Escape makes sense given the conditions
Source : A Voice for the Guilty Innocents, Scotland (Bangkok Post)
In the wake of the recent killing of the Burmese fugitives who broke out of Samut Sakhon jail, I would like to draw your readers' attention to the underlying reasons for what happened. I understand that the jailbreakers expressly stated that they would rather die outside than endure the conditions inside the prison.
The sorry state of affairs that led to such desperation is not confined to that prison alone. Attempted jailbreaks occur with much higher frequency than the national press is able to report due to regular cover-ups by officials of the Corrections Department, often at a very local level, so that senior officials may remain unaware of events.
I myself have personally witnessed an attempted breakout and the savage beatings and torture handed out by wardens in the aftermath. Despite a number of prisoners escaping, nothing was mentioned in the press.
I also have had the opportunity to speak to the witnesses of other jailbreaks who relate such stories as wardens placing weapons by the bodies of escapees to make their deaths seem justifiable to the public.
Thai prisons are the property of the state and its people, and what goes on inside them is therefore part of the nation's conscience.
Populated in large part by penniless youths on drugs charges, these institutions often have a slow but brutalising effect on their inmates. Previously unacceptable acts of violence and sexual abuse become acceptable over time. The typical diet of old brown rice and left-over fish heads gradually erodes the body's ability to counter the various diseases circulating the cells, including widespread tuberculosis, and together with the near-total absence of any other medicines apart from aspirin, these and other factors can often combine to turn a sentence of a few years into a death warrant.
Meanwhile, UN-agency funds given to Thailand for the maintenance of prisons and their inmates are misappropriated while front-line wardens make money from inmates, selling calls on their mobile phones and, in some cases, drugs.
Prime Minister Chuan's assertion that weapons were smuggled into Samut Sakhon prison inside food rations is well based. A thorough examination of each morning's supply of "rice" would, I know, reveal all manner of illegal substances in many prisons nationwide.
Ladies and gentlemen, look at your watches. What time is it? You can be sure, whatever the time, that somewhere in a prison near you your countrymen and women are living as animals. They sleep on their sides because there's no room to lie on their backs. They drink foul water from dirty troughs. They are subject to sometimes arbitrary beatings from wardens or the inmates they sponsor. Those too weak to defend themselves are abused sexually in their infirmary beds.
I plead with you to remember that before they got into jail, before they committed their crimes, before they had the misfortune to live a life that made their crimes seem acceptable to them, before all of that, they were human, and that is what they still are.
The Corrections Department has a duty to the nation to create clearer lines of communication between its organisational levels to facilitate the monitoring and control of its prisons. A truly independent body of prison inspectors would also help, as would heightened public awareness which has been stifled in the past by the department's refusal of access to its jails by interested and legitimate third parties.
Can it be hoped that the state and its people will act in the interests of transparency to shed more light on these dark issues?
Otherwise the very people entrusted with this most fundamental part of the nation's conscience, and therefore identity, may risk turning into the same kind of morally-corrupt unfortunates that they are systematically creating on a daily basis.
voicefortheguiltyinnocents@hotmail.com