Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  Sometimes I woke at night-time, I feel like I don’t want to stay alive. I feel like my body is hot, I feel so stressed. If I had something, like anything to drink, to kill myself, I would.

  They put me here because of drugs, but I see they are selling drugs like coffee. They give me death sentence for my drugs, then they bring that same drug and sell in front of me. I watch this and it makes me stressed. I watch the guards sit down and use together with prisoners. They are selling drugs everywhere, no secret, just everywhere drugs here. When it is so corrupt in here, when they are selling drugs everywhere, nobody would be happy here.

  Are they all corrupt?

  Yes. Many guards have been arrested. Even last year, the chief of security was arrested. Some guards are good, but eighty per cent of them are shit.

  – Emmanuel

  It was proven that it wasn’t just the underling guards who were lured into the Hotel K drug business, when the head of security, the number two boss, Muhammad Sudrajat, was charged with and convicted for drug offences, and sentenced to four years in jail.

  Last Saturday the Bali police arrested Muhammad Sudrajat, the Security Head at Kerobokan Prison, after receiving information from ex-prisoners he had been their drug dealer. Sudrajat was set up and busted with 2.45 gram of low-grade heroin in his pocket. As security head, Sudrajat could easily smuggle narcotics into the penitentiary – nobody was suspicious of him.

  – Jakarta Post, September 2007

  Police allege Kerobokan’s Head of Security, Muhammad Sudrajat, has been running drugs in and out of the prison since starting work there 14 months ago.

  – NZ Press Association, 14 September 2007

  Mr Sudrajat’s lawyer, Muhammad Rifan, said his client was ‘surrounded by dealers’ and had an amount of ‘involvement in the trade’, but said he was more a user than a dealer. ‘My client admitted he got carried away after getting too close to inmates who were drug addicts,’ Mr Rifan told Reuters. ‘He became an addict, and became more and more involved.’

  – Today, Singapore, September 2007

  Emmanuel had been in his early twenties when he flew to Bali from Pakistan, with just under four hundred grams of heroin inserted in his anus and in his stomach. He had just cleared Bali immigration when customs officers grabbed him. He was taken straight to a nearby medical centre, given two enemas and fed doses of laxatives until he finally excreted 31 capsules of heroin.

  Emmanuel felt sure his Pakistani boss had tipped off the Indonesians. His boss had been angry that he could not carry one kilogram.

  They use a machine and push into my anus. I try but I cannot put more … it’s too big.

  – Emmanuel

  With only four hundred grams, the Pakistani boss sent him anyway, as his false Sierra Leone passport and plane ticket were already paid for. So, for the lure of a $2000 cash fee, the young Nigerian flew to Bali and threw away his life.

  I hope they are not going to kill me, it shouldn’t happen. I’m the first person they give death for drugs here in Bali. But my stuff is the smallest. Many people here … the guy from Mexico had fifteen kilograms, Michael had four kilograms, get life sentence. Juri five kilograms plus, fifteen years; the Bali Nine, some of them already on life or twenty years. Me? I only had four hundred grams. They give me death sentence because of my colour. And because I have no family, no friends and no money.

  I’m angry because nobody cares here. But, I believe, one day I am going free. That’s what I believe. If I had money in the first place, my case would not be like this. And they hate all foreigners, but they hate black people more.

  – Emmanuel

  After living on death row for two years, Emmanuel calmed down a bit and started looking after himself. He cut his dread-locks off. ‘If I put water on my head, one litre stuck in my hair. So, make me more stress, so I cut it.’ He started working out with weights for an hour a day, spraying himself with Rexona afterwards, and dressing smartly. It helped that he was sharing a cell with Scott, and now also had Scott’s lawyer helping him. He didn’t feel so isolated and his rage was not so fierce.

