A Secret History of the Bangkok Hilton

by Chavoret Jaruboon

  Two months earlier, they had also been accused of killing a man in similar circumstances. That man had warned them in parental tones, ‘Brothers, you can’t do that (picking pockets).’ They dragged him off the bus, beat him senseless and stabbed him to death as he tried to run away from them on the streets of Bangkok.

  The three men were executed on the same day. Daengyik’s mother came to collect her son’s body the following day. Despite his wickedness, he was still a person to his mother and his existence meant something to her—though the rest of society wished him nothing but a painful death.

  Often when we talk about those who are sentenced to death we focus on the sordid details of their crimes but that won’t give you any insight into the minds of these individuals or make you relate to them as people. I would like to share with you some last words from a number of the condemned in the hope of showing you a new way to look at them. I have refrained from using their real names and have also taken the liberty of editing their messages for clarity.

  My dear son,

  By the time you read this letter, my life will already have been terminated. But before I depart from this world, please do not feel sorry for this disgraceful end to my life. I had no intention to commit the crime I was somehow found guilty of. I didn’t sell ‘ya ba’ (crazy drug or amphetamine). My only crime was borrowing someone else’s truck, not knowing what was in it. When you are big, please use my life as a lesson.

  I love you, son. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done with your best interests in my mind. I’m not the kind of person who breaks the law. You’re my son and I worry that the karma I’ve done in my current and previous lives will somehow haunt you in one way or another. Please be a good boy. I want you to wai [perform the traditional greeting] and ask for forgiveness on my behalf from those whom I caused trouble, including your mother. Everything that happened is all in the past now. Forget them if you can because the hardest part is now over for you. Please focus on your present and, if you concentrate and do your best today, then your future will become good in the long run.

  I have to say goodbye now. What good merit I’ve made so far, I would like to see them reward you, not me. Birth, aging, illness and death are common steps in the cycle of life, like Buddha said. Everyone has to face them sooner or later. Don’t feel sorry about my passing.

  I want you to know I never harmed anyone and I didn’t commit the crime I was found guilty of. I was sentenced to die anyway and you should realise that khon jon (poor people) in this country can be thrown into prison and executed with no way to protest their innocence because we don’t have the resources to do so.

  Take your education seriously and obey your mother. You don’t need to come and collect my body. Just come to collect my ashes. (I assume he expressed his intention to be cremated right after the execution instead of running the risk of having his family see his wounded body)

  Por

  The author of the above letter has stayed in my mind because I too am a father. His thoughts turned to the wellbeing of his child even during the last minutes of his life. He, and the following author maintained their innocence until the end.

  To my dearest three friends with respect,

  Please take my leave. I wish I could wai my father at his feet one more time. Please continue to fight for my innocence if you could. I didn’t commit the crime they said I did in the verdict. I suffered in this prison for eight years while trying to fight for my innocence to no avail. My lawyer didn’t submit documents for my appeal so I didn’t get the chance to fight my case through the three courts. I’m so distraught that I haven’t been given justice by the authorities. You can ask the lawyer for every detail regarding my case.

  I never have taken a man’s life but somehow my life was destined to have a tragic ending. I humbly beg you to continue fighting for my innocence. My children are still young and my wife has taken a new man. I don’t know the exact details of who is currently taking care of my children. Please take time to check up on their wellbeing. I last heard that they are being taken care of by a couple living at (the address).

  Finally I would like to wai at the feet of so many people to whom I am indebted with favours they have done for me, including you three.

  On the other hand, there were those who were resigned to their fate and buckled under the weight of their guilt. They accepted the consequences of their own actions for the last time before their lives would be terminated. I’ve selected two of them to be shown below.

  Dear Por, who I most respect,

  I’m so glad to have been born as your son, though I will regret eternally not having repaid you enough for what you have done for me. I was prevented from doing so by the consequences of my own action. It’s time karma made me repay my wrongdoings with my life and I’m willing to do so. I don’t want you or my brother to feel sorry for me or to waste your time mourning my death. Sooner or later, everyone has to die.

  Throughout my life, you and my brother are the ones who really cared for me. Brother, please take care of our father after I’m gone. Don’t let him down like I did. Support him. Don’t sell the family’s rice paddy. Work on it and make a living out of it but never sell it. I want to thank everyone from our village too who has offered me kindness and sympathy. Please tell them not to think too much about my departure.

  I prostrate myself at your feet, my father and mother.

  Father and mother, please take my humble leave. I’ve committed so few good deeds that my current life has been cut short like this.

  [It’s conventional belief that if someone dies prematurely it is because they have run out of good karma in this life.]

  If there really is reincarnation, I wish my fate would be bound with yours so I could be reborn as your child again. In this life, I’ve done nothing to make you two proud of me. I only brought troubles and heartache to you. Please forgive me.

