For Free

A question often asked me! What does the prison provide for us? If you don’t count the small plastic bowl of cold steamed rice and the inedible fish head watery soup or the like. The prison provides us absolutely nothing for free. That one bowl of soup and rice would not sustain a small cat’s daily nourishment and vitamin requirements to stay healthy. Without food parcels and money sent from family and friends a prisoner would soon become ill from malnutrition here. Staying healthy in a Thai prison even with food and money from outside is a impossible task. Extreme overcrowding, Heat and Humidity, contaminated water with even faecal matter, open sewerage and all round squalid filthy living conditions make diseases and sickness such as :

• Fungal and other skin infections
• Heatstroke and Dehydration
• Diarrhoea is the norm
• Bedbugs, Lice and Scabies is rampant
• Dysentery
• Typhoid fever
• Hepatitis A, B & E
• HIV and Aids
• Cholera
• Diphtheria
• Malaria
• Dengue fever
• Tuberculosis is very common

All these are here and we live along side these people with these conditions.

Thai prison can give you free all those mentioned above, but they don’t give you eating bowls and spoons, clothes, soap, Shit! If you don’t buy your own blankets you sleep on bare concrete, they do not even give treated drinking water. Every single item you need in your daily life here you have to pay for yourself, and the price they charge to buy those items inside here is between 30% - 100% higher than outside in a shop.

 

     

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A normal day in a Thai Prison?

 

A question asked of I, all so many times!.

Could I describe my normal day in a Thai Prison.

Firstly a normal day in a Thai prison would be more appropriately be described or titled:-

 

A Horrifying day in hell!

I am going to try and describe to you as best as my memory will allow me to. “Not easy as my subconscious definitely wants to forget those months”.

A typical day and routine of how everyday was for me, for my first 6 months in a Thai Prison.

Before I start! This short description let me assure you that it captures only a tiny fraction of those horrific months, and you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmares just how it was.

5am: I am awake?, did I really sleep?, Shit! I must have succumbed to sleep.

Again a horrifying realization takes hold as I look around my cell (40 feet long by 15 feet wide), 67 prisoners cram every inch of it (a continuous carpet of bodies).

Disbelief at this unbelievably overcrowded and filthy cell, disgust! My mind can’t accept I am here and this is real!. I don’t want to accept it… please, please let it all be not real, “A Nightmare”, let me wake up now!!

God!! It’s real, “Shit is it so so real”

My whole body ache’s like I’ve never known.

My shirt and shorts are soaked with sweat, the putrid smell and heat in the cell is nauseating.

How can it be so HOT at this early hour just before the sun rises.

15 hours!!, endless hours!!. My 5 foot long by 3 foot wide concrete floor space I share with 2 other people.

We lay, sleep on our sides as we have no choice back to belly like spoons, a tangled sweating mess. I can’t shit in the cell, the only one stinking hole that serves as a toilet for 67 prisoners is at the other end of the cell. With my elephant chains “shackles” weighing about 15 pounds, I have no way to climb over the mass of 66 other bodies, not an inch of floor space is visible!!

Cramps in my stomach, cramps and numbness in every part of my body. Trying not to shit myself, I lay there in agony, praying the guards haven’t over slept and they unlock our cell on time. (7am)

The 2 men I share this tiny space with are awake!,

with great relief I’ am now able to sit up, this only very slightly eases my pain ridden body.

God!!, God!!, please, please unlock the cell so I can stretch my aching wrecked body and also take a shit.

Every last bit of strength I possess is being sapped from me as I struggle to maintain control of my body.

I stare with horror and disbelief at my elephant chains (my shackles a welded permanent part of my body)

2 hours spent the day before polishing them to a chrome like shine has been obliterated over night by the putrid humid heat, (all for nothing) as they are now rusty as all hell again. An orange rust color encircles my ankles where the shackles continuously rub against my skin, scabs have formed overnight on the back of my swollen infected ankles. The slightest movement causes the shackles to cut in and gauge out my flesh.

Nothing in this filth and humidity gets a chance to heal and as soon as I get up to walk, again the shackles will rip off and gauge out the new hard formed scabs.

A rattling and jingling, clanking of 50 or so prisoners shackles heavy duty chains suitable for towing trucks (elephant chains), a deafening noise!!, the saddest of noise that still haunts me today.

Exhausted ghost like depressed faces all around me, awake from another incredibly hot and miserable night.

Grunts and groans as those who cant wait to shit downstairs in the prison yard, walk over and step on the sea of bodies on their way to the awful smell coming from the hole in the ground that serves as a toilet. Everybody has diarrhea, disgusting squirting and loudest inhuman fart sounds imaginable as each prisoner in line takes his turn to squat and squirt the foul brown watery liquid out of them selves.

