Welcome to Hell

by Colin Martin

  * * *

  I think most people are in denial when they are first sent to prison. I certainly was.

  I remember saying to myself, ‘This isn’t happening,’ or, ‘They can’t do this to me.’ But the fact is that they could do it – and they did.

  Although the letter-writing campaign lifted my spirits, I still had to battle depression constantly because Chonburi was hell on earth. As you would expect, suicides were common.

  Young prisoners often jumped down the four-storey stairwells to kill themselves. The bodies would be left there in a pool of blood until the police came to take photos. Then they lifted them off like a sack of spuds and threw them into the back of a pick-up truck. They didn’t believe in using stretchers in Thailand.

  I saw dozens of people kill themselves. Some prisoners slashed their wrists and bled to death in the rooms. Others drank rat poison or whatever else they could get their hands on. I know one guy who drank a bottle of resin hardener. I saw three or four climb onto the factory roofs and jump.

  The number of suicides never surprised me. What surprised me was that there weren’t more.

  And yes, there were times when I thought about it myself. But I had four children. I wouldn’t want them to grow up thinking their father was a coward who killed himself in prison because he couldn’t take it.

  15

  While I fought off notions of suicide, in October 2000, something happened that posed a real threat to my life. Years of living in squalor and a poor diet collapsed my immune system. I caught tuberculosis.

  At first I didn’t know what I had, but I knew something was wrong. I was coughing and vomiting uncontrollably and getting really bad chest pains. I couldn’t lie down at night without getting stabbing pains in my chest. I also lost about 10 kg in just a few weeks.

  My mother had died from heart disease, so naturally I feared that I had developed a similar complaint.

  I went to see the medic, who told me that I was probably worrying too much. He just gave me two paracetamol and told me that I would get well soon.

  I knew I had something serious, so I went to see the building chief and explained my symptoms. I told him if he didn’t get me a doctor I would probably die in his prison, which would give him a lot more paperwork.

  Two or three weeks later I was transported to Chonburi Hospital. I was weak and feeble by this stage. I was in constant pain, looked malnourished and could barely walk.

  They diagnosed me as having a dangerous strain of TB.

  They took blood and sputum tests and the results came back as level three, or chronic TB. It was a relief to know that it wasn’t heart disease, but having TB wasn’t exactly a joke.

  I had to go out to a hospital for chest X-rays. Both my lungs had TB, but my left lung was worse affected.

  The prison insisted I give another spit test just to be sure. It’s supposed to be done first thing in the morning before you clean your teeth or eat or drink anything, so I was at the office at 6.30 a.m. I had to wait until ten or 11 o’clock before the medic called me for the tests.

  The results were the same, plus three, but the medic wouldn’t believe me.

  ‘Foreigners don’t get TB!’ he said. ‘You put someone else’s spit into your mouth before you come to give the test sample!’

  Unlikely as it was, he refused to believe I wasn’t tricking him, and refused to give me any medication.

  At this stage I’d had enough, and I wrote to the Irish embassy in Kuala Lumpur. I spelled out the seriousness of my situation and told them that if they didn’t do something, I was going to die.

  As the weeks passed, my condition deteriorated. By January 2001, I’d started coughing up blood, and not just a little blood either.

  The embassy wrote to the prison, saying,

  ‘The embassy has been informed that Colin Martin has TB, and you will give him the proper medication until such time as the embassy can arrange his transfer to the prison hospital at Lard Yao Prison in Bangkok.’

  By this time, I’d lost over 25 kg and was practically skin and bone. But the letter worked.

  I was transferred from Chonburi Prison to Lard Yao on 2 February in a minibus. There were four of us – three Thais going to Chiang Mai and me to Lard Yao in Bangkok. I was accompanied by four commandos armed with Uzi sub-machine-guns at the ready in case any of us should try to escape.

  It was a joke. They’d put us all in shackles, so we wouldn’t be able to run very far even if we did manage to get away.

  I arrived at Lard Yao at eight o’clock on a Friday morning. It lies wall to wall beside two other prisons – Bombat, which is just for drug-related cases, and Bangkok’s women’s prison.

  Lard Yao is massive, holding 9,000 prisoners in total. It was originally built by the Japanese during World War II as a concentration camp. It was later modified a bit, but the original structure remained the same. The atmosphere was bleak and dismal.

  On arrival at the hospital section of Lard Yao, I was informed that a doctor wouldn’t be available until Monday, so they sent me into the main prison.

  Inside Lard Yao there are 14 different sections. When you go into one section, you can only get out if you have a hospital appointment or a visit. Once you’re in the belly of the monster, you are trapped.

  I found out that different types of prisoner are sent to different buildings. For example, Building One is for the katoeys; Building Two is for drug cases and troublemakers; Building Three is for mentally disturbed prisoners and invalids, and so on.

