THE CUTTLE TRUCK!! YET ANOTHER FORM OF TORTURE!! 

The bus depicted comically here, but seriously this bus is no joke. The prison bus is built to carry maximum 50 people. Yet 120 prisoners shoved, pushed to get in it or get beaten by the guards.

I was pinned solid between 120 stinking sweat soaked bodies, someone standing on my feet, the bus had no glass windows, only bars, ”unbearable heat” (Like a Cattle Truck), but this truck had a human cargo.

The driver is unconcerned about his cargo, braking hard deliberately. We couldn’t fall because there just wasn’t anywhere to fall; we were jammed together and held each other up.

Going to court is shrouded in brutality and indignity, brown filthy stinking prison uniforms, no underwear or socks and shoes allowed. Shackled if your coming from the prison, handcuffed together in a line of 10 prisoners or more if you’re making your first court appearance from the torture of the police stations.

Most of this article comes from Colin Martin’s account from the book WELCOME TO HELL by Colin Martin, his account is identical to my own experience. His book is spot on and a must read!!

Good luck to you Colin and thanks for making known the vicious tortures and inhumane conditions we all endure here.

THE DOUBLE DECKER CELL OR MONKEY CAGE!!

If you thought the inhumane standard prison cell (15 by 40 feet) in Bombut Narcotics Remand Prison in which I slept on the floor with 66 other prisoners, was inhumane, the double decker cell or monkey cage in building 3 where I did spend 1 hot sleepless night is a true Torture Chamber.

I was one of 120 prisoners rammed into this 15 feet by 40 feet chamber of horrors.

Overcrowding is a major problem in Thailand’s prisons and the evil sadistic prison authorities at Bombut created this. They cut a standard prison cell in half horizontally, leaving Prisoners on both the ground floor and upper floor unable even to stand up straight.

TREATMENT AND CONDITIONS IN THAI PRISONS

I have been in two of Thailand’s prisons! “Bombut Pisset”, a narcotics remand prison, and “Bang Kwang” maximum security prison, on the outskirts of Bangkok where I am imprisoned presently! Bang Kwang, only accepts prisoners whose sentences exceed 30 years.

For any foreign national unlucky enough to experience him or herself being sent down for a term of imprisonment in any of Thailand’s numerous prisons my advice would be to prepare yourself for a horrifying and truly shocking experience.

On arrival at the prison, after a rough ride in a prison bus from the court with many other prisoners, you will all be lined up and ordered to strip naked. Your clothes, meager possessions and naked body will be thoroughly searched.

Any valuables that weren’t stolen from you by the police at the time of your arrest or during the days you were held at the police station, you can now kiss goodbye to at the hands of the greedy prison guards. In fact, just about all the possessions you still had managed to keep up until now will be confiscated by the guards and shared amongst them or given to trusties to squabble over.

If you are unlucky enough to be wearing some decent trousers, say Levi’s or maybe an armarni suit for example. Don’t worry, the guards will not discriminate. A guard roughly bunches up the trouser material in his hands, somewhere roughly above where your knee would be and with one violent slice of a huge butcher’s knife, reduces your armarni or 501’s to a “Robinson Crusoe” style pair of raggedly cut uneven shorts, not even fit for the beach and by now about the only thing left you own.

For some unknown reason prisoners are only permitted to wear shorts and believe it or not, shoes of any kind are not allowed and so these too are stolen by the guards and you are left to wear holes in your socks or hobble on the hot concrete bare footed.

Bombut Pisset is a male remand prison. And so shackles were in everyday use. After the initial search I and all my fellow “new arrivals” were led away to be fitted with our new “Leg Irons” which are manually hammered and then welded around our ankles.

I spent a total of 7 long months in these, although that is nothing compared to some prisoners here in Bang Kwang who have been “hobbled” with shackles for ten years or more. These shackles and chains are not some small linked chain you might use to lock up a bicycle. These are huge linked jobs or “Elephant Chains” as they are called. Where the two ankle shackles and the chain that links them can weigh up to 10kg, 22 pounds. Incidentally, women prisoners are not shackled but conditions and treatment by guards at Lard Yao women’s prison in Bangkok is often worse than the men’s. All Thai prisons are overcrowded and prisoners are locked in their cells large dormitory style cells) from late afternoon until early morning. There are no beds. Prisoners sleep on bare concrete floors. Bedding is not supplied and rough blankets must be purchased from the prison shop but this can only be done by a visitor. A prisoner can not buy a blanket from inside the prison. Quite often a prisoners sleeping space in the cell must also be purchased from the guards or trusties in the cell and is usually paid in packs of cigarettes, the most common prison “currency”.