  I’ve not done my biggest duty as a son by becoming a monk to make merit on behalf of you two and, for that, I feel terribly sorry. My wish is that I can do that for you in my next life, if it is possible. Sister, please take your education seriously as it will play a big part in how your future turns out and how many choices you will have in life. Mother and father, please take care of yourselves. For whatever I did in the past, please forgive me. I don’t have anything else to say.

  It’s common for the authors of these letters to open their hearts to their loved ones and I admit that some of these messages were touching. They showed that, regardless of what they had done wrong, they were still human and their existence meant something to somebody. However, sympathy mustn’t excuse them for their crimes.

  I didn’t read any of these last letters or the cases before the executions. It was my rule not to research the execution cases until they were over in order to prevent myself from investing any emotion in pulling the trigger. I didn’t want to run the risk of taking pleasure in executing certain convicts, whom I later found to be very contemptible. That would make me no better than a murderer. On the other hand, I couldn’t shoot someone if I doubted their guilt, so the best policy was to know nothing regarding the circumstances of the person before me.

  It is impossible for those of us who are free to understand the feelings of a condemned man or woman but I used to hope that they tried to think of good deeds they had done in their lives. We Thais believe the state of mind in which we leave the earth greatly influences our wellbeing in the afterlife. So if you think positively, you are likely to have a better status in this world when you come back. I know it sounds absurd for them to think of anything else besides the pain they were about to experience but I genuinely thought this belief would help them.

  When I was a prisoner escort, I used to explain this idea to those I collected from their cells in the hope that it would calm their minds. It is ironic that such advice came from a messenger of death. What a petty gest
ure of kindness I gave them just minutes before their demise.

  Later, with each execution I performed, I would ask the convicts for forgiveness in my mind and then empty it of negative feelings in order to focus on the duty at hand. I looked to my right to a flag-holding officer to signal to him that I was ready. He lowered the red flag and I sent bullets through the bull’s eye that was placed on the cloth screen to help me take aim. In the blink of an eye, they pierced the heart of the condemned person. A small pool of blood started to form at the base of the cross and some blood splattered onto the sandbags in front of them. The sound of the machine gun, though muffled by a silencer, was amplified as the room fell silent for few moments. Brief croaking sounds ensued as their spirits slowly and painfully departed from bodies.

  They were untied from the cross and put in a room awaiting collection by their relatives the following day. The more fortunate were buried quietly or cremated while the less fortunate ones were simply left there. Their relatives held them in contempt because they had tainted the family name and they decided to humiliate them, even in their death. In such cases, Bang Kwang Central Prison cremates the remains in co-operation with the adjoining Buddhist temple.

  When I was a guide at the Corrections Museum later, the fact that I had been an executioner seemed to add an extra chill to the tour for some visitors. As I explained how the equipment was once used on actual human beings in order to test their innocence, their faces registered disbelief and terror.

  The museum houses equipment for use in torture, restraint, punishment and execution dating back to Ayutthaya era, which ran from 1350 to 1767. There is also prison memorabilia such as the handmade drug-taking apparatus used by prisoners. It was opened in 1939 and, after a few relocations, is now in part of the building that used to be the Bangkok Remand Prison on Mahachai Road.

  As a guide, I felt it was my responsibility to be able to answer questions the visitors had that were beyond the exhibits themselves. So I did extensive study of the history of Thailand’s prisons and judicial system. It helped me to understand the stories behind many of the strange items on display.

  The main exhibition building houses paintings depicting gruesome ancient forms of punishment such as being caged and eaten alive by starved dogs, being burnt alive or being tied to a cross and having one’s skull opened while still alive. These were reserved for those who had committed severe crimes. Three types of whips were used, one of which was said to be soaked in salt water to ensure excruciating pain was inflicted.

  One tactic used to obtain confessions involved making the accused lie down in a small coffin with his hands tied. There were two small air holes in the lid to ensure that the person inside suffered greatly but did not suffocate. To make matters worse, the box was placed under the glaring sun.

  One piece that seems to draw the attention of Thai and foreign visitors alike is a rattan ball called takro. A convict would be made to enter this 80cm diameter ball and assume the foetal position. The ball would then be kicked around by an elephant as the man inside was cut and stabbed by sharp nails sticking into the ball’s interior.

  Another horrifying centrepiece is a hook called bet lek. It looks like a T on a tripod standing slightly taller than a grown man. The T, with a central pivot, has arms that can tilt in the same way a balance does with a pulley and a hook on one arm. The offender was made to stand with his hands tied behind his back while the hook pierced his chin from beneath. The punisher then pulled the rope to gradually lift the hook, leaving the offender with no choice but to stand on his toes while it further dug into the inside of his mouth.

  Looking past the disturbing nature of these exhibits, you will see the progress of civilisations. Torture used to be part of ancient judicial proceedings but societies have abandoned such practices in order to adopt a fairer, more humane approach to punishment.

  Chapter 2

  Ancient justice

  Contrary to what you might expect, however, trial by ordeal and barbaric penalties were not the norm at the dawn of Thai civilization in the Sukhothai era, which ran from 1238 to about 1350.

