By Bert Bratoo
Welcome to this months Newsletter. I must first apologize to our regular readers for the sometimes lengthy delays in getting each month’s letter onto the site. This is due in the main to ‘Technical’ difficulties we have been experiencing when trying to send the finished letter out of the confines of Bangkwang, halfway around the Globe and into Cyberspace. As I am sure you will appreciate there is no easy way of doing this and sometimes our methods must be altered and updated on a monthly basis. We are always on the lookout for new channels to speed up the flow of material but we would ask you to be patient and we will Endeavour to get the information to you as fast as our situation will allow us – Thanks.
So…. October. Well after the previous months dominating stories October has turned out to be a month decidedly void of interesting events. Its difficult to follow a month that included a near epidemic. A military coup and the shooting dead of two prisoners at the hands of prison guards. In comparison October could not have been more uneventful so rather than bore our visitors with mundane descriptions of our tedious daily lives behind bars we felt a slight change of ‘Tack’ in this months letter would be more interesting and to do this we are going to share with you some of the ‘other’ stories from our lives here. These are perhaps some of the less well known happenings and events. Though 100% true all the same. We take them for granted but though that maybe it is important to pass this knowledge on to you out there. Read on……
21st CENTURY PUNISHMENTS
in Rayong Provincial prison on
Other prisons have different methods of punishments. In some, prisoners who have been caught fighting each other are forced to fight again in front of the entire prison population until they drop. If they tire from battering each other to early they will be forced to continue by blueshirts wielding batons. They either fight until they are bruised and bleeding or take a hammering by blueshirts. Elsewhere the problem of inmates fighting is dealt with by chaining the two, three, four or more offenders together by the ankles for several days or weeks until it is deemed they have learnt their lesson. The ‘Chain’ of prisoners must now do everything together. If one needs to go somewhere they all have to follow and that includes squatting for a shit! They must eat and shower together and sleep side by side too. If one of them still insists on fighting then the others are left with no choice but to shut him up. A team effort.
Other punishments vary from prison to prison. I have seen giant wrought iron ‘Chicken’ cages pegged out in the fierce sun where a prisoner under punishment must remain all day without food or water, left to cook in the oven like heat and contemplate his offense.
On another occasion I saw a Thai prisoner beaten brutally across the back by an officer with a 2 inch thick bamboo cane. After the beating he was forced to roll, shirtless, over and over across two lengths of prison yard. The concrete and grit superheated by the sun only added to his agony as did the handful of blueshirts bawling, screaming, kicking and laying into the guy with batons whenever he stopped rolling.
During the 1990’s in Bombut remand prison, a prisoner was beaten to death by guards after they caught him sniffing glue that he had purloined from the furniture making ‘Sweatshop’ which is located in building 8. In a state of collapse after the beating he was taken to the prison hospital but never recovered and died later that day. The beating was quickly covered up and the prisons official line was that this man had suffered some kind of accident in the furniture shop. The body was hastily cremated and the remains returned to the grieving family. How do we know all this? The prisoner’s brother was also beaten that day, but survived. Albeit with some permanent damage that impairs his vision and speech he is still serving alongside us today.
Some punishments are less physical but designed to demean or belittle the offender. Being forced to exercise or masturbate naked in front of hundreds of fellow inmates for some perceived violation at the shower trough; having empty tin cans strung around one ankle which must be then dragged noisily, clattering and banging the prisoner all day while he shouts over and over in Thai at the top of his voice. One can only surmise by the giggling and laughter of the other prisoners and guards that his shouting is something akin to the English exclamation “I am a Wanker!”
Or how about being forced to work up to your waist in human excrement. This detestable job is commonly reserved for offenders. Every few months the cess pits beneath this building become full and start backing up the crude system. The level must be brought down and the only way to do this is by removing the manholes, have people lower themselves down into the filth and start shoveling. Once the covers are off the stench is overpowering and the surface of the waste appears to move but is actually caused by the thousands of Cockroaches feeding on it and scattering from the bright sunlight.
