Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  They were all reacting differently to the situation. Nita was fretting, Vincente was casual and laughing, and Michael was, still high from an earlier hit of smack. He turned to Ruggiero asking, ‘Where are we going, man?’ Ruggiero was pumped up, excited to be out in the real world. ‘We’re going to take a flight, my man. I don’t know where to, but take a walk on the wild side,’ he said to Michael. ‘We always get to fly together, don’t we?’ he joked.

  After almost two hours, it was time to go. Domestic passengers were called first and filled up the front of the plane. Then the eight prisoners and their massive police entourage, minus machine guns, walked down the aisle past the staring faces of the seated passengers. Three empty rows separated the prisoners and the other passengers. Ruggiero, Juri and the two Nigerians sat in the back rows, while the other four sat a couple of rows in front.

  An hour later, Vincente, Michael, Nita and Arman got off the plane in the large Muslim city of Surabaya in central Java, which was near their new jails. The other four flew further north to Jakarta.

  When we got to Jakarta Airport, police had machine guns again. I felt like the fucking biggest terrorist in the world, walking outside like this, with all the police with their machine guns and everybody watching. I didn’t even know where I was, I’d never been to Jakarta in my whole life. It was very hot. It took about one and a half hours to get to the fucking prison. When we got there, it was horrible … 2000 people, lot of junkies, dirty place. The guards were very hostile at this new jail, Cipinang. Very hostile.

  – Ruggiero

  Juri and Ruggiero were given T-shirts and uniforms, then taken to the Cipinang security chief ’s office and told the rules of the jail. As they left to walk across the grounds to their new cell, a guard suddenly kicked Ruggiero hard in the stomach. He buckled over. The guard then turned to attack Juri.

  Boom. He punched me three or four times. I still had the prison T-shirt in my hand, so I couldn’t try to defend myself. He says to me, ‘Here is Jakarta, it’s not Bali’. I say,‘Yeah, I know, I don’t need to get punched’.

  – Juri

  Back in Bali, Juri’s wife, Ade, turned up for her usual morning visit to Hotel K, handing over the 5000 rupiah fee to get inside. Unusually, the guard refused to take it. She was momentarily confused. The guard looked up from his seat and broke the news that Juri was gone, transferred to another jail, in Jakarta. Ade collapsed. It was devastating news. She’d heard stories about prisoners being viciously bashed as standard procedure on arrival at new prisons. She also knew that Juri’s transfer meant that she and his elderly parents would have to abandon the life they’d created in Bali and start all over again in a new city.

  Inside Hotel K, the transfer instilled fear in all the westerners. It was a stark warning that everyone was vulnerable to the whims of the Indonesian Government. Anyone could be plucked from their beds in the dead of night. If slinging cash to the guards had given the prisoners some sense of power over their destinies, this transfer undid that.

  For the Hotel K guards, the westerners’ fears created a new blackmail business. Prisoners splashed around hundreds of dollars to have their names removed from alleged transfer lists. The nastier guards enjoyed taunting the prisoners, ‘White monkey, we move you tonight’. Suddenly, prisoners were desperate to stay in Hotel K. It was the devil they knew. With its walls touching paradise, it was a drop-in spot for tourists, and easily accessible for friends and families. And its being filled with westerners meant there was always someone to talk to. Juri and Ruggiero had friends inside Hotel K. They had had their days out, their afternoon drinking parties, their favourite meals delivered from Bali’s best restaurants. But those days were now over and they didn’t know what lay ahead in the big city jail.

  It was like a shock, trauma. It was, like, leave everyone we know. We have friends. I know everyone in there. Kerobokan felt like home after three years. Then move.

  – Juri

  Kerobokan is not really a prison – it’s a place to kidnap people and rip them off. It’s place for making money. This is why they don’t fix anything, why the walls are always falling down, why we have to fix our own toilet or be sick. A place that is about ripping people off is not going to pay for anything.

