Greetings!
To kick off the new week really hard
I've translated for You really interesting, inspiring and
I've translated for You really interesting, inspiring and
sometimes disturbing interview with Michał Pauli -
a Pole whose journey to Thailand ended with 12 death sentences...
It's a pretty long interview so I have split it into two parts
(next one at the end of this week :)
(next one at the end of this week :)
Bon Appétit!
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Translation: Krystian Iwaniuk
.:In the Land of Smiles:.
Michał Pauli, a slim, dark-haired man with hazel eyes and a wide smile stuck to his face. The smile which has not been rubbed off even by what he had experienced for 6 years in Asian prisons.
A young Pole sets off to exotic Thailand, where he gets entangled in a drug smuggling. He is sentenced to 12 death penalties commuted to lifetime imprisonment. Finally, he lands in one of the harshest prisons in the world, shrouded in a grim history, the Bangkwang Central Prison. He shares his cell with serial killers serving short sentences. He has no right to visits, and the only privilege he has is a 15-minute conversation with a Polish consul per six months. And in this abysmal circumstances he does not, even for a moment, lose hope, and from behind the bars makes an effort to change his wretched situation.
- How did your Thai adventure start?
I’m a visual artist, but my second passion is travelling. About ten years ago my private life changed, and I’ve decided to pick up travelling once again – I’ve chosen Southeast Asia. Back then, I still had my own ceramic workshop in Poland where I earned my living. However, with time it started to bring less and less money so I decided, using my connections in Poland and Asia, to import handicraft from Asia.
Everything went great in the beginning. But with time I encountered serious financial problems. Autumn came, and I was up to my ears in debt. And then Pim, my Thai friend who was helping me with the handicraft business, called me. She asked me to do her a favour and send some ecstasy from Poland.
- How did she even know that she can ask for such a thing?
Well, she knew about my financial problems, as well as my attitude towards substances such as marijuana.
- What about Thais? What is their attitude to drugs?
- What about Thais? What is their attitude to drugs?
More lenient than to other illegal acts, albeit drug possession is a punishable crime. Nevertheless, when I was there I’d seen masses of people in clubs taking ecstasy, smoking marijuana, and there was no problem with buying them. I don’t know how does it look like now, but then those drugs were quite popular. Unfortunately, after the smuggling I found out how Thai police works. Policemen often caught tourists who were possessing drugs and wheedled money out of them. You can be sentenced for seven years for marijuana possession there.
During my trips to Thailand I didn’t experience any of this, and I witnessed the widespread of drugs. Moreover, I regarded Pim as a friend so I had no anxieties about her request.
Well, now I could talk at length about whether I was inclined to do it or not. The truth is, I was lured by money – it wasn't much because I was smuggling small amounts, and treated it more as a favour. In the end I sent her letters from Poland, in which I’d placed several ecstasy pills. In Poland I also had no problems with getting them anyway.
- How did the jail look like?
It was a typical one. During my last trip to Thailand some guys wearing civilian clothes, without any badges, flattened me on the ground, handcuffed and dragged me to a car. They drove me to a house, which had nothing to do with police whatsoever.
Oblivious of what was going on, I was interrogated by a bunch of Thais who didn’t speak English. After some time a black American guy came along and told me that he is a DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] agent, and I finally realized why did they catch me. The American expected information, which I wasn’t able to give him.
Bangkwang prison - Everything' seems fine...
- What information?
Later, in the evening, I landed in a police station. They took me to a room where on a desk where the contents of all my letters were heaped up. Next, they dragged me to a cage, 4 metres wide and 5 long, in which already were forty people. I spent there two weeks, including interrogation breaks.
- How to pull oneself together in such a place?
It’s really hard. After a couple of days came a guy from a Polish embassy telling me how screwed I am, and that they can’t help me because they have no time for it. People with whom you are sharing the cage aren’t very communicative. You land in a world of monkeys, which want something from you, but there is no possibility of mutual understanding. Living in such small space makes you start to feel like an animal as well.
After two weeks I went to a first prison, Bambat. In the meantime I learned that my ‘friend’ works for the police and is the chief prosecutor in the trial. Furthermore, the consul informed me that in Thailand for what I’d done I can be sentenced to death.
- How did the trial look like?
It’s too much to talk about, but frankly, it did not ‘look’ at all. You may refer to my book, where I’ve written in great detail how certain things looked like, and how they were deprived of fundamental features of what is known in European countries as law. It’s worth reading to get an idea how Thailand’s judicial system works, as well as to understand my yearning for freedom.
