For months now I have been suffering with serious skin infections, Boils and lesions brought on by the filthy water that is provided here for the purpose of bathing.

Bangkwang is supplied with reasonably clean mains water but in order to “Minimize Costs”(official jargon universally accepted to mean the skimming off or theft of government budget funds by the directorship) contaminated river water is pumped from the nearby ‘Chao Phaya’ river untreated and unfiltered directly into the bathing troughs in each building here. (Waste water and sewage from Bangkwang is pumped back out into the river incidentally) anyone who knows Thailand at all will know that the ‘Chao Phaya’ river is to Bangkok what the Thames is to London. However, the comparison stops there. Bangkok, a sprawling metropolis with some 10 million inhabitants does not share London’s waste management policies or systems and so millions of gallons of raw sewage and chemical waste are unceremoniously dumped into the slow flowing waters of the capital city’s river each year. It doesn’t take the brains of an archbishop to work out that it is this contaminated water that is causing these excruciatingly painful and raw abscesses that are cropping up regularly over my body, and many other prisoners have the same problems.

Unfortunately there are not even any decent doctors working in the Bangkwang hospital, let alone an Archbishop or two! The ones we have are ‘yes men’ not doctors. Their loyalty to the oaths they took as young doctors have been surpassed and replaced by their loyalty to the prison policy and in particular their refusal to subscribe to any suggestion that a particular health problem is in any way related to the inadequate and inhumane, squalid conditions we are forced to live in here. That would be openly admitting that this prison falls far below the minimum requirements and standards laid down for the housing and treatment of prisoners. Basic health care begins with sanitary living quarters and the supply of clean water for drinking and bathing… Any idiot knows that but apparently not the idiots that call themselves doctors here! Meanwhile, skin and other infections are rife amongst the prison population and increasing.

Water once again, and the expression ‘April Shower’ took on a whole new dimension here in building 6 this afternoon when a fifteen minute down pour, not unusual for this time of year, caused widespread flooding and a subsequent power cut.

The open sewage system that circles the building, grossly inadequate for its intended purpose at the best of times, was unable to cope with the heavy shower and was overflowing within minutes of the rain starting, spilling raw sewage amongst inmates trying to shelter from the storm.

Soon, the majority of us were wading around in filthy brown water, one hand covering our mouths and noses trying not to inhale or catch a whiff of the foul smelling, noxious odors permeating the surrounding atmosphere. Turds bobbed by us like corks while lumps of old animal fat, vegetable matter, fish guts and other ‘ganglia’ suspended in the ‘soup’ clung to our legs like jungle leeches and waves of scuttling cockroaches headed up the walls to higher ground.

Meanwhile the situation was reported to be infinitely worse outside of the building on the ‘main drag’ running through the centre of the prison. Guys coming back from the Friday ‘contact’ visit said that the flooding had reached above knee level. Over 18 inches of filthy water, slime and the contents of around 5000 prisoner’s bowels.

Incredibly the contact visit went ahead and prisoners relatives and families were forced to wade through the filth in order to reach the visit area and anxiously waiting prisoners.

One wonders how these families must have felt about their soaked and stinking welcome to Bangkwang? Especially since it would have taken a blind man amongst them not to notice the prison officer passing them in the other direction. This individual had commandeered a large ‘food trolley’ a chair and a golfing umbrella and seating himself on the trolley well above the ‘high tide’ mark had ordered three miserable and soggy prisoners to push him through the muck to his next destination. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely and broke into a loud chuckle and even managed a ‘royal wave’ as he passed wives, mothers, fathers, grannies and whimpering children dressed in their finest wading knee deep in human excrement!