Locked away and forgotten: inside a high security jail

Locked away and forgotten: inside a high security jail

At Khao Bin Central Prison in Ratchaburi, we expected to find incorrigible drug lords _ but met instead the poor, the disaffected and the foreign

At two security checkpoints visitors are frisked and scanned with metal detectors. No sharp objects, no liquids, no metals, no mobile phones or gadgets.

Khao Bin Central Prison’s special zone, where selected drug traffickers were moved in order to halt smuggling and cut inmates off from outside drug contacts.

 As in Dante's Inferno, there are several levels of discomfort here, namely nine zones of increasing security. We proceed inwards, but the deepest rung is still under construction _ a reported 600 million baht behemoth of a building where the most notorious drug lords will be held.

Khao Bin Central Prison in Ratchaburi's Chom Bung district covers 213 rai of land in a remote part of the province surrounded by hills. Khao Bin cave and an open zoo, popular tourists attractions, lie nearby, and a public minivan makes daily visits to the prison directly from Victory Monument in Bangkok. Phone signal around the area is unreliable, suppressed by advanced signal dampers within the prison _ the first official signal jamming system of its kind in the country. Even on the roads outside, reception is sporadic until the prison is a kilometre or more away.

The prison houses around 3,000 inmates. In Zone 5, around 1,000 serve sentences ranging from 30 years to death. There are murderers, rapists and, above all, drug traffickers, from "lords" and mules, to the guilty by association. Zone 4, a two-storey building divided into six cells equipped with surveillance cameras, accommodates most of the more than 200 high-profile inmates from around the country who were moved to Khao Bin in February, as part of a move by authorities to stifle smuggling and drug dealing by inmates. The overflow from Zone 4 gets moved to Zone 9.


The exterior of Khao Bin prison.

Satellite phones can bypass the jammers, but users are required to register the devices and the chance of detection is high. Nevertheless, they are occasionally found in raids. Those serving life terms are often unconcerned about being caught with banned items such as phones or methamphetamine, since they are already serving maximum sentences.

There are fewer than 200 prison warders, an insufficient number. Prisoners in shackles wander around, those either recently transferred or on death row. Most wear a light blue uniform; a few are dressed more casually. As in any community, there are status and power hierarchies here. Besides the troublemakers in solitary confinement, most of the inmates sleep in a group cell, on a spot on the floor 80cm wide. For 15 hours a day prisoners are confined to their cell blocks.

The school building is a sort of sanctuary during the free hours. Inmates can check out a Michael Crichton novel in the library or write a masters dissertation on one of the computers, although no internet is allowed. You can get your hair cut there or practise your drum solos.

On the day of out visit, prisoners sit on the bare concrete floor of the school, nearly 300 of them, mostly Burmese, Cambodian and Lao _ ones outside the highest security that we are allowed to meet. One Tanzanian with a thick Tom Clancy book under his arm. Almost all of them are here on drug trafficking charges. They are not drug overlords by any stretch of the imagination, simply those from impoverished backgrounds who saw a chance to make a quick profit peddling ya ba (methamphetamine) tablets or ya ice (crystal meth), or who were convicted by association _ the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time, and too poor to mount a proper legal defence. The conviction rate is often tied to how rich a suspect is, as well as what country he comes from. Those whose embassies provide legal, financial or moral assistance fare much better, as do those whose countries have extradition arrangements with Thailand. After a few years, most Europeans, for example, can apply to be transferred to a prison in their country, where the conditions are better and where they will be released years earlier.

The prisoners are polite and humble. They listen intently, since they receive very few visitors and are considered outsiders even within these walls. A few tell us their stories.

"I lent my car to a friend," says a Myanmar Shan. A friend of his borrowed his car, only to use it with four others to do a drug deal and get caught. Because it was his car, and because the five all defended him, the police assumed he was the ringleader and had threatened the others with death if they implicated him.

police conduct a surprise search at Khao Bin prison earlier this year. They found unauthorised items including mobile phones, gambling equipment and hand-made weapons.

