villages for the afternoon or to eat lunch at a local café and go shopping. Others were allowed weekend release. Depending on who they were, and how connected they were, all sorts of freedoms could be granted.

  For a small sling to the guards and an excuse, such as selling their jail artwork to a nearby gallery, local inmates could usually get out for a few hours. It was a safe bet they’d return, as their family villages and homes could be easily located. So locals got a lot more freedom than inmates from other parts of Indonesia or westerners. Even those Balinese prisoners without jobs could slip out for the day by spending a little cash and climbing onto the rubbish truck.

  Whenever they bring the rubbish out, they put maybe two people inside the truck, and they go out of the jail and then go their own
way all day and in the evening they come back. It was Balinese people. They sit normally in the truck. It was business for the jail. They would pay, of course; maybe 400,000 each. Every time the truck was going out, two or three people would go out for a holiday.

  – Thomas

  Whatever it took to have a few hours away from Hotel K, most prisoners would seize the chance. But for all of them, it was a bittersweet taste of the life lost to them over the walls of Hotel K.

  The first time I stepped outside of the prison wall, I felt nervous because it was the first time I’d experienced it for a long time. It felt like a dream and I even pinched myself on the cheek to check whether it’s real or not. I could breathe so freely and really take the fresh air as deep as I could, and didn’t care about the pollution because it’s quite bad traffic in the tourist area. I got out from the darkness into the light, even though it was only for a moment. But I felt it was a beautiful blessing, and I felt so lucky because not everyone got the chance to enjoy it.

  – Trisna, Balinese inmate

  CHAPTER 18

  RAIDS

  The guards don’t want the police to come inside. It’s their kingdom.

  – Thomas

  Juri sat on the blue room floor, stroking his fiancée’s face and talking, enjoying their time together as they sat crammed in among hundreds of people. Ade had just returned from a trip home to Timor and they were sharing a tender moment. It ended abruptly when Juri leaped up, gasping, ‘Shit’. He ran across the room, darting around the sitting bodies. Ade turned to see what had made him jump. Striding in along the far wall was an endless line of police carrying machine guns. Juri was in the toilet, frantically wrapping a gram of smack that he’d had in his pocket in a piece of foil from his cigarette packet before slipping it up his arse. Hotel K was being raided.

  His phone rang just as he finished. ‘Juri, come fast, they’re searching our block,’ Chinese inmate Patrick blurted. Visitors were being ushered out by guards as Juri sprinted through the blue room, across the jail yard, past hundreds of police and into his block. He slammed his cell door shut and looked for anything incriminating. The police were outside; he had seconds. He snatched up a card he used for chopping smack, a bit of aluminium foil and a lighter, and hurled it all out the back window. Just as he turned back around, the door opened and three police officers walked inside.

  Juri stood there breathless, watching as they searched his cell. He suddenly realised he’d forgotten his bong. It was sitting under the table, tucked behind a box. It was only a matter of time before they found it, but there was nothing he could do. They were tearing his room apart; stripping the sheet off his mattress, searching a pile of clothes and squeezing out toothpaste. Then they found it.

  There was a momentary uproar as the police started talking excitedly and yelling to others to come inside. Three more police entered the small cell, along with friendly guard Pak Mus. ‘You use. We catch you,’ the policeman said to Juri, pointing to the bong for emphasis. ‘It’s not mine,’ Juri said. He was desperate. He didn’t want another case against him. He started talking fast. ‘This belongs to a Dutch guy who used this room before me; he’s just left the jail. Pak Mus, that’s right, isn’t it?’ he said, turning to the guard for help. ‘Yes, this is true. Juri doesn’t use,’ Pak Mus said. He saved Juri. The police didn’t charge him.

  I was lucky that time.

  – Juri

  The whole jail was active. No-one knew if the police would come to their block, but they had to be prepared. Prisoners in the other ten blocks were still running around, yelling, ‘Police coming, police coming … clean … clean!’

  Prisoners everywhere were clearing their cells, frantically picking up and disposing of drugs, bongs, foils and syringes that were lying around. They were throwing them out the back cell windows, burying them in the dirt, hiding them in secret compartments and shoving them up their arses. A group of prisoners gambling at the roulette tables near the temple packed up fast, carrying the tables into the back of the Hindu temple and stashing them away.

  Typically, police were searching the blocks one at a time. Specialised police went inside, while at least a hundred and fifty armed police surrounded the block, prepared for a possible prisoner attack. Usually the raids were done in the evenings, so the prisoners were already locked in their blocks. But this day, more than nine hundred criminals, most with a bitter hatred for police, were roaming freely about.

