Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (83 page)

As with so many things in life, good things never last too long. In prison, things could change from one moment to the next. Not too long after Flea got busted, around midday one day a group of three Thai civilians, dressed casually and accompanied by Veesarnou, were seen walking around the building. They were looking up at the roof. Then they went into the cells. The office clerk, Keng, who was my friend, was well informed of everything that was happening in the building, so I went and sat around outside the office, hoping that he would make conversation with me. When he saw me, he came over and asked, ‘Whatz up?’ This was what he always said. ‘
Min dun
’ (The same), I replied. Then, switching to English, I pointed to Veesarnou’s group, who seemed to have finished their surveillance, and asked what was going on.

Keng told me they were installing signal blockers, which meant we would soon be unable to use our mobiles. News travelled around the building like wildfire. The dog handlers were devastated. Within a week, machines were installed outside every third room, in the corridor in the centre of the ceiling, and also at three-room intervals on every corner of the building just under the roof. In no time, the system was up and running. The prices of mobile phones dropped dramatically. There was no way you could get a signal inside the cell, but outside and away from the building, down the other end where Chinatown was, one could still bark the dog. The property prices on that side immediately shot up. The houses were open and only small walls divided one from the other. It was risky, though, because anybody walking past could see what you were doing. Mikhail had his place there, and he would climb right into his locker (a small cupboard), close the door and use the dog in there. It was a tight squeeze and very uncomfortable, especially with the heat. Shlomo also had a house there and was kind enough to allow me to use the dog in the event of an emergency. For me, the risk was too high, and from then on it was only occasionally, maybe on a Saturday, that I would call my sister. Fortunately, I still had my two five-minute calls a week at the office.

Some of the dog handlers would still bring their dogs to the cell every night, hoping that by some miracle they could get a signal, but it was no use. To be suddenly cut off from the outside world was quite traumatic for us. The atmosphere became tense and the dog handlers walked around with long faces. Arguments broke out and led to fistfights.

The signal blockers were housed in protective boxes. Each machine had a green light and a red light. Red meant the machine was not working, and green that it was. If both lights were on at the same time, it meant the machine was faulty.

There is always a positive side to every negative. With the installation of the signal blockers came benefits, one of which was that I started to get a good night’s sleep. Another was that I was no longer putting myself at risk of being caught on a mobile phone, and, instead of spending all night texting, I got back into reading books. There was only so much TV I could watch.

After about three months, the system started to break down. As if by a miracle, the red and green lights kept coming on at the same time, and this allowed us to reconnect with our families.

At 3.30pm, the usual time for lockdown, when we entered the cells a guard and two Blue Shirts would stand at the door. One by one, they would check our things. Prisoners carried their food in steel
pinto
s, and plastic bags were filled with items they planned to use to pass the time during the night, which might include listening to music on an MP3 player or watching a DVD. Regardless of our choice of entertainment, our things were all thoroughly searched. Some guards were lazy and would let you pass without checking, and it was always prudent to find out who was on the evening shift. If it was one of the more stringent guards, one who liked to conduct a full body search, for example, then I wouldn’t risk walking the dog.

Watching movies was always a favourite pastime for most of the foreigners, and this led to the formation of a movie club. My DVD collection now stood at well over 600 titles. I also loved a good series. My all-time favourites were
The Sopranos
,
Prison Break
and
Heroes
, although
Heroes
kind of lost the plot by season two. One or two guys had DVD machines that you could hire for a night for 100 Thai baht, including a movie. Almost every day I had people come and ask if they could borrow my DVDs. I gave them with pleasure, the only condition being that they looked after them and made sure they didn’t get scratched. As always, though, there were those who would abuse the privilege, and these guys got blacklisted.

One thing that was impossible to avoid in prison was swearing. Every second word that came out of your mouth was ‘fuck’ or ‘motherfucker’. We prisoners were an embittered species and swearing somehow empowered us and made us feel better about ourselves. It was our way of keeping the hatred and anger alive. As I evolved spiritually, this became a real concern to me. My new year’s resolution would invariably be to stop swearing, but actually, if the truth be told, this was more difficult even than stopping smoking. They say effort produces results, but only time would prove whether that was true.

Changing times kept biting us in the arse. Another new Director, who liked to be referred to as Commander Sophon Thitithammapruek, had somehow heard about our illegal satellite TV, and an order was sent to our Building Chief to remove and break both the decoder and the satellite dish. The guards from our building were not very happy about this, as they also enjoyed watching TV during their night shifts, but there was nothing to be done but obey the order. The Blue Shirts were given the honour of breaking our dish and smashing the decoders. Life after that became unpleasant, especially for us football fans, who avidly followed European football and the English Premier League. We were locked up in our cells for over 15 hours a day, and boredom and depression walked hand in hand. The nights were hot and long. I had watched many of my own movies more than once. Shlomo and I organised more of the latest movies and TV series to be sent to us from home. Our families would send the discs to one of the guards I’d befriended, and he would smuggle them in for us for a fee. Whenever I watched, I would connect the main TV to my own so that everybody else could watch, too.