Prisons in Bangkok, and I’ve been in a few, are places which recall times of the colonial slavery. They are overcrowded and have no basic sanitation. Bangkwang prison was established during WWII by Japanese to keep thousands of prisoners. At the moment there is over eight thousand people being kept there.
First, I was in Bambat prison, it’s only for the ‘drug guys,’ where in one block were even 1000 prisoners, and in a cage were 50 people. At three o’clock you go to a cage, and at seven you go out to a square, where Thais had to work. I was also forced to work for a long time, but with other foreign prisoners we finally stood up. When I landed in this prison for a good start they had welded heavy chains onto my ankles. Later was only worse. And this exotic climate…
Exactly, for diseases and vermin. After staying in a seclusion room – a place where heat and bites of a multitude of insects just wrecks you – my leg became infested with fly larvae. They were removed in hospital, probably the worst part of the prison. Nevertheless, in terms of living more comfortable than blocks.
It was a dying room. There was a reek of boracic acid and rotting bodies, which were lying in bedclothes until a corner came. The worst was when a sick died on Friday, and in this high temperature his body started to decay after one day, and a corner came on Monday.
When it came to a treatment, paracetamol was the cure for everything. Doctor visited every few days for an hour. The hospital was absolutely overcrowded, people lay everywhere. You could catch several diseases there – the staff didn’t enter the sick’s cages because they were afraid of infections. But thanks to that we had more freedom – we could gamble, were allowed to have more personal belongings.
- Is there a possibility of getting used to such a way of living?
With time you’re getting used to it and start to organize your life. I survived this thanks to money from my family, by which I could arrange things with guards on the side – they helped only in exchange for money. I arranged food and pure water, because the public one was drawn from a nearby river and had a coffee-with-milk colour.
You could order foodstuff - you chose it from a list and waited for four days. Rice with eggs cost equaled PLN 20 – twice as much as behind the bars.
Another Pauli's illustration picturing prison corridor of cages
- In your book, you have described torturing people to death, slave work, corruption of prison guards. These are blatant abuses of human rights!
Unfortunately, that’s what things are like there. Thailand’s judicial system is in no way like European. The embassy works in accordance with directives which work in countries where prisoners are treated like human beings and have, at least, basic rights.
According to these regulations, Polish diplomats can react only in a situation when I would be treated worse than an ordinary Thai. And that’s the case - you just can’t treat anybody worse than that! We – the foreigners – coped better in prisons than Thai citizens because administrators were afraid that if they attacked us the embassies would protest.
Thais have undergone constant indoctrination. They are made believe that drug dealers commit worse crimes than murderers. A dealer ‘kills millions’ while a killer only one person.
As for correctional institutions in Thailand, stories of establishing such facilities like Bambat are very interesting. It all began after WWII. Back then opium trade was legal in Thailand bringing the country great profits. In the 1950s CIA subsidized opium plantations, thereby supporting general Li Mi’s army. Whereas heroin trade was organized by a chief of Thai police himself. Moreover, key politicians were involved in it.
Later the Vietnam War broke out, and gigantic amount of drugs produced in the Golden Triangle reached USA. In 1971 Nixon established DEA and officially declared war against drugs. America allotted huge money for this fight, building infrastructures etc.
But Thailand is not America. At that time money came in torrents to Thailand, and the police manipulated evidence and fabricated investigations in such a way to keep figures looking good. Effectiveness mattered – it gave money, not such an abstract concept like law. For my capturing DEA gave Pim a big pay rise. The fact that she arranged the whole thing and abused my gullibility is a different matter…
Don't judge a book by its cover?
First of all, it’s certainly difficult to make friends in a place where you found yourself against your will surrounded by people who were there against their will as well. Secondly, we are talking here about a company of ‘alpha males.’ Thirdly, there were [all kinds of] pressure and problems constantly overlapping each other. Nevertheless, I must say that there was a group of people with whom I got along, and to some extent I can say that they are my friends.
- Do you know what happened to them?
- Do you know what happened to them?
Their situation haven’t changed – they’re still where they were. I had a huge luck, stories like mine rarely happen. Royal Pardon, by which I was released, is given to one or two people out of thousands a year at most. I had in mind all those who didn’t manage to break free when I was writing my book. I believe that the world should know about their misery – they deserve it.
I had no idea that there were, and still are, so many Poles around the world who got into similar troubles to mine, but hadn’t so much luck. Recently, after my appearance in a few Polish TV programmes, I’ve received quite a lot of dramatic letters from distraught families. I really would like to help them because I know from my own experience how ‘great’ Polish institutions’ support is.
Bright side of Thailand...
End of the 1st part.
End of the 1st part.
https://paulithailand.blogspot.com/
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