  The whole justice system is simple – it’s nothing to do with punishment or rehabilitation. It doesn’t matter what evidence you have in court, it’s not about the evidence, it’s about money. They don’t even look at the evidence. That’s why someone with 12,000 ecstasy tablets, like Steve from England, gets three years in jail, and some poor local gets four years for one or two tablets. The whole system, from the courts to jail, is to make money. It’s not to fight against narcotics. That’s just an excuse.

  – Mick

  You feel you’re dead when you’re breathing in Kerobokan. You’re always looking for tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

  – Inmate

  EPILOGUE

  WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

  Thomas

  After leaving Hotel K, Thomas was taken to the immigration offices for his third deportation. This time though, the authorities were insisting that he flew back to Europe and not take the short flight to Bangkok. But Thomas had other ideas. Before leaving Hotel K, he’d teed it up with a friend to help him escape from the Denpasar immigration offices. So the moment the police were upstairs playing a game of cards, Thomas sprinted outside, leaped on the back of the waiting motorbike and tore off. The friend took him to a bus stop, and within a day of his release, he was back in Jakarta, living in the shadows and looking over his shoulder.

  Within no time, Thomas was dealing again. But his snakes and ladders career would soon take its biggest hit. First he was busted for possession of few grams of heroin and sentenced to eighteen months in Cipinang Jail – his fourth stretch in an Indonesian prison. Then he crashed hard. He was busted dealing more than half a kilo of shabu from his cell.

  It was a former friend and fellow ex-Hotel K inmate, Atiya, who brought him down. Unbeknown to Thomas, Chinese drug dealer Atiya was now working with the police to set people up in return for cash. Out of the blue, he called Thomas in Cipinang Jail, and asked him if he could arrange to get a kilogram of shabu. Thomas was reluctant at first, but was soon lured by the smell of cash. He organised a Nepalese boy to bring six hundred and fifty grams of shabu into Indonesia through Singapore. But then Thomas made a mistake. He broke his rule of refusing direct contact. Atiya didn’t want to use standard procedure of wiring the cash first, and then picking up the drugs from an anonymous hotel room. He wanted to exchange cash for drugs at the same time. As Thomas had known Atiya for years and done deals with him before, he took the bait. He sent his new Indonesian wife to deliver the stash and collect the 40 million rupiah fee ($5300). But a split second after she’d handed over the shabu, she was wearing handcuffs.

  Thomas had no money to deal. His wife was sentenced to ten years in jail and he got another twelve years on top of the eighteen months he was already serving. During their trials, Thomas and his wife shared a police cell and conceived a child. But in Jakarta, men and women are kept in separate jails, so it will now be years before Thomas sees his wife again. But the Austrian has a new baby son, living with his wife in jail.

  Vincente and Clara – the Mexicans

  Clara was released from Hotel K after serving five of her seven years. Vincente is currently serving his life sentence in a jail in Java. Their rich Bali-based Chinese drug customer has fled Indonesia. Apparently, things started getting too hot.

  Iwan Thalib

  Iwan Thalib was moved to Nusakambangan’s Super Maximum Security (SMS) Jail to serve the last couple of years of his sentence. He was transferred out of Hotel K by a particularly strict new boss who was trying to eradicate the drug market by getting rid of the bigger dealers. (It didn’t work. Drugs are still rife in Hotel K.)

  In June 2009, Iwan was released from SMS Nusakambangan prison, after serving only eight years of his sixteen-year sentence. He return
ed to his family in Bali. Within three or four days, he was back inside Hotel K – as a visitor this time. Iwan and his Dutch wife sat in an office eating lunch with three members of the Bali Nine. The three Australians, formerly on death row, had used Iwan’s lawyer to get their death sentences commuted to life and had become friendly with the drug dealer’s family. While Iwan was in jail in Java, his wife had regularly visited the Bali Nine in Hotel K, even hosting some of their families in her home near the jail when they flew to Bali from Australia.