  Brazilian Ruggiero was in his cell, sleeping away the hot afternoon, when he was suddenly woken by an inmate running around the block, screaming, ‘Police, police, police, police!’ Ruggiero leaped up and shut his door. He swept around the cell, scooping up his knives, phones, chargers, headphones, and anything else he could find that was contraband, and putting it all in a secret bunker that was cut into the floor. He didn’t have any drugs, and his laptop and some cash were already hidden in the false bottom of his wooden table. By the time the police opened his door, he was ready. He gritted his teeth as he stood watching them pry and pick through all his personal belongings, flicking through his Buddhism books, rifling through his clothes, looking through his crate of beer and flipping the mattress. This was jail and he was used to raids, but he didn’t like them. They were humiliating and intrusive, and sometimes ridiculously excessive. When a female police officer stuck her fingers in his fresh cheese baguette, his patience snapped. ‘Bitch, don’t touch my baguette!’ he snarled. The police left his cell without finding anything and, fortunately for him, left behind his full crate of beer, which he’d bought from Laskar member Alit Balong, who was in the cell next door.

  Police swept through the rest of the cells in Ruggiero’s block, and found drugs in only one room. That morning another prisoner had discarded several marijuana seeds and a twig in his ashtray while rolling a joint, and had forgotten about them. It was a costly mistake. He was arrested, charged and, after going through another court case, had two more years added to his sentence. This sort of incident was why the prisoners took raids very seriously.

  For this raid, police had secured their search warrant after arresting guard Pak Giri. Police had followed him the night before, after a tip-off. Pak Giri had left Hotel K after his shift, ridden his motorbike to a karaoke bar in Denpasar, stopped in the car park, turned off the bike and pulled out the key. The next instant, several police officers rode up beside him and surrounded his bike. An officer told Pak Giri he needed to search him for drugs. The guard argued that he didn’t have anything with him. But, after patting him down, they found a plastic bag in his sock. It contained just over four grams of heroin. Police then escorted Pak Giri to his house, where they’d been told he stored drugs for Hotel K inmates. Under the tiled floor beneath his bed, they found a candy tin stashed with two plastic bags, one of cocaine, weighing fifty-two grams, and one of heroin, weighing almost nineteen grams.

  The suspect confessed that he got those illegal drugs from a prisoner. He also mentioned that the said prisoner is keeping drugs in a large amount in his cell. Next, the police raided Bali’s biggest prison on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the prisoner’s room was already empty.

  – Denpost, February 2006

  The prisoner was Hotel K drug lord Arman. The police knew he was a big-time dealer from his cell, because people arrested outside with drugs continually confessed he was their supplier. Since checking in, Arman had added to his criminal record a number of new cases for possession of thousands of ecstasy pills. As the jail’s notorious drug lord, Arman also took the rap for his biggest ecstasy supplier, Iwan, who sat back quietly in the shadows of his furniture workshop-cum-ecstasy factory. It was widely known among inmates that Arman was Iwan’s agent. Arman acquired the new drug charges for many reasons. Prisoners were often caught couriering his drugs outside. Dealers working in clubs and pubs selling his drugs often got caught and quickly gave him up. There was no loyalty.

  Arman was even set up by one of his formerly most trusted men, who had been caught with three hundre
d and forty-three of his ecstasy pills. The man did a deal with the police to have his charges dropped if he worked a sting on Arman. So, he ordered 2000 pills and went inside Hotel K to pick up the package. Arman gave his trusted dealer a red bag filled with T-shirts, which the dealer passed to the police as soon as he walked outside. Underneath the T-shirts were the 2000 pills. The confiscated 2343 tablets, priced at 175,000 rupiah each, were worth four hundred and ten million rupiah ($55,000).

  The biggest case against Arman began when one of his suppliers in Jakarta was caught with 35,000 yellow ecstasy pills with Popeye logos that had been smuggled in from Holland. The supplier’s house in Jakarta was searched and police found a list of drug deliveries, including one to Bali for 7000 pills, and an airway delivery note. Jakarta police flew to Bali, and waited at the cargo office for the drugs to be collected. Two men, Aldi and Prana, arrived in an old Honda Accord and were arrested as soon as they tried to pick up the package. They confessed that their friend Ayung, a prisoner in Kerobokan, was due to meet them at a restaurant at 4 pm to take the package.

  ‘The suspect who was supposed to be in Kerobokan Prison at the time, arrived in a taxi around 4 pm. The police nabbed him when he got out of the taxi and entered the restaurant. When Ayung (prisoner) was interrogated, he claimed that the stuff belonged to Arman Maulidie and that the plan was indeed to take them to Kerobokan Prison,’ stressed Bali Police spokesman AS Reniban.