  Scott bitterly regretted his teenage mistake, and was losing his life day by day. Once, in a fit of anger at himself, he’d scratched his arms with a sharp piece of metal. He’d also shot up heroin a couple of times, chain-smoked, had seen a psychiatrist and taken antidepressants. But the death sentence was always lurking. One of his earlier cellmates had told him he sometimes called out, ‘Mum, Mum,’ in his sleep. He often dreamed of someone harming his family. Sometimes, he heard the ringing gunshots of his own execution.

  The first thing his mother, Christine, had given him after his arrest was their family Bible, and Scott had turned to God for strength. Many nights, he got down on his hands and knees in his cell and asked for forgiveness. He started seeing a Catholic priest at Hotel K’s chapel but stopped when the people running it started telling him, ‘If you die, you will be going home [to God]’. He didn’t like it. They weren’t the ones facing death by firing squad. Dying was not going home. ‘Who were they to tell me that?’

  Scott’s parents initially spent five months in Bali, looking after him and trying to find someone they could trust to take money to him from an account they had set up. His parents spent about $340 a month to keep Scott in relative comfort in Hotel K. This was cheap by Hotel K standards. Another Australian was spending $1000 a month on food and payments to guards.

  On Scott’s twenty-first birthday Lee and Christine flew to Bali with their other two sons, Dean and Cameron, and threw a two-hour party for him in one of the small offices. It was only three months since his sentence had been upped to death, when his mum had walked out of the jail telling waiting reporters that her son was ‘scared, absolutely petrified’ about his fate.

  But they were all making the most of his birthday, with about twelve people celebrating and a chocolate cake. As he took a deep breath to blow out the twenty-one candles, someone joked, ‘We know what the wish is, Scott, so just blow’.

  When he was handed a framed portrait of his late grandfather, he kissed the image. If he were ever to know how important family was, it was now. And, somehow, for those hours he simply enjoyed being with his loved ones.

  ‘Actually, I feel pretty good. It’s good to have my family and friends here. It’s amazing to be able to celebrate it and I just feel great today,’ Scott told reporters.

  Snatching moments of happiness was vital, as the daily grind was so difficult. But if Scott and Emmanuel ever needed reminding that things could get worse, they only had to look out their death tower door. Their cell was luxurious in comparison with cell tikus, across the grassy path.

  So far since I’ve been here, two guys have died in solitary cell tikus from tuberculosis and AIDS. One guy got put in there because he tried to escape from hospital where he was held, that wasn’t that long ago, and [the] guy before that just kept getting skinnier and skinnier … some days he didn’t know who he was, and I think they knew he was going to die sooner or later. That’s a terrible way to die, I reckon, being put in a little cell like that.

  – Scott

  Scott had helped guards carry the body of the prisoner with TB out of cell tikus. The second man had been treated in Sanglah Hospital for AIDS and TB, but ran away before they could take him back to Hotel K. He didn’t want to die in a jail cell. He was found in a graveyard, taken back, as a very sick and weak man, and thrown into cell tikus.

  One night, not long afterwards, he died in there. The guards found him mid-morning and pulled his body out onto the grass. His face was covered in vomit and ants. It was unsurprising that the rate of TB was high in Hotel K. The sewage water from cell tikus streamed past the small canteen where food was cooked and sold.

  If you get sick, they put you in a small room, you stay there until you die so that nobody will see you.

  – Emmanuel

  The spreading of diseases didn’t just come from the bodies pulled out of cell tikus or from the sewage water. Some pris
oners locked in cell tikus without a toilet would throw a plastic bag of shit through the vent and onto the grass outside Scott and Emmanuel’s cell. Black Monster – Sonia – was the worst culprit.

  When the guards came past to count the prisoners, and Sonia’s stinking plastic bag was on the grass, they’d open her cell and make her clean it up. It was a tactic of hers to get out of the cell for a few minutes. Typically, Black Monster put on a bit of a show, throwing water and shit at the guards or at anyone walking past.

  This crazy girl, Sonia, threw shit. But not only shit, she put water inside the plastic bag also. It landed in front of my cell on the grass, so everybody can smell it. It makes a lot of problems. She threw shit on guards. And there is nothing they can do. The last time she threw shit at me, and Matthew walking past.

