Living in such appallingly overcrowded conditions as we do in Bangkwang it was always clearly only a matter of time before we would see a serious outbreak of sickness or disease amongst the 5000 prisoner population. Our fears took on reality when in the first week of September over half of that population were struck down in a matter of days with a chronic round of sickness. A bad situation made worse by the prisons pathetically inadequate medical facilities and staff whom were almost brought to their knees by this crisis

The sickness, with similar symptoms to Dysentery and believed to have originated from the filthy untreated river water we are forced to use here, claimed its first victims at around lunchtime on September the 4^th. People began to complain about feeling sick and as the afternoon wore on a large queue developed at the yard toilets as people were struck down with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea over and over again.

 I myself was one of the first of those unlucky enough to succumb to the sudden illness. Having felt fine up until lunchtime, I was within an hour or so reduced to a quivering mess with high temperature and fever, squatting over the hole with my bowel going into spasm’s. I soon became aware that I was not the only victim and later when I sprinted over to the open sewer that runs round the compound in order to vomit I noticed that at least 3 or 4 other prisoners had beat me to it and were already busy spewing the remains of their lunch into the same filthy mess.

By 3:30pm and “Lockdown” it was all I could do to drag myself into the block and up the stone stairway to our cell, seeming to have ejected my energy reserve along with all the other solids and liquids out of my backside. All I wanted to do was lay on the cell floor and sleep but was kept awake for the entire 17 hour “Lockdown” by an agonizing night of cramps, squatting over the toilet, even though by this time I must have been completely ‘empty’. The fear of shitting myself whilst asleep was enough to keep my eyes open and my concentration focused. It was fortunate that I was the only one in our cell to have gone down with this sickness as two or more men fighting over the same hole would certainly have meant a very messy and unpleasant night for at least one of them!

I’ve never been so glad to be unlocked and let out of the cell as I was that morning and after cleaning myself up and a change of clothes I reported sick and requested a visit to the prison hospital. By the time we were called to gather at the building gate over 40 prisoners had also reported sick having spent the night in agony on the toilet just as I had.

What a sorry bunch of sick buggers we must have looked as we shuffled and dragged our heavy feet in an untidy rabble on the 500yard walk through the prison to the ancient hospital building, one or two stragglers being chastised en route by an officer for stopping to vomit down a storm drain at the side of the track.

As can only be expected by the sorry outfit that calls itself the Bangkwang Medical Department, the hospital had not been forewarned or briefed of the situation and on our arrival there it was explained that there wasn’t actually any doctors on duty and that we would have to wait until someone showed up, though nobody could say for sure when exactly that would be.

We laid around, curling up on the waiting area benches, 40 or more of us in various stages of the sickness and some frequently darting off to the hole in the ground toilet in the hospital yard. As an hour passed, and then another, our numbers were swelled by groups of sick prisoners arriving from other buildings and soon there must have been 80 or more of us but still no doctor in sight. One of the nurses eventually drummed up the initiative to start giving each of us a brief examination taking written notes but this was soon abandoned in favor of issuing every sick prisoner with two sachets of Electrolyte and eight Paracetamol tablets each and sending us back to our buildings. The doctor had not showed and without his consent the hospital was unable to prescribe us any stronger medicines, so that was the extent of our treatment that day. Over the next few days hundreds more prisoners went down with this crippling sickness and by Friday of that week over half of this building population of 860 men had succumbed. I had decided that another trip to the hospital was a waste of time and instead tried to manage my own sickness using medicines that I had acquired and kept safely for just such an event. Meanwhile reports from prisoners returning from a morning trip to the hospital told of an overwhelmed medical staff, a rammed ward of sick interns, a tight almost miserly control over issue of medicines and a complete lack of a professional diagnosis as to the cause of the outbreak.

Announcements were made telling us that all drinking water should be boiled and no food should be prepared using untreated water. But we have always imposed these rules on ourselves as a matter of course and self preservation anyway and the announcement did little or nothing to help those already suffering the illness.

A building allocating its sick prisoners more than one day a week to attend the hospital is unprecedented but all that week and more surprisingly over the weekend the hospital was attended by the sick from any building. The hospital was already creaking under the weight of its responsibilities and were not encouraged by the news that some of its staff had started deliberately shying off work and staying at home for fear of going down with what still remained an essentially ‘Mystery’ illness themselves. It doesn’t add up to good news when you know that the individuals whose job it is to care for the sick are too scared to come to work.

