A Secret History of the Bangkok Hilton

by Chavoret Jaruboon

  The second type is called ‘bury pearls’. The skin is cut, small balls are inserted and it is sewn up again. In the past, the inmates used to break plastic bottle caps into pieces and then rub those bits against the cement floor until they became tiny balls. Now they use ready-made plastic balls. Some inmates are sick enough to ‘bury pearls’ several times. This takes a long time since they have to allow the skin to heal between one insertion and the next. Some make two cuts to put in two balls at once to save time.

  The third kind is called ‘install bud’. The name doesn’t really reflect how it is done. Basically, they make several small cuts on the penis, which turn into scars. This makes the skin uneven and scary-looking.

  Of course, those who make mistakes are permanently disfigured—though not in the way they wanted to be. These ‘operations’ are carried out in secrecy and the equipment is not sanitary. Often they have inflammation and swelling. They cannot wear pants so they wear sarongs while their cuts are healing. The more serious cases are sent to the prison hospital.

  It is beyond me why these inmates choose to mutilate themselves when the prison provides more productive options for them. Those who do these things don’t seem to think that they are harming themselves but see this hideous practice as a way to assert themselves among their peers and to show their bravado.

  Bang Kwang holds the country’s most hardened criminals and tension between them is high as they all try to prove they are the strongest. Clashes are commonplace and often bloody fights erupt, sometimes resulting in death. The attackers are penalised according to the severity of their actions. They may be shackled, put in solitary confinement or refused visitors for one to three months. Those who kill someone inside are prosecuted by the courts and get an additional sentence. Some lifers or death row inmates couldn’t care less if they get another year in jail.

  In general, what the inmates fear most is being downgraded to a lower category. The inmates are classified into six categories according to how well they behave: excellent, very good, good, normal, bad and very bad. Some deserve to be put into a seventh category as they have killed a lot of people. Bang Kwang holds the upgrading test twice every year.

  When a mass royal pardon is handed out, those in the first class will have their sentences cut by half. Those in the second class will get a two-thirds reduction. The third class gets a one-third cut. The fourth class get a quarter off and the bad inmates a fifth. The very bad ones get none.

  In the past, the convicts viewed killers and rapists as the lowest kind and their penalty was to be raped, bullied and looked down upon by their fellow inmates because they were not real men and had committed atrocities against pedmae (mother’s gender).

  Some prisoners got back at their opponents by finding ways to attack them without their knowing. A prison guard told me once that an injured inmate came to him for help with a soft tin box covering his head. As he got closer to him, his nose detected a revolting smell and he could see human excrement dripping from the box. The guard quickly ordered the trustees to remove the box from the man’s head but they were understandably reluctant to do so. The choice of human waste box was obviously to inflict maximum humiliation on his victim.

  The trustees cleaned him up as much as they could. The box was little bigger than the man’s head and there were jagged edges designed to scratch his face as it was being removed. So they carefully and slowly took it off.

  This smelly, vicious attack was a new twist on an old trick. Underhand attackers usually put sacks of thick cloth over the heads of their targets before beating them up instead of having face-to-face fistfights. Obviously, they get away with this because their victims cannot identify who attacked them.

  Not all prisoners are so clever. The afternoon before I was put in charge of the trustees, or the ‘blue shirts’ as they are called by the ordinary inmates in brown, a friendly senior guard named Paisarn called me into his office for a briefing. He told me of a stabbing incident in which a man ran back to his cell after badly wounding a bully. The poor guy held out the homemade knife he had made from a metal rod threateningly while yelling: ‘I’ll fight whoever the heck walks in. I’ll fight!’

  Until this day, I don’t understand why he ran back into his cell. Paisarn was unmoved and coldly called out: ‘Drop your weapon and I promise no one will hurt you. Otherwise I will be forced to teach you a lesson.’

  Standing behind him were blue-shirted inmates who were eager to deliver a hiding on his behalf. Although he was scared, the poor guy kept repeating his pitiful threat. With a nod from Paisarn, the trustees produced thick bamboo sticks and inserted them through the spaces between the bars. They manipulated the sticks deftly to hit him repeatedly. He was smacked around from one side of the cell to the other like a piece of sweat-soaked rag until he gave up with a whimper.

  Paisarn stopped short of revealing what happened next to the man, rolled a cigarette and puffed on it. Then he said: ‘The man may have been wronged by the guy he stabbed for all I care but we have rules here and we need to enforce them. He didn’t drop the weapon so I had to make him.’

  He then told me of a similar incident where the attacker had climbed onto the roof of an outdoor toilet and vowed to fight to the death only to have stones hurled at him by the trustees.

  He continued: ‘You see my point is, some people just need to be hurt first before they can listen to you… and another thing you need to know is to let them be—but not too comfortably. They can complain about how hard their life inside is. Just remind them that this place is designed to punish them and they have no right to demand things because they are the bad guys.’