  – Emmanuel

  Scott and Emmanuel had spent time in cell tikus together. They were put in a cell the width and length of two bathtubs, with no toilet. When they needed to relieve themselves, they used a bottle or a plastic bag. For days, they sat leaning against the wall at opposite ends of the concrete cell, with their legs stretched out in front of them. At night they slept close together on the bare concrete.

  You have to lie like a dead man.

  – Emmanuel

  Some days, Scott paid the guards 500,000 rupiah ($65) to get out to a visit. Again, he felt discriminated against because most people paid that fee to be let out permanently.

  I got put in cell tikus with Emmanuel for, like, a month. I got put in there for walking around the jail. Emmanuel got put in there for having a phone. Solitary is terrible. There’s no light in there. I got a light bulb to put in there, just to read, and stuff, at night. The worst feeling about cell tikus is that they put you in there and you feel like you are completely forgotten.

  That’s what it feels like; time goes really, really slowly, especially when you see other people moving around and you get to see them doing what they want to do, and you not being able to walk around and you get envy. And envy is a bad feeling.

  – Scott

  CHAPTER 22

  OPERATION TRANSFER

  I couldn’t even, in my wildest dream, imagine we were going to fly in a plane that night.

  – Ruggiero

  It was a morning of utter confusion. At around 4.30 am, Ruggiero was abruptly woken by two guards bursting into his cell. ‘What the fuck are you guys doing here?’ he barked. ‘The boss wants to talk to you,’ one of them said. ‘Why? It’s five in the morning. I’m sleeping.’ The guards didn’t know why the boss wanted him, but hustled him out of bed. Ruggiero furtively slipped his phone in his underpants as he stood up. He was wearing only short pyjamas and a T-shirt, but there was no time to change. He slid his feet into a pair of sandals as they ushered him out the door. The Brazilian followed the guards down the concrete path that he’d walked literally thousands of times, and was unaware this time would be his last. As he turned the corner to walk into the offices, though, he knew that something big was in the air.

  The office atrium was filled with armed police. Standing bleary eyed and half-dressed in the centre were drug lord Arman, Frenchman Michael, Mexican Vincente and two Nigerians. Ruggiero didn’t have a clue what was going on and quickly asked the others if they knew. They didn’t.

  Juri was the next to arrive – in bare feet and wearing only the T-shirt and the shorts he’d slept in, with his dark hair sticking up. He asked the others what was happening and got the same blank response. He asked the guards as they snapped handcuffs on him and started searching his pockets but they didn’t know either. It was a covert operation – the police knew that if the guards knew, the prisoners would be informed.

  They don’t tell us nothing, nothing. Just pick up in the morning and go.

  – Juri

  Finally, female inmate Nita turned up, looking dishevelled and confused, and wearing only slippers and a nightie. Her hands were already cuffed in front of her, and she, too, asked if anyone knew what was going on. They shrugged. All the way across from Block W, she’d been asking the guards. ‘But they just tell me, “No question, no answer”.’

  Police started moving the eight prisoners out into the car park, which was swarming with police, prison guards and journalists. Photographers snapped pictures of the confused, bedraggled prisoners as they were swept along, gripped on either side by police officers. Ruggiero spotted friendly guard Pak Mus. ‘What the fuck’s going on, Pak Mus? What’s happened?’ he asked as he was pulled past. ‘Ruggiero, I don’t know,’ Pak Mus said, looking distressed. ‘Are we going to the police station? Are we going to be moved?’ ‘Ruggiero, I don’t know,’ he repeated, clearly feeling sorry for the Brazilian.

  Juri suspected they were being moved when he heard one police officer asking another, ‘Jakarta or Surabaya?’ and pointing at the buses. He quickly asked if he could get a bag from his cell. ‘No. Cannot, cannot.’ But the police officer saw his bare feet and made a concession to his request, sending a tamping prisoner to run inside and get his thongs.

