The Last Executioner (19 page)

Even if all the different nationalities spoke English badly, most Thai prison guards do not speak English. They tend to just shake their head to whatever they are being asked and wave the prisoner away. Therefore the foreign inmate does not feel that he is being looked after or that he had the same rights as the other prisoners. We have to be able to answer their questions. One guy got very frustrated in his efforts to obtain permission to marry his girlfriend in prison. In fact I have had to help obtain several marriage licenses by now, which is a pleasant matter to be involved in but is a real bitch, paperwork-wise. As always I take my role very seriously and work hard at it. Sometimes the complaints are a little silly like the few times I have been asked why their relatives haven’t written to them. I would love to simply reply with another question, like, ‘How the hell would I know?’ Instead I suggest that the prisoner tells his family to either send their letters through their embassy or register their letters so that the post office can track them—if these letters actually exist in the first place.

We even provide internet access for the prisoners which I am delighted with. If the prisoner prefers he can write a letter and we can scan it for him and email it. When the reply comes through we print it out and give it to him. This service is also available for Thai convicts but they largely prefer contact visits from their families to letters and emails. It is prison policy that each prisoner is entitled to a voice and communicate any complaints he may have.

I also have to deal with complaints about heath matters and insufficient treatments. Mostly the convicts send their complaints first to their embassies or NGO (Non Government Organisation) who then passes on the query or complaint to the Superintendent here, asking him to do something about it. We would then send a letter to the Director of the local hospital asking for a doctor to attend to the prisoner to see how serious the case is. Sometimes the prisoner specifies which hospital he wants to be treated in and the attending doctor must confirm that his illness cannot be treated successfully by the prison clinic. The prisoner must also be made to understand that he will have to pay for all his medical expenses. The prison does provide a limited amount of medicine free of charge but certainly something like a hospital stay has to be covered by the inmate himself.

The most years that a foreign prisoner spends with us is eight, before either being released or being transferred to his own country for further imprisonment. These are the hard core cases, like drug-selling. For lesser crimes it is between two and three years. We have different transfer agreements with 44 countries. There is a committee made up of officials from the Justice Ministry and the individual embassy that look after each transfer case. The embassy sends us a request regarding a prisoner and we send them back the details of the crime committed and the sentence handed down. We also send the photographs and fingerprints and everything is stamped by me to confirm that the prisoner is eligible for transfer. The embassy then has a meeting to discuss said prisoner. If everything is fine they request another pack of the same documents from us. Then the embassy confers with the Department of Corrections.

Obviously the most important part of my job is to make sure that the right prisoner is transferred. Fortunately I have never sent the wrong guy packing but what did happen was that a guy was almost on the plane before it was realised that he hadn’t actually finished his sentence. The police had filed another charge against him but a warrant hadn’t been issued yet. They had to ask a judge to specially set a hearing and issue a verdict on the same day in order to allow his transfer to continue.

I have to say that the American team probably impresses me the most with their efficiency and organisational skills. Two days before the transfer of an American national, and without any nagging on my part, the Ambassador, embassy officials, prosecutor and police will arrive at Bang Kwang to visit the prisoner to read him his rights so that he knows exactly what is going on. Each transfer is presided over by our Superintendent, and because I head the Foreign Affair Section I am always a witness. I don’t play any part in the escorting of the prisoner to the airport, except for one time when we transferred almost 100 Nigerians and extra officers were required to accompany them. An entire plane had been booked for them. Needless to say there was a lot of paperwork that day. Immigration officers had to come out to Bang Kwang to go through all the documents and passports before the men could leave the prison.

It is very hard work, but I also enjoy it as there is a big social aspect to this position. I have a drawer crammed with all the little gifts that I have received from foreign officials, from an ‘I Love New York’ key-ring to a badge of the Canadian flag. My favourite is probably the head of the Statue of Liberty on a chain, or maybe the FBI badge. The embassies are particularly generous around Christmas and New Year and I receive many cards and bottles of wine. I was never one to say no to a party and get invited to many functions now at all the embassies. The Superintendent and I are the only two ever invited from Bang Kwang and I go to every single one of them. Sometimes he allows me to use prison money to bring flowers or a fruit basket along.

I must have a passion for collecting things as I have kept every party invite I have ever received. I receive regular invites from the Canadian, English, American, Malaysian and Singaporean embassies. Some of them make me laugh as the spelling of my names varies drastically from embassy to embassy.

They are not very wild parties—quite unlike the ones on the American military bases when I was a teenage musician. They usually start about 6.30pm and finish up just two hours later. The location can be the Ambassador’s residence or somewhere equally plush like the five star Shangri-la or Hyatt Erawan Hotel. I never really enjoy the food—the bite-size finger food usually leaves me hungrier after I have eaten it. However, I always enjoy tasting the different wines and being introduced to the other guests. I have always enjoyed meeting new people so this job suits me very well.

Sometimes it comes in very handy, like the time when my daughter worked briefly for a photography studio run by a Taiwanese man who didn’t pay her as promised. I got on the phone to Chan, the Director of the Thai-Taiwan Business Association, who I had met at a party. He asked me for the studio’s phone number and a little while later my daughter received her wages. One of my favourite officials is Kate from the British Embassy. She once looked after me at a party and made sure to introduce me to everyone present. I knew her for a while because she is the one who contacts me about matters relating to the British inmates. I like her because she respects the Thai officers and is a good listener. You can have a proper discussion with her and so properly explain why you can or cannot help with a specific request.

