By Warren Fellows

Double Cell in Bumbud

JUNE NEWS !!

The Damage Done

Greetings Readers,

                            As of June 30^th almost ten weeks to the day has passed since the two High Court Judges reserved their Judgment on my appeal. With only two weeks remaining for the Judgment to be delivered, these are sure anxious times.

Like I said last month no news is good news, but talk about taking it to the wire, they are sure getting their pound of sweat. Enough said on the subject as it’s really driving me crazy.

 

With my mind so preoccupied with this forthcoming Judgment and no idea what to say to you all this month. Let me give you a few quotes etc from the book that really put Bangkwang Prison (The Bangkok Hilton), (The Big Tiger) whatever you want to call it. “The proper title is Bangkwang”, and just about every Prison in Bangkok claims to be called the Bangkok Hilton. “On the MAP” Who am I to say where the title belongs, but my money would be on the infamous Bangkwang.

Anyway the book that made all Bangkok’s Prisons infamous:-

 

The Damage Done by Warren Fellows

I remember reading this book about 3 years or so before my arrest and imprisonment in Thailand.

I could hardly believe some of horrific accounts that Warren describes. I clearly remember thinking “God I pray I never end up there”!

Obviously God ignored my prayers and I followed Warren’s footsteps almost identically through the remand Prison Bumbud as Warren spells and pronounces it, I followed Warren to the very same building within that Prison building 4. And then after a year and a half in Bombud, once sentenced I was transferred to Bangkwang and again into building 6 the very same building Warren was in. In fact there where still Thai prisoners in building 6 who knew him and were with him way back in 1978 when they were first incarcerated together. Incredibly over 29 years had passed and these Thai prisoners were still serving the same original sentence given to them in 1978, now was 2007. Scary or what?, you normally need a 30 plus year sentence to get into Bangkwang.

I must say despite its notorious and infamous reputation I found Bangkwang so so much better than the remand prison Bumbud which was really everything in your worst nightmare you can imagine a Thai prison to be.

All accounts from every Thai and foreign national prisoner I met in my 3 year stay at Bangkwang prison, everybody agreed Bangkwang prison was by far the best in the country. Saying that though things, conditions etc etc were far from humane and in many ways horrendous compared to English standards, yet it still had by far the worst reputation amongst prisons within Thailand outside the walls of Bangkwang itself

As in any prison things, conditions etc etc can change rapidly and vary year to year and prison governor to prison governor, especially in Thailand he has a major impact on just how endurable any Thai prison is to a prisoner there.

Okay a bit about the book and a few quotes from it:-

 

The Damage Done by Warren Fellows

ISBN 1-84018-275-X Mainstream Publishing

‘A grueling cautionary tale reminiscent of Midnight Express’

Twelve years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison.

Think about the most wretched day of your Life. Maybe it was when someone you loved died, or when you were badly hurt in a accident, or a day when you were so terrified you could scarcely bear it. Now imagine 4<000 of those days in one big chunk.

In 1978 Warren Fellows was convicted in Thailand. The Damage Done is his story of an unthinkable nightmare in a place where sewer rats and cockroaches are the only nutritious food, and where the worst punishment is the khun deo – solitary confinement, Thai style.

Fellows was certainly guilty of his crime, but he endured and survived human-rights abuses beyond imagination.

This is not his plea for forgiveness, nor his denial of guilt; it is the story of an ordeal that no one would wish on their worst enemy. It is an essential read! Heartbreaking, fascinating and impossible to put down.

‘Fellows admits he was caught bang-to-rights, but even the most hardened criminal would appear an innocent inside the barbaric prison system he subsequently endures. The picture that builds is gross, horrific contemporary version of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch…

If you’ve ever had as much as a spliff on a Ko Samui beach, you must read this book’

             James Brown GQ

Here’s some quotes from the book:-

 

‘I often hear people talking about how prisoners have it easy inside: they have televisions and Live in ‘Luxury’! The thing people don’t realize is that it is not appliances and simple comforts that give people their freedom, but the ability to exercise options. To ear when you want to, shower when you want to, go for a walk or talk to a particular person late at night. These are the things you really notice when they are taken away from you. Your freedom to make Decisions based on what you want is the only thing that sets you apart from an animal in a zoo. To have this taken away from you by someone you’ve never seen before and who, really, has no more of a moral right than you to act on his personal dislike for you, seems just too outrageous to bear. And this prison – these vaults in Thailand – are the most notorious robbers of human dignity in the World’!

 

‘In here all opposites were negatives. The opposite to suffering was not Joy, but a kind of calm sadness. The opposite to pain was not pleasure, but simply no pain. Boredom was not replaced by excitement, but fear. For me, there was nothing positive about Life any more’!

 

‘When you incarcerate someone guilty or not, you incarcerate the innocents who love them, and there are always such people.

The most vile murderer of all time had a mother.

End of Quotes!

I can so relate obviously to the above!

I wonder where you are now Warren?

I will now finish with another one liner, can’t for the Life of me remember where I noted it down from a week or so back on this note book cover in front of me now. I remember it felt so relevant at that time:-

‘For the triumph of evil it is only necessary for good men to do nothing’!

 

Love you and leave you

                          Dear friends Steve Willcox