somo

What It's Like In Thailand's Deadliest Prison
by T. M. Hoy

BANGKOK: -- Thai prison, like all prisons, reveals the dark side of a person's soul. It is how people behave when there are no constraints and outside limits are nonexistent. All the fury of the Thai people against the neo-colonial economic imperialism of the West is directed fully at Western prisoners; in the provincial prisons, at least, where little or no oversight exists.

The prisons in Bangkok are somewhat less deadly, as the personnel from the foreign embassies visit regularly, making sure that the worst of abuses are curbed.

But still...heroin addiction is rampant, madness is a regular side-effect, and no one emerges from the experience unscathed. A U.S. State Department study found that every year spent in a Thai prison is equivalent (in damage done to body and mind) to five years in a standard U.S. prison. The five-plus years I did are therefore roughly equivalent to doing twenty-five years in the U.S. prison system. (I was then given a treaty transfer and served an additional eleven years in U.S. federal prison).

Thai prison is a surreal place. Like Thai society itself, it's a strange mixture of casual brutality and indifference to human suffering, while being placed side-by-side with stoicism, introspection, and humor in the face of death.

In retrospect, that cauldron of viciousness and cruelty brings forth the whole spectrum of human behavior--from great evil to transcendent kindness, and mimics what I would assume those who survive a war must experience. [more…]

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-- HUFFINGTON POST 2012-05-22