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THAILAND – LIFE IN JAIL August 1999 DUR 10’02” SCRIPT Bangkok Airport
Arrival Hall & Bangkok Airport Departure Hall Jane’s passport Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) RL – Thought track with Jane’s passport Flight OA473 on
flight board Olmpyic Airways flight OA473 on tarmac – loading
etc. Deborah’s passport Deborah Spinner
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) RL – Thought track with Deborah’s passport Olympic Airways departures
counter, loading bags etc. Subjective approach
to Olympic Airways check-in counter Lyle’s passport Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwag
Prison) LR – Thought track with Lyle’s passport Police/security
officer at Bangkok Airport Stills of three
couriers holding name signs Jet walkway begins
to pull back from Olympic Jet Stills of condoms
with heroin VHS of three
couriers being held at airport, heroin condoms Jet pushes back Tilt up form jet
taxing, to black Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) –behind grill of interview room – LR Camera crew enters
prison and signs book Tim with prison
officials walking through women’s prison grounds Prisoners’ computer
class in Women’s Prison Prisoners moving
about in Women’s Prison grounds at lunch Cell in Women’s
Prison, and tour of cell block Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) – behind grill of interview room - LR Prisoners moving
about in Women’s Prison grounds at lunch Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) – behind grill of interview room – LR Embassy Room Interview
cutaways Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) – behind grill of interview room - LR Reporter to girls as
they arrive in truck to court Girls arrive in
truck for court – covered with towels, handcuffed Reporter to
prisoners as they leave in truck from court Deborah under towel
speaking fro prison van Deborah Spinner
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) – behind grill of interview room – LR Prison textile
factory at work Deborah Spinner
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) – behind grill of interview room – LR Bang Kwang prison
externals Bangkok internals
with packed cells Tim meets Lyle Tim on meeting Lyle Cutaways of Tim
meeting Lyle Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwang Prison) LR Passport photo of
Lyle Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwang Prison) LR Lyle shows us his
food Tim – reverse Arms through bars Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwang Prison) LR – thought
track up to first cut with ITV vision of blacksmith placing chains on legs of
prisoners Lyle comes off bus
in chains Reporter to Lyle as
he enters court in chains Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwang Prison) LR Tim – reverse Tim - reverse ITV Building One
cells overlay Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwang Prison) LR Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) RL Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) RL Girls led by chain
into court Deborah Spinner
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) Jane McKenzie
(Convicted Heroin Trafficker) RL Lyle Doniger (Drug offender in Bang Kwang Prison) LR |
Music (Inst. 2’) Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport; a Friday night in March 1996. Music (Sting 1’) It’s the worst
mistake that we’ve ever made in our lives because we didn’t, we really didn't
contemplate and think before we took the actions we took. O A four – seven – three, the Olympic Airways overnight service to Sydney; ground staff load the jet. Music (Sting 1’) What was more
important to myself was the money I was going to make. Ten thousand dollars.
We were all employed individually. Three Australians booked on the flight are about to gamble with their lives, though they’ll later insist they had no idea how much was at stake. Swasdee Ka Music (Sting 1’) The Australian
police already knew before we even left Australia, apparently… and they
informed the Thai Police and they just waited for us. Music (Sting 1’) Lyle Doniger; Deborah Spinner; Jane McKenzie – arrested. (Tarmac walkaway
alarm sounds) Hidden in their bodies; ten condoms packed with heroin. As the three Australians begin to think through the consequences of drug trafficking in Thailand, OA Four-Seven-Three backs up without them. Their last link with home – their ten children – the lives they’ve had up to now – all gone. (Internal prison
gate opened) I remember when we
were at the airport after we had been caught and the first thing that made me
aware that we were looking at some very, very serious, a very, very serious
offence was when they closed the airport door and on the back
it has the level of trafficking laws and number one for heroin is the death
penalty and we just looked at each other and burst into tears. It’s not a place cameras normally go. (External gates of
Women’s Prison, close) Inside, rows of perfectly manicured gardens; five thousand perfectly behaved prisoners. (Music, jail
library) Music classes, computer classes, cooking classes; this appears nothing like the hell often described by former inmates of Thai prisons. There is though a failing jail officials admit to; too many inmates. Even the new remand section, designed for six hundred, is hopelessly over-crowded. These cells, the prison’s best, are the size of an ordinary western living room. How many sleep in each cell? Seventy-two. We asked to see the older cell where the two Australian women are locked away each day, but were told we couldn’t; if there is the day to day squalor Thai prisons are notorious for, it’s hidden from view. My health is fine.
Ah, I’m doing OK. (laughs) As well as can be expected under the conditions
that I live in. I wouldn’t say the conditions are wonderful, but you wouldn’t
expect them to be wonderful. Ask Jane McKenzie about over-crowding and she bites her tongue, knowing Thai prison authorities will see what she has to say. How do you think conditions here might compare with
Australian prisons? Um, probably
better I don’t comment on that one. So why would a mother of four, her youngest then just four years old, risk everything to smuggle heroin out of Thailand? Simple, says Jane McKenzie – she was a junkie. I wasn’t thinking
straight. I was under the influence of drugs. I was making a desperate
attempt to do something and it really didn’t enter my mind that I would not
be returning home. Did you expect this? No. Definitely
not. In my worst
nightmares, no. How do you feel?