By Sunday, although the medical department had not yet identified the exact illness they were dealing with, they did initiate a program of injecting new patients with a broad Anti-biotic but by this time the sickness had started to slow down in its onslaught anyway, seeming to have ran its natural course and the number of new patients dwindled as the days passed.

Although many prisoners, infact the frightening proportion of almost half of Bangkwangs population spent several days suffering this chronic bout of sickness, all have thankfully recovered and there has been no lasting after – effects. However, it did demonstrate to us what we have assumed all along; that a bout of sickness or epidemic of disease such as this, when it came, would be uncontrollable and would tear through the prison population like wildfire as a direct result of the chronic overcrowding and appalling filth here. The medical dept. was grossly unprepared, understaffed and completely overwhelmed this time round and god forbid when next time comes, as it is sure to do, they will not have done a thing to improve their inadequate preparation or response. Next time more serious illness could very easily result in deaths, a lot of them, but by then it will be too late. I hope I’m not around when it happens.

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BULLETS FLY AS TWO PRISONERS SHOT DEAD

The morning of the 20^th will be remembered by us, more for a highly charged though unrelated event that took place just yards away, rather than the military takeover unfolding outside.

Nonthaburi prison is the local equivalent of a county jail and serves the province of Nonthaburi by housing local prisoners with sentences of not more than 15 years. Although it is a separate entity from Bangkwang it is actually part of the larger complex. The rear of Bangkwang buildings four, five and six share a common wall with Nonthaburi prison and although we cannot see its prisoners we often hear them in their exercise yard on the other side of our wall and we can see the upper stories and roofs of their cell blocks.

At around 9.30am on the first full day of the Coup we were sitting in the yard on our side of the wall sipping bitter coffee and discussing the events unfolding in Bangkok and across the country when our attention was drawn by loud voices and some sort of disturbance coming from the other side. The shouting slowly increased in intensity until it became obvious that something quite serious was going on although we couldn’t see what. After ten minutes or so the noise was that of an angry mob or demonstration. There was jeering and shouting and by this time a few of the guards from  our building had moved up towards the wall ordering us to move back and nervously scanning the razor wire on the walls upper edge 20 feet above the ground.

 

Suddenly the shouts were punctuated by several loud and intermittent reports which caused hundreds of pigeons on the building rooftops to flap alarmingly into the air and fly off. My fellow prisoners looked at each other somewhat perplexed but my blood had already run cold in the certainty that what I’d just heard was gunfire. The shots continued and we could hear the sudden panic and chaos amongst those on the other side of the wall. I jumped up on a bench to try and get a look at what was going on but the wall was just to high and instead all I saw was a couple of ricochets off of the top, the bullets making a loud smacking sound and throwing up little puffs of concrete dust as they were deflected some 5 meters from where we stood.

We backed away from the wall and looked around for anyone who looked as though they knew what was going on but it was impossible for anyone around us to know for sure because of the wall blocking the view. Only the group of guards gathered atop Bangkwangs infamous Landmark, the central tower could have seen events unfolding over the wall. The sunlight glinted off the lenses of their infra-red binoculars as they were joined by two snipers kneeling and aiming their high powered rifles with telescopic sights down toward our position, preparing incase the violence spilled over into our side of the wall.

The intermittent gunfire continued on and off for several more minutes as did the panicked cries of those trying to dodge the bullets, eventually subsiding until all that could be heard were individual screams as people were subdued and beaten with batons. Then there was silence.

Later that day we learned what happened. The whole thing was started as a peaceful protest by prisoners over their ill treatment by one of the guards. Only the week before a similar protest by prisoners in Nakon Thammarat Provincial Prison complaining over violent beatings by some of the guards ended peacefully when the prisoners demands to have the officers responsible for the brutality relieved of their positions was met by order of the Director General, department of corrections. Perhaps it was this incident, reported nationally in the media that had encouraged inmates in Nonthaburi Prison to try to address some of their own concerns. It is hard to find out exactly what had triggered their protest that morning, but the day was to end entirely differently from that of those prisoners in the South a week before.