God!! What a nightmare!!

Scratching at fresh mosquito and red ant bites from last night, I cringe looking at the terrible bites and sores that cover every inch of my skin.

The constant itching and scratching, shit! I feel and must look like a monkey, my skins crawling!!

Almost since arriving in this hell hole, I’ve been on a permanent course of antibiotics and I am still covered in festering bites, let alone the infections in my feet and ankles, from the shackles.

Shit!!. How I want to die!!

Shit!! How nice that would be right now!!

I can’t cope with another day of this!!

What has become of my wife, pregnant, luckily she wasn’t home when the Thai police ransacked our house, what they didn’t steal they confiscated, she’s penniless, shit! Does she have enough food to eat!! A prod from a man next to me whose body is covered with scabs snaps me out of my worries, and he says “you foreigner, no think too much. 8 year you go home”, “you good luck”, I’ve had this conversation a 1000 times with Thai prisoners and don’t have the energy to explain the terms of the UK-Thai prisoner transfer treaty, that to transfer to the UK after 8 years in prison here, is a transfer to a UK prison to serve the rest of your sentence there, not a transfer home to freedom as all Thai prisoners think. So I just look at him and say, “Yes I good luck”.

 

The sound of keys and a guard drags his 3 feet bamboo baton across the bars in front of our cell, we make 4 lines sat crossed legged for the head count, before the blue shirt (Trustee Prisoner) with the keys will unlock our cell, we call out our numbers 1-67. The short shuffled steps our shackles restrict us to make, it’s a chaotic scramble to get out of the door first and down the stairs before the other 669 prisoners as downstairs in the yard are only 10 filthy squalid holes in the ground (toilets) for 670 prisoners to squirt into. I ignore the pain coming from my ankles; my first few steps had already ripped off the dried scabs on the back of my ankles. The shackles cut into my flesh with every step. I’ am lucky I get the last vacant hole, squat down like a dog a filthy dark liquid squirts out of me, such relief, such ecstasy, a swarm of mosquitoes from the hole in the ground are already biting into every bit of bare flesh. There’s no door or privacy of any kind around the toilet, an endless queue has already formed in front of every toilet. The man at the front stares intently watching every squirt of my shit, they, all the Thai prisoners do this, fuck off monkey I shout, his facial expression don’t change and like always their inquisitive stare remains, scratching his dick and balls through his shorts as they all do. I reach for a bowl of filthy brown water infested with mosquito larva and god knows what other creatures little black wriggling worms for one as I wash off my arse, no toilet paper, sit down or flushing toilets here! With that over with I head for the animal trough, albeit a giant one a meter wide and deep and about 12 meter long again filled with the same brown infested water as the toilets. There is a restricted morning shower time from 7 am – 8 am, so again it’s the same chaotic fight and scramble as all 670 prisoners push and shove with little plastic bowls in hand to scoop out from the trough the water, before it run’s dry, it’s a frenzy! People just piss where they stand and shower, as there are no urinals and nobody is going to join the endless queues again for the toilets to only piss in them. The concrete floor around the shower area is covered in black and green slippery algae and makes walking in shackles a real ordeal.

 

Peoples bodies are covered in terrible skin infections, boils, scabs and scars from previous infections, everybody has the custom scars on the back of their ankles from wearing shackles at sometime.

 

It’s almost 8 am, guards and blue shirts start shouting at us to line up, we sit crossed legged in one of the 10 lines of 67 people, one line for each cell. We are forced to sit in the full sun, we take off our sandals and sit on them as the concrete is already hot you could fry an egg on it. The headcount is over and at 8 am precisely the Thai national anthem blast’s out from the numerous speakers, the volume is to high and it’s all distorted crackling and static, we must stand for this as the Thai flag is raised to the top of the flag pole. Immediately the anthem stops we sit and the mumbling chant’s of Buddhist monks, almost hypnotizing now blare out of the P.A. system, this goes on for 30 minutes or more, all this time we are still forced to sit in the full sun, covered in sweat I’ am on the verge of passing out, the top of my head is scorching hot.