  At that time, King Ramkhamhaeng the Great, the third monarch of the first kingdom, who is credited as the inventor of the Thai language, allowed his subjects to ring a bell placed at the front of his palace if they wished to have an audience. He would then listen to their complaints and settle disputes between his subjects in person. This shows how close the benevolent king was to his subjects.

  To avoid the threat of an epidemic, King U Thong, the founding king of Thailand’s second kingdom, moved his court to establish a new capital named Ayutthaya in 1350. He succeeded in peacefully taking Sukhothai as a part of his kingdom as a tributary state and declared Theravada Buddhism as the national religion. King U Thong introduced a law based on the Hindu code of conduct called Dharmashastra to govern his kingdom.

  Subsequent kings of Ayutthaya supplemented the Thai legal system by introducing other laws to cover a wide range of human activities as the society became more complex throughout more than 400 years of the kingdom. Ayutthayan laws remained in force until the late 19th century when legal reformation took place in the reign of King Chulalongkorn.

  Under ancient law, judicial procedures involved physical torture. This practice was known as Jareet Nakhonban and the accused would be subjected to torture for crimes they were presumed to have committed. It is likely that innocent people confessed to the bogus accusations levelled against them out of fear of pain and death.

  If they could bring a witness to testify in their favour, however, they might be found innocent. In other words, the defendants had to act as their own attorneys and prove the accusations were unfounded.

  Besides the use of violence during criminal proceedings, I have read many strange accounts of what was lawfully acceptable then. For example, it was legal for parents to assault a man who had sneaked into their house to meet their daughter without their consent. Householders could stab burglars who had broken into their homes. A charge could be brought against those who merely behaved suspiciously. Neighbours would be punished if they themselves couldn’t catch the thieves. This was deemed justified as necessary to keep the peace in the community as it would discourage neighbours from providing a hiding place to thieves. There was no such thing as ‘in dubio pro reo,’ when in doubt, favour the accused, or ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

  The living conditions of prisoners were deplorable. In Du Royaume de Siam, French ambassador Simon de La Loubère described prisoners being confined in cages or pens made of bamboo while completely at the mercy of all kinds of weather. He visited Siam (as Thailand was known until 1939) in 1687 during the reign of Narai the Great, a king who was known for his foreign diplomacy.

  The Frenchman also wrote that trial by ordeal took place in front of an audience. The plaintiff and defendant were subjected to various tests to prove their innocence. Those who showed a higher pain threshold and suffered less physical damage than others were deemed to be telling the truth. For instance, the one whose heel didn’t swell after walking through fire or whose hands were less damaged after putting them into boiling oil would be the righteous one. Likewise the one who could hold their breath underwater longer was the one who spoke the truth, it was reasoned, because divine intervention would be at work protecting the virtuous.

  In a milder test, each of the litigants would be given vomit-inducing medicine and subjected to curses by Buddhist monks. The person who didn’t vomit would be named as the honest one. In the event that both litigants were harmed or both were unharmed, they would have to undergo another test.

  Another account described eight prisons holding men convicted of dacoity (robbery) each with a cell for their respective wives and children in front of them. Ten dacoits (robbers) who had received more lenient sentences would be grouped as one with a neck chain and taken out to do public work. Those who had rec
eived harsher sentences would also be tied together using a neck chain but in groups ranging from twenty to thirty. On Buddhist holy days, these prisoners were sent out to markets to beg for food along with their wives and children, each of whom had two fetters (presumably around their ankles and wrists). They were joined together with a rope tied around their waists. This showed that for some offences the wrongdoers and their families were punished.

  The ancient system, flawed as it was, did have a way to prevent corruption and the miscarriage of justice, to an extent. It is said that if a litigant believed his judge had received a bribe or was colluding with his legal opponent to facilitate an unfavourable verdict, he could petition the royal court or a nobleman of a rank higher than that of the nobleman who had acted as his first judge. The first judge would then become the defendant to the petitioner.

  However, this kind of appeal was not done to reverse the given verdict but to punish corrupt judges, as no legal contest on the same dispute between the litigants would be allowed in a higher court. The judge who was found guilty as charged would have to pay a fine and a court fee for the appellant, and vice versa. In theory, the petition process could be repeated many times up the administrative hierarchy line until the case reached the kings’ ears. In reality, petitioners would give up the fight for fear that their action would result in retaliation from the judges.

  The Ayutthaya era lasted until 1767 when the capital was brought to ruin by the Burmese army. Siam was in chaos until it was reestablished by King Taksin, a military commander born to a Chinese father and a Thai mother, who chose Thonburi, situated across the Chao Phraya River from Bangkok, to be the new capital. He was later declared mentally unstable, supposedly as a result of the toll taken on his mind by being constantly at war. In a rebellion led by Phraya San, King Taksin was deposed and forced to become a monk.