 

The protest had become heated and angry when the authorities refused to listen to their concerns and guards had been ordered in to break up the gathering. In the ensuing scuffle one of the guards had been roughed up by some of the prisoners. It is understood that this particular guard was one of those that had been accused of ill treatment and violence toward the prisoners which had caused the protest in the first place. In a huge over reaction to this incident the other guards had re-grouped at the gatehouse, drawn weapons and begun to fire indiscriminately into the assembled prisoners. Panic had immediately taken hold and chaos ensued as prisoners had darted in every direction to try to avoid being shot by the ill trained and poorly disciplined guards.

 

Two prisoners were shot dead and another twenty or more wounded. Many more were hospitalized by beatings as the guards, their numbers now strengthened by a large group of colleagues sent from Bangkwang, re-established control over the unarmed prisoners.

 

The official press release from the Director of Nonthaburi Prison was a classic cover –up as is always the case in Thailand when a prisoner or prisoners die at the hands of the authorities. It was announced that the two dead were shot lawfully by guards whilst ‘Trying to Escape’. The dead prisoner’s names were not made public but their crimes were, as if to justify their deaths even more. The 20 or more wounded prisoners were not mentioned and actually the entire incident was only reported in the National Media once, the story being swallowed up by the much larger news of the Coup D’etat gripping the nation. No questions were asked and the whole thing was neatly forgotten by the next day, except of course by the dead men’s families and loved ones. I do have a few questions myself though, such as why anyone in their right mind would want to escape from prison on a day when a curfew had been announced and martial law declared?

If they’d have escaped the only people roaming the streets outside would have been camouflage clad soldiers with itchy fingers on the triggers of their M16’s and tanks on every other street corner. Not the best time, you’d have thought to be mooching the streets in shackles and prison duds!

Then, there is the actual shooting. If the two dead men were ‘attempting to escape’, what in gods name were the 20 plus wounded trying to do? Give the first two blocks a ‘leg up’ perhaps? Or maybe they were trying to dig a last minute tunnel? Convenient was it not that none of the wounded were mentioned in the official press release.

Furthermore, anyone with an even cursory knowledge of firearms will know that it would take a marksman of exceptional skill and nerve, with a very high quality weapon at his fingertips to shoot dead two particular individuals amongst a group of perhaps many hundred (Nonthaburi houses one thousand inmates) exchange the marksman’s rifle for a standard issue, department of corrections 38 police automatic and the task becomes impossible. Replace the marksman with an undisciplined rabble of Thai prison guards and you’ve got yourself a ‘Turkey Shoot’ for that is what happened here. A poorly trained, ill disciplined and highly excited number of glorified caretakers opened fire on a group of unarmed prisoners running for their lives. The only things the two unfortunate bastards who were killed were escaping from were the bullets that ultimately cut them down. The next morning in this building we were walking the yard, we came across a guard surrounded by a group of ‘Arse- kissing’ prisoners who were hanging on his every word, and we stopped to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe he had news of the Coup of which we were anxious to hear details. Imagine our utter disgust when we realized what was going on. It turns out that this particular guard had been one of those sent over to assist in the disturbance in Nonthaburi prison the day before. Here he was relating his tales of ‘Daring- Do’ to the assembled group of enraptured Thai inmates. It was all they could do to stop themselves giving this animal a round of applause as he proudly described and acted out how he had so bravely waded in and smashed the skulls of fleeing prisoners using his baton already suitably impressed it seems by his excited descriptions of his courageous attack on a bunch of their fellow inmates, the attendant bunch of slimy arsewipes were then given an extra special treat. The ‘Superhero’ guard reached into his fatigues pocket, pulled out a Polaroid snap and passed it around waiting for appraisal. I managed to catch a quick glimpse and was suddenly never closer to violence towards this scum than I was right then.

The photo showed the guard, smiling for the camera, arms folded with one booted foot resting on the back of a blood soaked prisoner lying on his front, his wrists held behind him with cable ties and a face who’s features were unrecognizable having been crushed under the blows of a guards baton.

A cold can of Pepsi was hastily brought for the guard and his cigarette was lit for him as he gloated over the crowd of Thai inmates who were smiling and looking at this pig with genuine admiration. As his sick trophy was passed amongst them and they nodded their approval.

We walked on in astounded, disgusted silence. Our thoughts going into overtime with sheer dismay. Didn’t they realize that the sorry looking horror story in the photograph could quite easily have been one of them?