  Sonia Gonzales Miranda (Black Monster)

  Sonia did three stretches in jail in the time it took to write this book. Initially she was in Bangli Prison, about an hour from Hotel K. She saw me visiting someone else, and charged over to say hello in her funky outfit, comprising a blue denim cap, a mini-skirt and tight black top, with a full face of makeup. She relished telling me that she was now famous in Australia after Schapelle’s book had mentioned her. She said Australian visitors to Hotel K all knew who she was.

  I saw her several times during my visits to Bangli. Even after she was released, I met her there. That day, she was trying to get her daughter back from the family she’d sold her to earlier. But only because she wanted to sell her again. She sat next to me on the visitor’s bench in front of the bars, through which we talked to prisoners. She’d set it up, with the help of a prisoner, for the foster mother of her child to come to jail on this morning for a visit. She had a policeman friend waiting outside the door. The air was always charged with Sonia around. She was hiding behind me so the woman wouldn’t see her and run off. Sonia’s plan was to snatch the child back. As we sat there, Sonia showed me baby photos and talked non-stop about her new sexy boyfriend, showing me photos of a very good-looking European guy. But Sonia’s plan failed. The woman didn’t come that day. Sonia left disappointed, but still firing with plenty of strategies to get her daughter back.

  Before long, Sonia was inevitably back behind bars in Hotel K for thieving. The place had a non-stop revolving door for Sonia. She served a few months, was released, and about six months later was inside yet again, telling people she always liked to be in jail on Independence Day. This was about her nineteenth incarceration.

  For many Indonesians jail is not really a jail, it’s like a shelter. Sonia, for example, keeps coming back. There are hundreds of repeat offenders. They can’t do anything outside but steal.

  – Mick

  Ruggiero

  The thing people don’t realise in jail is that every emotion runs much higher; really high, really low, you know. If you’re depressed, you get really depressed. If you’re happy, you get euphoric for no reason whatsoever – small things – like if I receive an SMS from somebody I haven’t heard from for a while, it seems like I won the lottery.

  – Ruggiero

  After his transfer from Hotel K to Cipinang, Ruggiero spent two weeks locked up in an isolation cell with Juri. The Italian, who’d been shooting up daily in Hotel K, went through painful withdrawals that Ruggiero witnessed up close. He spent hours massaging Juri and trying to help him through it.

  We shared the pain.

  – Ruggiero

  Ruggiero has now converted devoutly to Buddhism. He regularly spends time praying and meditating in the jail’s temples, trying to evolve into a better person, to give some purpose to the otherwise wasted six and a half years he’s already spent in jail. He still drinks and smokes, and loses the plot sometimes, trying to forget where he is. With remissions, he has about two years left to serve, although he is trying to be the first foreigner to be given parole. Only Indonesians are released on parole, as the authorities fear the foreigners will simply leave the country.

  It fuels his frustration to see sadistic killers walking free after only two or three years.

  Juri

  Juri’s sentence has been reduced from life to fifteen years. He’s already served six years, and with remissions he could be going home to Italy within five years. His devoted parents alternate the responsibility of living in Indonesia to care for him, which means they now see little of each other. It’s undoubtedly hard on them, especially for his mum who doesn’t speak any Indonesian or English. But they refuse to leave their only son alone. Juri’s Timorese wife, Ade, also lives with Juri’s mother or father and sees him three times a week, when visits are permitted.

  Nita

  Nita is still serving the ten-year sentence that she got when she was caught dealing drugs at the immigration housing. She is in a jail in Java. The Filipino wore the prison-issued blue T-shirt and untailored denim pants whenever I visited her, as she has never been able to recover any of her belongings from Hotel K.