  Being a foreigner and therefore supposedly troublesome, I was sent to Building Two, but they wouldn’t accept me because I had TB. I was considered too much of a danger. Building One also proved problematic. They said I’d have to cut my moustache before they’d let me in. I refused. Eventually they sent me to Building Three, where the mental patients were kept, but I didn’t mind. I was just pleased to put my bags and blankets down.

  I stayed in the building over the weekend, then was transferred on Monday to the hospital. They confirmed that I had TB and that my left lung was very bad. They took a number of X-rays which showed the scars where the lining of my lung had ruptured.

  I was admitted to the hospital on Friday morning. It was the first time I’d seen a bed in three and a half years – but my joy was to be short-lived. I soon saw what the place was like.

  Everybody had to wear pyjamas. The pair I was given had once been white, but were now far from it. They were ripped and covered with bloodstains or vomit stains, and there were stains on the trousers from where other patients had soiled themselves.

  The bedclothes weren’t much better and God only knows what stains were on them. I later found out that there were cupboards of new and pristine white sheets – but they kept those for when visitors or inspectors came.

  The ward I was put into was designated for patients suffering from HIV/AIDS and TB. Most of the 27 patients there had both diseases together.

  It was awful. Whatever chance I had of controlling my TB, the others had none. With AIDS, their immune system was destroyed, so the TB slowly killed off their lungs.

  The normal medication used to treat TB is a collection of 13 pills plus some vitamins and protein pills. The hospital didn’t bother administering any medication to the AIDS patients because they were dying anyway.

  It was horrific.

  I will never forget what I saw inside Lard Yao hospital. The staff cared nothing about hygiene and even less about the patients. No one was treated with any degree of respect. Every day, people died there without any dignity.

  There were some 60 patients with TB in that hospital wing. The staff used to line us up to get our medication each morning. The nurse would dip a cup into a bucket of water and hand out pills – but she used the same cup on every patient. Needless to say, I refused to tolerate this.


  I wouldn’t eat the food they served either. It came from the AIDS building and was prepared by the AIDS patients. It looked slightly better than the pigswill they served in Chonburi. It contained white rice, at least. But still, I couldn’t put it in my mouth. I used to ask myself what if the AIDS patients had cut themselves while making it?

  * * *

  The hospital wards were run by trustees or patients who’d recovered from their illnesses and stayed on as orderlies. The nurses didn’t do anything. They were the same as the commandos back in Chonburi. They spent all day raising chickens, ducks, frogs and fish behind the wards to sell to the inmates. They paid hardly any attention at all to the patients.

  The trustees and orderlies did almost everything. They admitted patients, took blood samples, gave medication, and changed drips. Under their care, patients soon found that sickness and disease were the least of their problems.

  For a start, the orderlies stole the painkillers and Valium prescribed for seriously ill patients. They sold these at a nice profit to any junkies interested.

  The wards had two floors upstairs for those who could still walk, whereas the ground floor was reserved for the near-death or bedridden cases. There was also a morgue – which some of the orderlies used to keep their food fresh.

  Like every penal institution in Thailand, there was an ever-present threat of violence. In this case, it was the bedridden patients who were victimised pitilessly by the orderlies.

  In the later stages of AIDS, the patients lose control of their bodily functions and often soil themselves. The orderlies were supposed to clean them up, but they were more likely to beat the shit out of these patients, throw them out of the bed and drag them – or, more often than not, make them crawl – to the bathroom to clean themselves.

  Those who couldn’t walk because they were too close to death were dragged screaming and propped up in a corner, where they were hosed down. It was horrific.

  I saw some patients who had meningitis and lost control of their bodily functions. They would moan and cry out in pain involuntarily. The orderlies often beat them just for making noise. They hated the patients.

  My most sickening memory is of the orderlies placing bets on how long it took a patient to die.

  The longer I stayed there the worse it got. Some of the chronically ill patients pleaded with me to help them. They feared they would be killed in their sleep. At first I thought they were crazy, but I soon found out that this danger was very real.

  In the three days I spent there, three patients died in the night. I believe they were murdered. One orderly told me that he thought nothing of killing someone to speed things up.

  The killings never came to light because the orderlies threatened and tortured the other patients so they wouldn’t dare say anything.

  There was nothing I could do. If you’re bedridden or seriously ill you’re entirely at the mercy of the orderlies. And I was near death.

  I was supposed to stay in that hospital for a couple of months, but after three days, I’d seen enough. I was afraid that I would be murdered. On the third day, I went to see the head doctor to demand that they let me out of the hospital section. I just wanted out of there.

  Eventually he agreed, but said that I’d have to wear a face mask at all times once back in the real prison building. I didn’t mind. If that’s what it took to get me out of the hospital, I’d have agreed to wear a space suit.

  * * *

  I was sent back to a cell in the main prison filled with TB victims. As in the hospital, there were men with both TB and AIDS together with those with just TB.