Are you guilty? Can you answer? One hundred and fifteen grams of heroin between three drug addicted couriers; they argued it was a tiny fraction of the kilograms past traffickers had packed in suitcases; for Thai authorities, it was enough to impose the death penalty. Any message for
your families? In the end, the court commuted their death sentences to fifty-year jail terms. I just want to say
to my mum and my babies that I love them and I miss them very much. For myself
personally, as a first offender, sitting here with a fifty
year sentence is something that I can’t, I dunno,
I can’t fathom the fact; I can’t relate to the fact, when at home I probably
would have been put in rehabilitation for a year, or maybe served one year in
jail. (Factory) She’s a foreign inmate, but Deborah Spinner still works, here, in the prison’s clothing factory. Prisoners are given half the profits, as savings. It’s not what we’re
used to. It’s not the average Australian wage, no (chuckle). Is it good
work? It’s OK. It keeps you like from
thinking too much, yeah. It’s all right. But the most feared Thai prison of them all is this one. (Bang Kwang prison
gate closes) In Bangkok, they’ve etched the Jail known as ‘Big Tiger’ into local legend; it swallows inmates, they say; many simply don’t make it out of Bang Kwang Prison, alive. (Prisoners chains
2’) Six thousand prisoners, all serving thirty years or more, some on death row. Among them is an Australian; he’s not on death row, though he sleeps in the same building as those who are. How are you? Are you well? Yeah, yeah, fine. Well, we’re inside. OK, I didn’t think the day would come, but… Lyle Doniger is due for release from Bang Kwang mid way through the next century. …and I thought we’d
be back in seven days, which turned into fifty years. Big Tiger’s daily rations have taken a lot of weight off the Sydney drug addict turned trafficker. There’s not enough
to sustain life. That’s a vegetable, something like a choko;
there are two bits of meat there, but they’re on bone. That and the rice is a
day’s ration. At the moment I’m lucky I got some
Vegemite. How did you get that? Yeah,
shipped over from Australia. Yeah, I got a very caring sister and brother. The forty-eight year old admits he’s scared – that long before they let him out, he’ll go mad. ITV (Attaching
chains to prisoners’ ankles) When you first come
here, they whack chains on you for three months; slow you down so they can
keep an eye on you, and ah try and slow down the suicide rate. Find most
foreigners, they seem to hit a wall or something after about six to eight
years, so I’m really sweating on it; ah I can get a King’s pardon and be out
before that happens. Hit a wall; what happens when you hit the wall? Ah, well you speak to people here; you
know how long they’ve been here, when you talk to them. They just seem to
change. I’ve met a few people who are crazy, and other people knew them when
they came and there were quite OK. Like the two women he came to Thailand with, this father of four says drug addiction drove him to gamble everything on getting drugs past the authorities. How will you be pleading today? I don’t even know if I’ll be entering a plea today (clanging of
chains around media scrum) Oddly, he says he went after the illegal heroin as a substitute for legal methadone. I’d been on methadone for thirteen years and it was an opportunity to try and get away from methadone. Methadone is very hard to come off. But you were out to make money or were you out to get
yourself a supply of heroin? We
weren’t going to make one baht out of it. It was ah, the small amount to
receive was just to wean myself off. The girls had been told they’d get ten thousand dollars. Um, no it wasn’t for the money. The other
thing was the opportunity to get out of Australia. At that time
I was forty-four; I’d never travelled. If he really did want to escape heroin, he’s in the wrong place. Many here regard drugs as the only way to make life in the Big Tiger bearable. Lyle Doniger won’t discuss whether he still uses heroin, but does say he’d never take it in here with a needle. The people who use
needles have AIDS. There’s no exception on that. There’s no way I want to
sort of ever get out of this place, just to go back and die of AIDS. We came into the
prison and it was a cold turkey and we’ve been clean ever since. Well into our visit, prison authorities allowed us a closer interview with the two Sydney mothers, and for reasons best known to them, insisted we record it in profile. I never want
anything to do with heroin again as long as I live. A year and a half after Jane McKenzie’s arrest, her second husband died of a heroin overdose; her two youngest children – now nine and seven – are virtual heroin orphans. Both mothers say their cruellest punishment is their separation from their children. My son was two and
a half when I left. He’s now five. He doesn’t even remember me. I mean to me,
that breaks my heart. The innocent victims are their ten children; most are likely now to grow up without even speaking to – let alone seeing – their missing parents. That, that hurts;
sometimes it’s unbearable. I’d take these
conditions with me if I thought I could get back y’know
to be near the children. They’re going to grow up y’know
not even knowing me. (Gate closes) |