Sophon was also a bit of a nutcase. He began to use the closed-circuit TV to broadcast his multiple rules and regulations. During the day, his voice could be heard booming over the loudspeakers and on all the TVs. When you asked any Thai who watched what he was saying, they all responded, ‘
Mai sumkan
’ (Not important). Anyway, Sophon kept tightening the screws, and everyone agreed he needed to be stopped.

Building 1 had by then been reduced to rubble, but work had suddenly been suspended. Once again, Thais and foreigners alike appealed to me to petition the Commander to have the UBC satellite TV installed legally through the prison. I drafted a letter and distributed a copy to every building, instructing the prisoners to collect as many signatures as possible. The plan was that we would all submit our petitions on the same day.

13 October 2004

The Commander

Mr Sophon Thitithammapruek

Bangkwang Central

Dear Sir

We the foreign and Thai inmates in Building 2 are appealing to you for your consideration, to please allow the reintroduction of some of the UBC channels on the Bangkwang cable TV. Primarily we are asking for a news channel, either BBC or CNN, and a movie and sports channel. Since your inauguration you have instituted many changes, making life increasingly difficult for all prisoners. There have been three stress-related deaths and one murder in Building 2 alone, all a direct result of these changes. The prison is over-crowded, tensions are running high, we still don’t have clean running water to shower with. The coffee shops are continuously without stock and we are unable to supply our daily needs. The prison does not provide any official rehabilitational programmes to prevent the mental and physical deterioration of prisoners, nor any organised events or representational forums to air our grievances. We cannot follow any of the local Thai TV networks because of the language barriers. UBC was the only form of entertainment that enabled us to pass time without going crazy. How many more prisoners must die before you ease the pressure and begin to meet the United Nations minimum requirement regulations for prisoners? Must we keep reminding you that we are serving life sentences; we are not short-term prisoners. We kindly ask you for your understanding and to allow UBC to be transmitted to all buildings for the benefit of everyone, as well as the Thai inmates, many in number, who are trying to learn to speak English. We are also calling on you to introduce medical emergency procedures, to supply proper medical equipment due to all the buildings, to train prisoners in CPR and other emergency procedures to prevent further avoidable fatalities. You don’t even have an emergency fire evacuation plan. Unless we start seeing some improvements to our living conditions and an easing of the unrelenting pressure you have imposed, we will be compelled to petition for your resignation and early retirement.

Discontented foreign and Thai inmates

Building 2

A month after submitting our petition to have the satellite TV reinstated, we were informed that the Ministry of Education would donate all the equipment to get the satellite TV up and running. Not even two months later, four big satellite dishes were erected in Building 14 and every building was hooked up. We foreigners were given an English movie channel and a series channel. The others were all in Thai. There was also the National Geographic channel and a sports channel. Even though the guards operated and monopolised the satellite TV, this was a huge victory.

In the middle of 2005 the Department of Corrections ordered the seizure of all electronics. We had to bag and tag everything and give them up. Even our frying pans had to be handed in. The reason for this was that, apparently, the electricity bill was far too high. This was a big blow. Without our electronics, life would be sheer hell. Even in prison we had grown to take things for granted. Now that we were going to be deprived of these simple luxuries, everybody panicked. We felt we had no choice but to fight for our rights, and to remind the prison authorities that even though we were the prisoners, we also had power in our numbers. The last thing they could afford was a riot.

Towards the end of July, I drafted one of my by now famous petitions, addressed to the director-general of the Department of Corrections, requesting the restoration of our rights to use electronic equipment. My tone was respectful, as usual, but I also threw in the not very thinly veiled threat of letting our embassies, the media and human rights organisations know about this latest indignity.

Eddie Tutin, our self-proclaimed French Jew, had become a Blue Shirt. For the past four years he had been in and out of hospital, after having been wrongly diagnosed, not once but three times, with tuberculosis. He began losing a lot of weight and complained of severe chest pains. He was eventually sent to the police hospital, where they detected cancer in its final stages. He was brought back to Bangkwang, but his condition had deteriorated to the extent that there was nothing that could be done for him. Too weak to survive in a general population, Eddie was admitted to hospital, where he would take his last breath and succumb to the unrelenting clutches of cancer. A fellow Frenchman volunteered to nurse him in those final stages, when even Eddie’s bowel movements were beyond his control. His embassy had done nothing to repatriate him. I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Eddie. He had stooped too low when he became a Blue Shirt. He worked for the prison authorities and had become an informer. Yes, fate might have dealt him a cruel hand as far as his health went, but such is life – you reap what you sow.