  So I asked him: ‘What should I do if things get out of hand—like if there is a big gang fight or a riot?’

  He replied: ‘You wouldn’t rub gold onto rough stone, would you? It’s beneath you to get involved. The best policy is to wait until it has cleared. Let the trustees handle the troublemakers. They’re a tough bunch and that’s what they are for. If anyone is hurt or worse, you can always say it was done in the melee by trustees acting outside your orders. This is no game and you can’t be a hero. One guard tried to stop a fight. He got stabbed in the hand and lost the use of it forever. Think about what your wife and children would do if anything should happen to you.’

  I soon came to realise what it felt like to have an army of my own but I was conscious about how I wielded a force that is a double-edged sword. Back then, the trustees were selected from ‘excellent’ class inmates who had a background in military or police service. They had to be well-behaved to be assigned the title.

  Prisoners outnumbered guards dramatically, so the trustees were valuable in keeping control as well as infiltrating criminal activities. I found most of them to be decent people. While they were rewarded with their own less-crowded lodgings and better sentence reductions whenever a mass amnesty took place, they were also the target of attacks by drug-dealers and others who saw them as betraying their own kind.

  After arresting drug-dealers inside, I would be summoned to Nonthaburi court, as the prison is within its jurisdiction. The most common question from the judge was: ‘How does a forbidden substance get smuggled into the prison in the first place? Given the protocol of screening everything, is it possible the prison guards helped to bring it in?’

  I would reply: ‘Your honour, the prisoners still have contact with outsiders and guards. Of these people, surely some do facilitate drug-smuggling.’

  After two young prison guards were arrested for smuggling drugs into the prison, I caught a number of drug-dealers inside using the intelligence they gave me.

  The status of trustees is different now. Their role has been reduced but still inmates vie for the title because of the extra sentence reduction. Some affluent Thai inmates pull strings to become trustees, so they are not necessarily a brutal force any more.

  Certain groups of inmat
es, who are considered to be a different class, are the farang (foreigners). In general, they are left to their own devices and have a place to gather during the day. They read books, write letters and relax. The farangs are considered big complainers in the eyes of the prison guards and they are always finding fault with the living conditions. The African inmates tend to make claims about human rights violations, especially over the use of shackles, as they represent slavery. When dealing with complaints from foreign inmates, obviously the authorities take into account bilateral relations in making any compromises.

  In general, foreign Asian inmates are obedient and don’t complain much. The majority of inmates from Burma, Laos and Cambodia are small-time drug-smugglers who come from poor backgrounds. Inmates of Chinese descent are perceived to be rich from running international drug rings. So they are welcomed by opportunistic guards and inmates alike. They can keep their wealth intact, unlike the Thais whose assets are confiscated unless they have been clever enough to get somebody to buy gold or diamonds.

  Slowly they ask someone on the outside to sell these assets to fund their lives inside. They often receive help and support from their families in the form of money, parcels and visits. Their relatives also send in such traditional Chinese delicacies as shark’s fin, shiitake mushrooms, sea cucumber, fish maw and herbs. Sometimes food parcels arrive with roasted pork, grilled chicken or duck in vacuum bags. The Chinese inmates prepare dishes for the guards to win their approval. Given that they come from similar cultural backgrounds and because of their generosity, they get along well with Thai inmates and guards while westerners and Africans tend to stay within their own groups.

  Spending too many years behind bars can cost inmates their sanity. Several have become mentally instable. One man attacked a guard with a broom until his head bled. Afterwards, he explained: ‘Last night I dreamt he hit me. So when I woke up this morning I decided to take revenge.’

  Speaking of revenge, there are ways the inmates can get back at hated guards without them knowing. To them, the guards can be their saviour or a nightmare. Obviously, the guards who really listen to their problems and settle disputes between prisoners fairly are preferred and are rewarded by having their clothes washed for free or a massage.

  The inmates conceal their resentment for those who make life harder for them. They will still be served coffee but it will have spit in it. A glass of cold water will get a good stir with a penis. Some guards who know that they are in inmates’ bad books take the precautions of ordering only hot water or carrying drinks to work in a thermos.

  Thai prisoners are divided into groups according to where they come from: northerners, southerners, north-easterners. Those from the central region don’t seem to form an obvious group.

  Other groups are based on the type of offence and some types of crime are associated with specific regions. Most drug offenders are northerners or north-easterners as both regions are routes through which narcotics are trafficked into Thailand from neighbouring countries. It is said that hitmen, killers and robbers tend to come from the central region while most of the murderers are from the south.

  Religion also brings some together. The three major beliefs in Bang Kwang are Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Christian and Muslim inmates form obvious groups while the Buddhists don’t. Some Muslims once complained when some of their number converted to Christianity to receive donations, an affront to their faith.

  When they get together, the inmates gain visibility and some protection against bullies, though clashes between different groups often result in injury.

  Most Asian countries don’t have prisoner transfer treaties with Thailand. This results in their nationals having to stay behind bars much longer than western or African ones.