He has served 15 years of a life sentence, which in the meantime has been reduced to 19 years. Behind bars he completed two bachelor's degrees and is studying for a third. He tries to maintain his Thai, English and Japanese, learned in his days as a student in Singapore and as a businessman in Bangkok. Through years of good behaviour, he has a few liberties most of the other prisoners don't. He is dressed casually in white shorts and T-shirt and addresses the other foreign prisoners by microphone. At first we mistook him for a visiting NGO worker. He has his own office in the school, complete with the computer he used to study for his degrees, and other foreign prisoners defer to his experience.

His future prospects looked good 15 years ago _ he had his own company in Bangkok and ambitious expansion plans _ not bad for a boy from Shan State. After his conviction, life became a living hell. One of his co-defendants died of an Aids-related disease behind bars, two were executed eight years ago, when the death penalty still meant a machine-gun.

"I don't know what I'll do when I get out," he says now, shaking his head. "I have four more years."

Many Western prisoners would have been transferred to their home country by now, and in the initial trial might have received legal help, subsequent moral support as well as campaigning to have the sentence reduced or the inmate transferred abroad.

"Our country doesn't care about us. It's my curse to be from such a messed-up country."

Myanmar is opening up now, we say; democracy and rule of law are beginning to take hold.

"I don't know about any of that," he says sceptically. "Though that's what they say on the news."

There are television sets in the chambers, with terrestrial channels only and programming regulated by the guards. Often this means dubbed Korean and Taiwanese series, occasionally sports or news.

He has been at Khao Bin prison since it opened eight years ago, but says the conditions were much better at Khlong Prem or Bang Kwang prisons closer to Bangkok. This statement is surprising, considering that these prisons are notorious for rough conditions.

"The food was better at Bang Kwang, the rules were more relaxed, the library bigger, there was medicine and doctors nearby," he says.

Another Myanmar prisoner agrees. "This is where they send those they want to lock away and forget about," he says.

He is currently serving a life sentence. Back home he was poor, he says, trying to raise three sons by making a living doing various low-income jobs. He was told he could make money working in Korea, so he paid a large sum to an agent to be placed there. During transit in Thailand he went to karaoke with friends and was arrested by Thai police. He insists he had nothing to do with any drugs.

Another prisoner from Laos says he was a ferry driver helping passengers cross the Thai-Lao border. In 2002 the Thai border police arrested him with his wife and his two daughters, accusing him of trafficking meth pills into the Kingdom. He says he is innocent and the justice system never gave him a chance.

Another prisoner is a young ethnic Karen from Myanmar already behind bars for eight years. He was sentenced to life, later commuted by royal pardon to 35 years. When he was young, he says, his family fled to Thailand as refugees but later they all died from illness. He moved back home to work as a porter, working for almost a year when a friend fell ill and he had to take him to hospital. He spent his savings on his friend's treatment but it wasn't enough. Offered a job to transport a parcel to the Thai border, he accepted without knowing the contents. At the border he was arrested and convicted of drug trafficking. He says he pleaded guilty to avoid the death sentence.

In the afternoon, the prisoners are allowed to cook for us and serve us a meal. One keeps refilling our glasses of Pepsi; if the ice has melted he replaces the entire contents. It is a rare occasion for the prisoners, but the food is very good and they are pleased to have permission to prepare and serve it.

Other prisoners offer us free haircuts, a musical performance; we give them a quick language lesson. They hang on every word and enthusiastically repeat the expressions. They line up in a row of nearly 300 to shake our hands and thank us for the visit. The gratitude is sincere; these are the prisoners who don't receive visitors, who have no ties back home or family, no moral support, no money for food and supplies. Locked away for decades, forgotten by their countries, often for singular mistakes made out of poverty.

ZONED OUT: The Corrections Department transferred over 200 prisoners convicted of serious drug offences to Khao Bin Central Prison’s ‘special zone’ in February.

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