Hot drinking water is not always available, and when it is, is sold by guards or their trusties so even a hot drink is hard to get without some form of payment. Herein Bangkwang water is heated for drinking and cooking over primitive charcoal stoves which must be purchased by prisoners from the prison shop. There is no hot water provided for washing, showering or laundry. Cold, filthy brown river water is pumped up into a communal trough and is the only water available for showering or laundering clothes.

In Thailand it is essential that prisoners have some sort of financial support from someone outside the prison in order to feed themselves and maintain basic standards of health.

Prisoners are required to pay for all of their everyday needs without exception. Food, drinking water (when available) blankets, clothing, basic toiletries, medicines and even the bowl and spoon to eat with. The prison supplies a pitiful meal once per day which is unfit for human consumption. It usually comprises animal feed graded red rice and a watery soup with a little vegetable matter and maybe a fish head or tail. it is scooped cold from rusted drums brought around on a handcart.

Here in Bangkwang we consider ourselves lucky in that we are able to buy and use, the albeit very primitive, clay bucket stoves fired with charcoal. Fresh produce can be bought from the prison shop but at vastly inflated prices. Sometimes the mark up can be as much as 100% greater than ‘outside’ prices. However, most prisons, including BomBut where I was held in remand do not allow the prisoners to cook and instead force them to purchase pre-made meals which have to be ordered and paid for up to 7 days in advance. The meals are prepared one or two days in advance and stored in plastic bags until being piled high on handcarts and delivered inside to the prisoners, who only have ready made meals or prison food to choose from. There are no other alternatives. Relatives cannot send in food to their loved ones and prisoners with special or religious dietary needs are going to find themselves hungry. The nearest thing to a hot meal in Bombut was eating instant noodles in warmish flask water. It is not unusual to spend 3 or 4 years in Bombut on remand during which time you will never eat a hot meal or take a hot shower. Neither was bottled drinking water available and the prisoners were forced to drink untreated mains water.

Incidentally, Bombut remand usually holds around 5000 prisoners at any one time. When you realize that the ready made meals sold to these prisoners are prepared by a private concern, consisting of many of the prison officers wife’s, it is not difficult to understand why the prison food would, to coin a phrase,’ MAKE A PIG CRY’, a captive market and huge profits on poor quality food is the name of the game in Bombut, and many other prisons besides.

Prisoners constantly suffer health and dental problems due to the combination of poor diet, hot humid weather, bad sanitation and overcrowding. Skin and stomach problems are rife and spread like wildfire in the crowded blocks. Scabies is an old friend.

Much of the medical care is carried out by unqualified prisoners. Doctors are usually failed medical school dropouts or have ‘Mickey Mouse’ qualifications from the university of ‘freeride’.

Free dental treatment, meanwhile, is limited to tooth extractions, again by unqualified prisoners and any other treatment is costly and can take months to arrange.

If you are lucky enough to get to see one of these so called ‘Doctors’ (quite often a prison officer dressed in a white coat) you will have to tell him which medicine he should prescribe for your particular problem and then you will have to post the prescription outside of the prison to a person who is willing to collect it and deliver it back to the prison. This process can often take weeks before your suffering is alleviated. Medicines supplied by the prisons are of very limited use and are usually low quality generic types, copies that are cheap and of little medical value.

Money, that is, cash money is essential in a Thai prison. Yet possession of cash is illegal and a punishable offence (which is convenient for the guards when they want to relieve you of a little of it). Here in Bangkwang, cash is considered contraband. Yet every day an officer will be around with a barrow full of fresh vegetables to sell to prisoners for cash, and at exorbitant prices. To buy fresh food cooked inside our building here, we must pay cash. If someone gets sent a parcel, they must pay (with cash) for a guard to collect it from the local post office, even though the sender has paid the correct postage to have the parcel delivered to the prison. To say corruption is rife in the Thai prison system would be to make a gross understatement.

Everything here is of such poor quality, bad condition or limited in availability that a prisoner must seek alternatives to have any small quality of life. The system is deliberately designed that way so that prisoners are forced to hand over what little funds they posses. For example, prison food is of such low quality and dietary value so as to force prisoners to buy an alternative to keep themselves reasonably healthy and which is only available through purchase from prison officers ‘other’ business. The prison shop in Bangkwang is owned exclusively by the Directors of Bangkwang’s wife, who has no qualms about selling poor quality goods at over inflated prices to a captive market without a choice. Her latest bargain is providing copy cigarettes to prisoners at the genuine brand price.

It’s not only the prison system that is designed to suck every last penny out of you, regardless of the human suffering. Every step of the dreadful way, from the time of your arrest by the police, through the court system, and everyday you spend in Thai prison you are stolen from, deprived of, cheated or have the shirt removed from your back in some form or another.

WELCOME TO THAI PRISON. STAND AND DELIVER!!