  Mick

  Mick orchestrated a move out of Hotel K because he was losing his grip on sanity. He contrived a story, telling the jail boss he was being threatened by Laskar. For his protection, Mick was put in cell tikus. But the guards couldn’t do much to protect him long term, so they moved him and his girlfriend Trisna to another prison in Bali. Both still defiantly claim their innocence. To try to manage his fury at his incarceration, Mick does yoga daily and meditates for hours at a time. Like so many westerners serving long sentences, he has tried to find some bigger meaning and point to his incarceration and lost years, and believes it has given him spiritual growth.

  My mind changed slowly. Why this was happening to me. My attitude, behaviour, changed 180 degrees. I was a madman chasing the governor. I changed from madman to more enlightened. Now, I think I’m blessed. I couldn’t get what I needed outside. It’s like a mystery school in here.

  – Mick

  Mick has served eight years of his fifteen-year sentence, and is still working on his final appeal.

  Robert

  Robert was released and went back to the UK. He has nothing to do with his child, conceived through the bars in Hotel K.

  Arman

  Arman is serving out his many sentences in Nusakambangan’s Super Maximum Security Jail. His sentence has increased from ten years to nearly thirty since first checking in, and he still has several court cases pending from charges that arose during his time in Hotel Kerobokan.

  Schapelle

  Schapelle has fourteen years left to serve of her twenty-year sentence, taking into account remissions already given. But given her dire mental state, her devoted family is sure she will not survive that long in Hotel K. From day one, her family has fought to prove Schapelle’s innocence. Now, on humanitarian grounds they will try to get clemency from the Indonesian President, but are waiting for a reply from the Australian Government confirming it will support this request. But Schapelle will not admit guilt. She has told her family that she would rather die in jail than admit to being a drug trafficker.

  I believe Schapelle has mentally broken down, not just because of the hellish daily life, and the long dark tunnel she is staring down – but because she is innocent; locked up for a crime she didn’t commit. Imagine for a second being in these shoes; there is something in your bag when you arrive on your holiday that you know you did not put there. You fight to get evidence; check-in baggage weight or baggage X-rays. But you get nothing from Qantas. You fight to have the plastic bags fingerprinted but the Indonesian court, typically, refused point blank. If she really didn’t put it in her bag, which is what I believe, she had absolutely no way of proving it. Imagine being innocent and looking ahead at twenty years in Hotel K. It would send anyone mad. It is unsurprising that Schapelle has lost her grip on sanity.

  Saidin

  Saidin was released from jail in 2008 after serving a little over six years for the murder and decapitation. He is now living back with his family in Klungkung, earning far less cash than he did when he was top tamping in Hotel K.

  Michael Blanc

  Michael Blanc is living in a prison in Java. In 2009, his sentence was cut from life to twenty years. He has served nine years already, and with remission could be home in France within five years. His devoted mother still lives in Indonesia to care for his needs i
n jail.

  Laskar Bali

  The eight Laskar bosses have all been released from Hotel K, none serving any more than a few years for the stabbing murder at the Denpasar Moon karaoke bar. The Laskars are still in full force roaming the bars and clubs of Kuta and Legian. They no longer rule Hotel K, as its bosses are busy outside. Several other gangs have moved into Hotel K, including a Korean crime syndicate. But there are always some Laskars inside.

  Bali Nine

  The eight Australian males in the Bali Nine syndicate are all still living in the ‘death’ tower, sharing with several locals and Nigerian death row inmate Emmanuel.

  Three of the Nine, Andrew, Scott and Myruran, are fighting their final appeal to have their death sentences commuted to life. If these fail, their last chance is to ask the Indonesian President for clemency.

  Five more of the Nine are serving life sentences. They do not receive remissions, but it’s possible that one day their sentences might be cut to twenty years by the Indonesian President, as he did in 2009 in the case of Frenchman Michael Blanc.

  The only female of the group, Renae Lawrence, has served four and a half years of her twenty-year sentence. As a tamping, who doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty clearing drains or unblocking septic tanks, she has been receiving the biannual remissions. To the others, her twenty-year sentence is enviable. And like Schapelle, with incremental increases in biannual cuts, she could be home free within eight to ten years.