  I say, ‘Can I take my stuff?’ They say, ‘No. Cannot, cannot’. Not even a toothbrush or a magazine. I say, ‘I get asthma. Maybe I get sick. I always have the puffer?’ ‘Cannot, no’.

  – Juri

  The prisoners didn’t yet know it, but the operation had been planned precisely. Ruggiero, Juri and the two Africans were put onto one minibus, and the other four put onto the second, coordinated to match their destinations. Several police with machine guns, and a single guard, climbed onto each bus.

  They had one machine gun per prisoner and extra two per bus. So, there were about twelve machine guns, I think.

  – Ruggiero

  As they drove out of Hotel K’s car park, the eight prisoners were unaware that they were leaving the jail for good. Ruggiero was excited; the pre-dawn trip broke the tedium. He didn’t know where they were going, but with five prisoners on life sentences and the Hotel K drug lord along for the ride, he knew it wasn’t to freedom. He suspected they might be going to police headquarters, for an interrogation about drugs in jail.

  Desperately curious, Ruggiero kept trying to get answers from the police. ‘What’s going on? Where are we going?’ ‘We don’t know,’ they kept repeating. ‘How come you don’t know, man?’ he pushed. ‘We just don’t know’. Ruggiero didn’t believe it. ‘You guys are joking with me … you don’t know! Are we going for a night tour in Bali?’ The bus turned off the potholed roads onto a main highway. Ruggiero kept his eyes glued to the windows, trying to figure out where they were going. When they came to a large roundabout and turned towards the airport, Ruggiero instantly asked, ‘Are we going to the airport?’ ‘We don’t know.’ But it was clear to Ruggiero that that was exactly where the bus was heading.

  He surreptitiously felt in his underpants for his phone and sent a text message to the Brazilian consul – ‘We’re arriving at the airport. Can you jump on your bike and come? See what you can do.’ But it was early and the consul didn’t reply. Ruggiero was getting more and more agitated and excited, and turned to Juri. ‘Juri, we are going to fly, man, I don’t know where to, but we are going to fly.’ Juri didn’t believe it. ‘Are you crazy?’ ‘We’re going to the airport, man,’ Ruggiero said, pointing out the window. ‘I know this road. We’re going to be at the terminal in five, ten minutes.’

  Several minutes later, they created a spectacle as the armed police piled out of the buses onto the footpath directly in front of the domestic terminal. Trailing out behind them were the prisoners, with their hands cuffed in front of them. Each prisoner was quickly surrounded by three police officers – two holding their arms and one pointing a machine gun at their back.

  Fuck, I’m an extremely heavy criminal … four grams of hashish – it’s a heavy offence. Makes a lot of sense, the money the government spent on protection. I’m a threat to society.

  – Ruggiero

  Crowds of tourists and local travellers scurried to the sides of the path to let the intimi
dating group of police and prisoners stride past. They swept towards the glass doors to the domestic terminal. Inside, the prisoners got VIP treatment. There was no waiting, as one by one they were whisked straight through the metal detectors in a tightly choreographed routine in which the police let go of their arms as they approached the machine and grabbed them again on the other side. They were all taken across the busy terminal to a row of plastic chairs, and given bottles of water and brown paper packets of nasi goreng.

  The police were friendly but the guys wouldn’t tell us where we were going. I went to the toilet. I was relaxed. I wasn’t worried about anything, just very curious … extremely. Thank God nobody was sentenced to death, because they would, for sure, think it was going to be the execution because it looked like it.

  – Ruggiero

  Despite armed police pacing back and forth in front of them, the scruffy, pyjama-clad prisoners looked more vulnerable than menacing. People stood staring. Some curious travellers came up and spoke to them. One young Italian couple walked across to Juri, who was wearing an Italian football T-shirt, asking what was going on.

  They asked me, ‘Eh, what happened to you? Where are you going?’ I say, ‘I’m moving. I’m already long time in jail’.

  – Juri