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In the bigger picture I hope to be able to make a positive contribution to the Thai penal system. I collect as much information as I can so that I can present a history detailing the developments, the turning points and so on. Perhaps in ten years time there will be no death penalty, it will just be found in the history books or in the Museum belonging to the Department of Corrections where I help out as a guide at least once a month and lecture on the different stages of execution in Thailand, from beheading to firing squad to lethal injection. The government might decide that it has no right to take the life of a man no matter what he has done, because it is not a low life criminal, it is the government. Therefore, executing people should not be something that it condones. I have come to believe that severe punishment does nothing to solve the problem of crime but it should function as an extreme warning. I best describe it like this: You are two years old and you try to cross a busy street by yourself, almost ending up under the wheels of a car. Your mother grabs you in horror and slaps you several times to scare you from ever doing that again. There has to be consequences for committing a crime and there has to be deterrents—particularly for the ones who stop to think about what they are doing, or stop to plan a cold-blooded murder or rape.

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And now for the question that I am asked the most—do I regret being an executioner? I have given this a lot of thought and have even discussed it with Buddhist monks. Their opinion is usually the same; the convicts on death row are swamped in bad karma and the executioner is doing them a favour by sending them on to their next incarnation for the chance to redeem themselves.

Things used to be a hell of a lot worse for convicts in Thailand. A long, long time ago a convict’s chest would have been ripped open to see if his heart was any different from that of a normal person and his skull would have been split open for the same reason, to look at his brain. I should mention that the convict was usually alive when this was happening. After his head had been chopped off it was jammed on to a long stick which was then put up in a public place as an example to anyone who was planning on committing devious deeds. I am quite sure that the Western world could also offer many examples of man’s inhumanity to man, then and now.

I believe in karma, which can be bad or good depending on the individual. I never got any pleasure out of shooting people, or out of performing any other role in the execution process. It was my job. Did the World War Two pilot who dropped bombs create bad karma for himself? Or what about the American solders in Iraq? Should they be blamed for atrocities committed instead of the man responsible for sending them out there in the first place? Killing criminals troubled and depressed me. I always felt truly sorry for the condemned and things like Ginggaew’s prolonged dying will never leave me. It depressed all of us involved. Nobody looked forward to an execution. It was a duty to be carried out, and as such I wanted to do it to the best of my ability. You only create bad karma if your intention was bad. If I had enjoyed the killing I would be worried now, but my conscience is clear.

Killing wasn’t easy. Generally speaking when we talk about jobs we are talking about something productive. Everyone likes to be proud of what they do for a living but obviously I couldn’t. During my years of execution some of the superior officers looked down on me. They assumed that I was full of ego because of what I did so they didn’t wish to add to my ‘arrogance’ by treating me in a civilised manner. I also use to sense awkwardness at parties that Tew and I attended. I could feel people catch one another eyes and gesture in my direction. People didn’t want to socialise with me because, like my father, they believed all prison guards to be stupid and brutal. However, I also saw an opportunity to change people’s view of executioners and therefore of all prison guards.

I’m an unusual executioner in that I’m westernised to a certain degree; I play the guitar and I enjoy attending parties. If people were expecting to see a mad man thirsting for blood and brandishing a sword, then they were disappointed. If they were expecting me to spew forth hatred for criminals and their doings they were disappointed. I didn’t want their fear. I was an ordinary man whose biggest priority has always been my family. I never forget who or what I represent. The ones closest to me understood how tough I found the job and they were all I cared about.

My oldest son would complain over the years when his friends clamoured to be invited to the family home in order to see me, the executioner, in the flesh. Luckily he is a grounded kid and would huffily explain that ‘executioner’ wasn’t my title or who I was, only a duty that I had to do infrequently.

Then I found myself becoming a minor celebrity. Journalists, Thai and foreign, have sought me out to ask me about my job and Bang Kwang. One of Thai TV’s biggest personalities, Sawrayuth, understood my position immediately, which I really appreciated. He saw the job of executioner as being completely unwanted, depressing and thankless. He also said that he couldn’t understand how I managed to do it for so long. Students approached me for help on their theses concerning the penal system. That still happens today and I’m always happy to oblige. If they are especially lucky I will bring them back to my house and Tew will cook them a meal. What I don’t appreciate are the thrill seekers, the ones who just want the bloodiest and goriest details. They seem to think that I enjoyed it too.

I even speak at universities to warn young people about the temptations that lie beyond the college campus. My father would have been proud of me for this—I think he would have liked me to have gone into teaching. It is unrealistic just to tell young people to say no to crime and spin them fairy tales about good and bad witches. You must arm them with knowledge and information about the many ways it is possible to break the law. My tales are full of blood and gore but it gets my point across much more effectively. I tried to make something good out of my years of executing people by talking about how bad things can get if you are arrested and sentenced to Bang Kwang. If I can save even some of my young listeners and persuade them against committing a crime, then it is well worth it. The kids always ask me how many people I have ‘killed’—not executed—or if I could execute a relative, which proves that they are only concentrating so much on my warnings against breaking the law!

Tew always supported me no matter what I did but I knew that she looked forward to the day when I was no longer executioner. I know she used to wonder why I didn’t push myself forward and try to ingratiate myself with my superiors but that was just out of loyalty to me. She always wished I was appreciated more and paid even more than that. I watched other men do it over the years—get involved with the office politics in order to get themselves ahead. Although to be honest it’s an expensive business, undertaking to keep a boss supplied in whiskey or his favourite tobacco. It might take years before it paid off. I did buy presents maybe once a year around New Year’s Eve which is normal Thai practice but some of the men would decide to lick ass big time and end up spending a fortune. Some of the more well-to-do would buy presents for the boss’s family. I found it entertaining. There was a lot of string pulling, especially in the earlier days. The Thai official system was very rooted in a patronage system. Who you knew or who you were related to was most important.