  For a recovery or treatment room, it was stinking and unhygienic. It was dirty, with scrawls of graffiti all over the walls. The plaster was all cracked and falling off. There were bits of lino in places, but the rest was just bare concrete floor.

  Reading some of the graffiti, it was obvious that the room hadn’t been painted in over 25 years. Any money that had been allocated for repairs or paint had been stolen by the commandos – just like everything else.

  John Mulcahy in Dublin had continued to campaign for my release. We wrote to each other every week. He had been instrumental in highlighting my situation and, I believe, had played a part in inducing the Irish embassy to take action as regards getting me moved to Lard Yao.

  In one of our many letters I told him about the condition of this so-called recovery room. I asked John if he could send me some money from the appeal fund to redecorate the recovery room.

  It wasn’t a matter of wanting to do it. I had to. I was going to be in the TB room for at least six months. Trying to cure anything in those conditions would have been impossible.

  John sent me the money, and I bribed one of the commandos into buying a couple of gallons of disinfectant. Together with the other patients, we scrubbed down the walls, the floor and the toilet area.

  Next, I bought sand and cement and repaired the walls. Two days later, I bought paint and brushes and we painted the whole room. I also bought new lino for the floor and paid to have the toilet fixed.

  When we had finished, it looked like a normal hospital room. I felt elated. Being able to help those less fortunate than myself was an added benefit and gave me a new will to live.

  You might ask how I managed to get the materials to repair the cell into the prison. That was easy.

  The commandos made a request to the prison’s correction department for the materials needed. The correction department sent the money. The commandos bought what was needed, then charged me again for the same amount. They could have made repairs to the cell at any time by making a simple request to the correction department – but there’d be no profit in that. Instead, they waited until they found a way to make money.

  When it was all finished, it felt like I’d moved into a hotel. It cost a lot of money, but I hadn’t really had much choice.

  After six months my TB was still at level one. The doctor said I’d have to be readmitted to the hospital where I’d undergo further treatment. This would involve daily injections of a strong antibiotic called streptomycin.

  When I was called to the office and told that I’d have to go back to the hospital, I refused. I told the building chief that I’d already seen what the hospital was like. I said he could lock me up in solitary or do whatever he wanted, but I wasn’t going back to stay in that hospital. If he sent me back, I told him, I’d have him charged with attempted murder.

  He talked with the doctor and they agreed that I could walk to the hospital every day.

  So for the next 60 days I walked over and got my injections. That was 60 days, and 60 injections.

  I would get a shot in the right cheek one day, and in the left cheek the next. The injections actually caused a lot of pain. They were like tetanus shots and went straight to the bone, giving muscle cramps and spasms. That’s why they liked to admit patients to hospital. Most people don’t want to walk after getting a shot like that, but I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, I was going to suffer whether I was in or out of the hospital.

  The injections were all given by a prisoner working in the hospital. I never even saw a nurse or a doctor. Some days the guy giving the injections would say, ‘Maybe today it will hurt a little bit.’ There was something about the way he made the comment that irritated me. It sounded odd.

  A week later, I found out that he’d been re-using the needles and selling the new ones to the junkies for 250 baht each.

  Thankfully, after the 60 injections, I was no longer positive. I still had TB but I was told that it would cure itself. I still had to take 15 or 20 pills for breakfast every morning, but I was happy to be finished with the needles.

  The next problem I had to deal with was my weight. I’d lost over 25 kg and I needed to pile on the pounds if I was to regain my health properly.

  At the time,
I was still finding it hard to eat. I’d feel hungry but, once I smelled the food, I didn’t want it any more. I’d have to pinch my nose to force a few spoonfuls of soup or something down into my stomach. I’d sit, nearly in tears, forcing myself to eat just one more spoon.

  I’d buy baby formula, as it was easy to get down and was full of vitamins and minerals. I drank tons of the stuff. Instead of trying to eat three large meals a day, I decided to eat six or seven small ones. It worked, and my weight eventually climbed up to 60 kg.

  Putting on weight isn’t cheap in a Thai prison, but I’d started to receive food parcels from people in Ireland who’d read about my situation in the newspapers. The food I received helped me to rebuild myself.

  Although I was still physically ill, I felt better within myself. I had accepted what had happened and had dealt with the situation. I stopped getting angry and began to work the system. My change in attitude also coincided with a visit from John Mulcahy.

  I greeted him like a long lost friend; his visit, more than any other, boosted my spirits. I felt confident that something positive was going to happen, although I was not quite sure what.

  It took a year and a half for me to cure the TB, and then another year to get my weight back up to normal. If that medic in Chonburi Prison had given me the medication when he should have, I could probably have been cured in three months.

  16

  Although Lard Yao was a much less severe prison than Chonburi, the commandos were as violent and dangerous. They loved to inflict pain and to humiliate the prisoners, and often engaged in brutal violence, rape and even murder.