Not a popular job but someone has to do it so usually recent rule breakers or offenders are singled out for the sickening task. They must spend several very unpleasant days up to their tackle in shit. Shoveling it out into barrows from where it will be wheeled to another part of the building and buried. This is a nasty few days for all as the unavoidable stench of shit permeates every corner of the building. The barrows are wheeled, slopping and dripping their load along the buildings main thoroughfares past prisoners preparing or eating food, the shit is trodden everywhere by the prisoner traffic. There is no getting away from it.
Maybe the expression ‘Getting in the shit’ originated in Bangkwang?
‘R’ IS FOR ‘RACISM’
We rarely acknowledge or speak to any of the prison guards here and when we do it is usually by way of a subtle reminder for them to do their jobs properly. Generally though they really aren’t worth the bother. It is a rare occasion that we get a straight answer to a question out of any of them and rarer still that answer will be given willingly or without some outward display of distaste towards us. We keep away from them and they reciprocate.
There are. However, always exceptions to the rule and in our case there is one particular guard whom foreign inmates respect as a man who will speak openly with them without fear of ‘Losing Face’ lowering himself; or whatever it is the other guards seem to be hung up on. He speaks excellent English and is quite at home discussing any number of topics with a foreign prisoner. He seems to have a lot more understanding about how it is to be a foreigner in a Thai prison; and so he should. Over the months and years just about all of us have talked to him and have likely expressed many of our hopes, fears, doubts and wishes in some form or another. He is a likeable bloke, approachable and friendly and a useful source of information compared to other guards who usually only answer with a cold stare and dismissive wave of the hand.
A few weeks ago this particular guard was doing a spot of overtime and was assigned to our building for a Saturday afternoon shift. I was having a conversation with him, talking about Bangkwang in general when the subject swung around to violence and beatings of prisoners at the hands of the guards. And in particular this prison’s poor track record vis-à-vis this topic. The guard went on the defensive insisting that the department of corrections had implemented measures recently to curb unnecessary violence toward prisoners by prison officers, though we have seen little to convince us that this is indeed the case having witnessed beatings both here and in Bombut remand. The guard went on to say that he himself had only ever witnessed two beatings in all the years he had been here. I found that a bit hard to swallow. I thought to myself ‘either he takes a lot of time off work or has been walking round with his eyes shut!’ But I didn’t want to argue this observation with him just as he was opening up so I asked him what those beatings had been for? “Well the first time” he said, “was a guy who had been stealing food from his fellow inmates”…..”He had been caught many times before and this time the guards beat him to show him his mistake”
Nobody likes a thief but I couldn’t help thinking there must have been a better way to teach him a lesson. Besides it was likely that the thief in question was forced into ‘helping himself’ having been left to survive within the prison environment without any family or source of income to support him. A hungry man can do desperate things. Neither did it escape my sense of irony that this thief had copped a beating at the hands of those who have made it a profession to steal from prisoners, the guards themselves, but once again I bit my lip not wanting to piss the guard off. I wanted to hear what the second beating had been for? “the second guy was different. I mean the circumstances were different and I think they were wrong to beat him”. Now I was all ears. “This guy had been caught teaching prisoners from
He had been trying to give the most basic instructions to people whom the guards considered to be, at best, a nuisance and at worst, a threat to Thai society. To most Thai’s the people of the indigenous hill tribes are considered sub-human and so prisoners of hill tribe extraction are treated with down right hatred and contempt by Thai guards and inmates alike.
AND FINALLY……
To round off this month we would like to send an extra special thank you to Carla. A young lady who has been battling away, banging on many a door on our behalves on the legal side of things to try to find some solutions to counter the ‘legal limbo’ our own Government has placed us in.
Her tireless efforts in trying to find some ‘real’ justice for us, and for those who will come behind us are unparalleled bye anyone, and without her we would be far less certain about anything. Thanks must also go to Ollie for his support and encouragement. THANKS GUYS!!
……..See you next month!
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