A Secret History of the Bangkok Hilton (2 page)

Chapter 1

The Last executioner

In Thailand, many people call me ‘the last executioner’. That is because in the 20 years I spent in that role, I pulled the trigger more often than any of my colleagues, shooting 55 people dead. With the sub machine gun firmly in my hands, I fully acknowledged the human beings before me whose lives I was about to take. Although there was a cloth screen between us offering me some ease, the bullets I fired ruptured the hearts of those who had been condemned to death.

Today capital punishment is carried out by lethal injection in Thailand. Three executioners send deadly chemicals from another room through a tube connected to the arm of a strapped-down convict. Some Thais consider this method not enough of a deterrent, however, as the condemned person does not suffer real pain. The executioners are viewed as administrators of a medical procedure instead of as fearful figures. That was not the case when I was the executioner.

You could say that I had no one to blame but myself for landing this unpleasant title. My first job at Bang Kwang was as a prison guard. Later I became a death row prisoner escort, then the gun adjuster and, finally, the executioner.

I eagerly accepted the chance to be part of the execution team, to show my superiors that I could carry out undesirable tasks and be a valued staff member. Perhaps I could have refused to do it but somebody had to and it happened to be me. I took it as a job and my intention was pure: to carry out court orders and not to take pleasure in killing anybody. Besides, I didn’t want to risk offending my superiors by refusing their requests. When each new warden asked me to carry out this task, I did not refuse as he might take it personally, because I had obliged the wardens that went before him.

On the day of an execution, I would go home earlier than usual for a short rest and to get ready. Tew, my wife, picked up on this pattern but usually my silence spoke volumes and she went about the household chores. Later, she would ask resignedly, ‘You did one today?’

The execution order had to be carried out confidentially so I never discussed it with her. She could read about it in the next day’s newspaper anyway.

For years, she hoped I would give up this extra, undesirable job. She was concerned about my karmic wellbeing as well as my aging body. So after capital punishment by lethal injection was introduced, she dragged me to do merit-making rituals at various temples, buying cows to save from slaughterhouses, and also urged me to be ordained a monk, which I did.

In Buddhism, to take a life is a sin. And yes, I have sinned. However, given my pure intention, I hope karma will be kinder to me. I guess, if you look at it from a different angle, you could say that I helped to speed up karma’s work.

In later years, I caught myself sighing deeply with pity, increasingly feeling sorry for those whose lives I was about to cut short. Some of them wailed, pleaded or protested their innocence loudly until the very last minutes of their lives. Others walked to their deaths calmly or even boasted about the number of people they had killed as they were tied to the cross with their backs towards me.

I remember how one man, named Daengyik, begged us for a little more time even as we tied him down to be shot.

‘Please, please wait. My mother is talking with the bigwigs. She knows people in the government. She’ll come to help me.
Mae
(mother) please help me! I don’t want to die,’ he said.

His pathetic cries stuck in my mind because they made me wonder whether a condemned person outside Thailand would say something like that. It showed how common the practice of pulling strings is in this country. Making use of contacts can get you a job, a place at a prestigious school or the chance to have your life spared —regardless of whether you deserve it or not.

His pleas fell on deaf ears. Had I not known of his crimes, I might have felt sorry for this grown man who was reduced to crying like a baby. Daengyik’s three-man gang of pick-pockets had committed shocking crimes, however, and the military government had ordered summary execution.

They were arrested after one gang member killed a man who had alerted an unsuspecting female that they were trying to steal from her shoulder bag as they all rode a public bus. Enraged, two members of the gang, though not Daengyik, attacked him. One of the thieves grabbed him by his collar while the other stabbed him in the heart in front of the petrified passengers. The gang of three fled unhampered.

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 gesture 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.