 

8.40 am the Buddhist prayers over, now the prison directors voice blares out through the speakers, his brainwashing lies and false promises the Thai prisoners all soak up as the truth, on and on it goes until I’ am getting so crazy, I really feel like my brain is cooking inside my head I’ am so hot! At last 9.45 am he stops. The 200 or so prisoners who have already spent 9 months compulsory in shackles and had their shackles removed disperse and the 470 of us still in shackles again form new lines, still sitting crossed legged in the sun, as the guard approaches with his 3 foot bamboo baton we stretch out our legs in front of us spreading our legs apart until the chain between each leg is taught. He taps the chain of each prisoner and each prisoner spins the welded full circle round bar around his ankle giving the guard full view the chain or ankle ring have not been tampered with. 10.15 am the noise is deafening as the shackle check is over and 470 prisoners stand at once 470 clanking sets of chains all scramble, shuffling to the hot water line up, one scoop per prisoner, at last a cup of hot coffee, I gulp down the very strong black coffee I made and eat 2 stale bread (they make and sell us here in the prison) jam sandwiches. Shit! It’s hot! I search the yard for a few square feet of floor space in the shade. With my back flat against the building wall, feet on the floor knees bent double, I fold the dirty brown prison shirt in half and place it between my feet flat on the ground, I hook my index finger through the middle link in the chain between my ankles and I run the chain backwards and forwards with a swinging flicking motion of my wrist, the trick is to make the chain run snake like across the old shirt. I spend the next hour doing this non-stop, my index finger is blistered but now my chains and shackles shine chrome like again. It is extremely important to keep your chains clean to cut down on infection; it’s a loosing battle with the humidity as the slightest moisture turns the chrome shine to rust again.

 

11.30 am No! I need to shit again, my mosquito bites have only just gone down from the morning’s episode, great! There isn’t much of a queue and 15 minutes later I’ am back squatting like a dog squirting water out my arse again, fuck off monkey! Is he the same prisoner at the front of the queue again watching intensely my every squirt? Its almost 12 o’clock I shuffle over to sit in line in the now even hotter sun for the 12 o’clock head count, 30 minutes again sitting in full sun cooking my brains. 12.30 lunch time, I go to the wire grilled hatch as doe’s 669 other prisoners, pushing and shoving chaotic is an understatement! 30 minutes later I have a cold plastic bag of steamed rice and a cold plastic bag of watery soup no trace of meat a lump about an inch square of pumpkin Shit! This wouldn’t sustain a small cat for the day, let alone a human being, better than the fish head soup though!

 

1 pm the rice and soup fill a very small dessert bowl each, I wash my spoon and bowl in the same filthy water as the toilet and shower. 1.20 pm I grab my pen and paper and start to write a letter. I have to use a thick piece of card to rest my sweaty hand on not to touch the writing paper with sweat as the pen then wont write on the paper. With yet another letter of total madness insanity what people must think to my letters. It’s 2 pm the next and last allowed shower time 2-3 pm it’s the same chaotic 670 prisoners scrambling for the not enough filthy brown water to go round again. Is this water putting more filth on than taking off? I don’t know but it feels good. 2.30 pm my shower done I have 30 minutes only to the next head count and lock back in the cell. I need all of 30 minutes to turn my now rusty chains again into chrome. Why bother you may be thinking, but if you leave the chains rusty, you’re sure your infections will turn gangrene and you risk having to have your foot amputated. Covered in sweat from polishing my chains I’ am back sat in line. 3 pm last head count before climbing the stairs to the cell. I hate climbing the stairs as every step the shackles cut deep into the back of my ankles.

 

3.30 pm we are sat crossed legged again in 4 rows in the cell for the count, again we call out our numbers from 1-67 I squeeze into my floor space with the 2 other men, we sit rather than lay. All my body aches and cramps soon start to return sitting so cramped up unable to walk just sit. Nobody speaks English in my room apart from a few who speak barely more than 20 words of pigeon English. The heat and smell in the room is unbearable. Disbelief at my miserable inhumane existence. Loneliness in a cell cramped so much that a permanent sweaty body is always against mine. How welcome death would be ecstasy to end my suffering, even that is not possible, what would become of my wife, my unborn son, even the luxury of death is out of reach. 7 pm its all stand for the Thai national anthem, followed by some Thai prisoner in another cell screaming out each verse of a Buddhist prayer for the 669 other prisoners to scream out and repeat of each verse.

 

7.30 pm it’s all over, the 3 of us try and wriggle and squeeze into the tiny space, sleep is always impossible you just lay in a tangled sweating mess of bodies until total exhaustion takes over and you fall asleep. Every hour through out the night on the hour a Thai prisoner beats a stick onto a 2 foot length of hollow bamboo 5 times as that’s our cell number. It’s done to let the lazy guards know downstairs a prisoner is awake at all times acting as a guard. Each prisoners name is in a book and his allotted time. He is the one punished if he misses beating the bamboo. It also makes sleep almost impossible that deafening banging on every hour. Well that’s my day! You must understand I’ am still in a Thai prison, so I’ am unable to describe so many of the real horrors I’ve witnessed. But all said here is true.

 

 

 

 By Steve Willcox