  Control and limiting the rights of convicts are the main priorities in the Bangkok Hilton—after all it is a place of punishment for convicts. The idea of rehabilitation was introduced much later and seems to be bottom of the priority list. In fact, I sometimes wonder if inmates who have served time in the Bangkok Hilton leave as better people or as hardened criminals. Given the number of notorious gang leaders inside, every day is like a crime seminar in there.

  The inmates range from a small-time thieves to crime bosses. All of them have one thing in common: long imprisonment. They have no freedom and are subject to a lot of rules.

  We don’t allow them to use communication

  equipment to contact outsiders. Most of them have no mattresses to sleep on, unless they buy their own. They each have to bid for the most lucrative spot in their respective cells—the farthest from the toilet that is. The toilet is just a three-sided knee-high wall that cannot contain the sound of someone breaking wind. They lie side by side.

  Those who are awaiting trial on drug charges may have to sleep next to a serial killer. There is simply no privacy. There is access to treatment and medicine but don’t bet on getting it quickly. They are searched at least twice a day for ‘prohibited items’, the obvious ones being opium, cannabis, alcohol, alcohol substitutes, gambling apparatus, escape apparatus (which depends on your interpretation), weapons, perishable or intoxicating items, gasoline and explosives. That list is growing by the minute and the prison has a very straightforward way of adding to it. Say, for example, a guard finds a SIM card cleverly hidden in a pizza, then pizza will be banned. Our concern is that they would conduct drug dealing over mobile phones to get yaba into the prisons and sell it to the other prisoners. So the rest of the inmates who innocently crave it can forget about it.

  In general, Thailand operates with a kind of caste system. Your surname, wealth, gender, age, skin colour, education and other factors will be taken into consideration by others. It is like we have a mental calculator to help us evaluate each other according to these criteria. Prison operates in pretty much in the same way even though all inmates more or less should be treated equally.

  So the inmates have to find ways to better their position inside. The route to power is straightforward for Thais, though foreigners have a more complicated approach.

  Generally the big legs use their connections to get their powerful friends to visit them. It is a subtle way to let guards and prisoners alike know they are somebody. After achieving a level of respect from the guards, they start to act as channels of communication between the prisoners and the prison in the regard to donations, complaints and reports from the prisoners. Ordinary inmates pin their hopes on them. When they resolve a problem, they get even more respect from their peers. Though we have taken their freedom they find ways to make life inside more bearable.

  Some big legs who were crime bosses on the outside continue to run similar enterprises inside, offering credit, running gambling dens and selling drugs. Poorer inmates often offer to serve them in the hope that they might secure a dubious job or two at one of their businesses after they are released.

  That’s not to say that Bang Kwang is a safe place. It comes under a lot of scrutiny, however, so violence is less common there than in other less known Thai detention centres such as the one in Pathumthani province.

  In 2009, two siblings of a man who died there while being detained for a minor offence took their plight to the media. Their brother had been arrested for drunk driving. He was instructed to pay a fine of 3,000 baht but he had no money on him so he was sentenced to 15 days in a detention centre in Pathumthani province in late of October. On November 1, the centre called to his workplace to say that he was dead and his co-workers called his family.

  The death certificate said he had suffered internal bleeding in his chest, his ribs were broken and both lungs were torn. Given the horrific injuries, his relatives visited officers at the detention centre to ask what had happened. They claimed he fell as he was walking to the bathroom and when they found him on the floor he was already dead.

  A similar incident had happened at the same detention centre the previous January
. A woman said her husband was beaten to death while in detention.

  ‘My husband was a taxi driver. He was charged with drunk-driving on January 15, 2009. The court gave him seven days in jail and he was sent to the central detention centre for men in Pathumthani. He arrived there on Friday, January 16 to spend his first weekend in jail. On Monday, I was informed by an officer that he had been hospitalised.’

  When she asked what happened, the officer replied that he was found unconscious in the morning and sent to a nearby hospital. At the hospital, she found her husband covered in bruises. It appeared to her that he had been beaten about the head. She called to the centre again and this time the officer said her husband had fallen in the bathroom. Her husband was transferred to another hospital for an x-ray. The result confirmed her worst nightmare. They found huge haemorrhaging in his brain but the surgeon said his body was so badly injured he wouldn’t survive an operation. The doctor told her to prepare herself for the worst. On January 21, 2009, her husband died and the autopsy report revealed that extensive physical damage had been done to the heart, lungs and kidneys. The damage was far too severe to have been brought on by a simple fall.

  I am confident that violence by the guards is a thing of the past at Bang Kwang since all eyes are on it due to its notoriety.

  Chapter 6

  Scapegoats

  Many people have asked me whether I think I have ever executed an innocent person. It is a difficult question and one I feel would be more appropriate to direct to the authorities who went before me in handing down a death penalty. After all, I was just the last link in the chain of the Thai justice system.