ladyarkles
04-21-2005, 09:48 PM
By Angela O'Connor
April 22, 2005
Christopher Parnell can do more than imagine the prison fate that may await Australians held in Indonesia over drug offences - he knows it well.
Mr Parnell spent 11 years in some of Indonesia's worst prisons, for drug offences he says he did not commit. From his arrest in 1985 when he was 32, he was beaten, starved and tortured in jail. He spent four years in solitary confinement. For three-and-a-half months he had his hands shackled behind his back. He lost his gall bladder, spleen and left eye in an attack and says he ate cockroaches and human flesh.
"If a cat got into a cell at night, you were ready with a cloth to throw over it and it would become prison rabbit," he said.
He needed money to survive. The Australian Government paid $100 a month to help him through, and his family sent another $100 a month.
With it he paid guards to buy food to supplement the rations supplied by his jailers.
Breakfast was tea and a piece of sweet potato the size of a quarter of an apple. For the rest of the day, there were two mug-sized serves of rice, one topped with a spoonful of vegetables.
"You woke up every morning thinking of food, and after that you spent the rest of the time thinking how to escape. If he had known then what he knows now, he would not have made the many escape attempts he did.
"The Indonesians are often ready to reduce your sentence by as much as nine months for each year you have served," he said. "But if you try to escape, your jailers are held responsible and their status and pay are reduced. They hate you for your escape attempts."
If the "Bali nine" were held together, they would be better off than he was because they could support each other.
"You do better if you are humble, learn the language and learn to accept and respect their culture. You don't look guards and authorities in the eye when you are talking to them. You drop your eyes," Mr Parnell said.
"It is better (for families) not to send too much money, because the guards and authorities who accept the 'gratuities' see it as a cash cow and there is less incentive for them to shorten the sentences," he said. You don't call the money the guards get to buy you small necessities bribes, and they give you a receipt.
For people tempted by the prospect of wealth from carrying drugs, he said: "Look around you. Look at your parents, your family and friends. Realise that if you are caught you will be in a foreign country, in a foreign environment where your family no longer exists. Don't be tempted by wealth. I highly recommend you don't do it."
His experience is the subject of his book The Sunday Smuggler, a reference to things inmates could lay their hands on when staff were off on Sundays.
(Source - The Age)
April 22, 2005
Christopher Parnell can do more than imagine the prison fate that may await Australians held in Indonesia over drug offences - he knows it well.
Mr Parnell spent 11 years in some of Indonesia's worst prisons, for drug offences he says he did not commit. From his arrest in 1985 when he was 32, he was beaten, starved and tortured in jail. He spent four years in solitary confinement. For three-and-a-half months he had his hands shackled behind his back. He lost his gall bladder, spleen and left eye in an attack and says he ate cockroaches and human flesh.
"If a cat got into a cell at night, you were ready with a cloth to throw over it and it would become prison rabbit," he said.
He needed money to survive. The Australian Government paid $100 a month to help him through, and his family sent another $100 a month.
With it he paid guards to buy food to supplement the rations supplied by his jailers.
Breakfast was tea and a piece of sweet potato the size of a quarter of an apple. For the rest of the day, there were two mug-sized serves of rice, one topped with a spoonful of vegetables.
"You woke up every morning thinking of food, and after that you spent the rest of the time thinking how to escape. If he had known then what he knows now, he would not have made the many escape attempts he did.
"The Indonesians are often ready to reduce your sentence by as much as nine months for each year you have served," he said. "But if you try to escape, your jailers are held responsible and their status and pay are reduced. They hate you for your escape attempts."
If the "Bali nine" were held together, they would be better off than he was because they could support each other.
"You do better if you are humble, learn the language and learn to accept and respect their culture. You don't look guards and authorities in the eye when you are talking to them. You drop your eyes," Mr Parnell said.
"It is better (for families) not to send too much money, because the guards and authorities who accept the 'gratuities' see it as a cash cow and there is less incentive for them to shorten the sentences," he said. You don't call the money the guards get to buy you small necessities bribes, and they give you a receipt.
For people tempted by the prospect of wealth from carrying drugs, he said: "Look around you. Look at your parents, your family and friends. Realise that if you are caught you will be in a foreign country, in a foreign environment where your family no longer exists. Don't be tempted by wealth. I highly recommend you don't do it."
His experience is the subject of his book The Sunday Smuggler, a reference to things inmates could lay their hands on when staff were off on Sundays.
(Source - The Age)