Prisoners from Room 409

Hello all! Its been a long week and so much has happened! Some of it good, some of it heart-breaking but all of it interesting. The best place to start any story is in the beginning and ours starts last Friday, May 30. That night Shireen and I embarked on our long journey to Bangkok, Thailand. Shireen would be spending a week in the office, helping me to get acclimated to the surroundings and work and I would be spending the next 2 months working with political refugees and prisoner's of conscience in their quests for a grant of asylum both here and abroad. The trip over was relatively uneventful, highlighted by Shireen managing to get gum stuck in her hair and the nice man sitting next to us helping her out by advising her to use ice on it. For my part, the brunt of the trip was spent laying out over three seats in coach. Our flight from Amsterdam to Bangkok was almost half empty and it afforded me plenty of personal space, for which I was very grateful. I suppose a military coup and government advisory against, has a way of scaring off all but the most hardened world travelers.

Anyway, we arrived in Bangkok Sunday morning and met up with the office staff over here I'll be working with. They are all great people with far more interesting lives than my own and I'm sure you will hear plenty about them as the blogging continues but for now, I think its enough to say that they have all played a big part in keeping me from starving to death or getting hit by taxis.

The first few days of work have been relatively quiet. Not only am I new to the country of Thailand and the East in general, but I'm also completely new to the field of NGO work. I've spent the past few days trying to get oriented to the job, my responsibilities, and how best I can contribute and the past few nights trying to figure out how to survive in Bangkok. I speak absolutely no Thai and, contrary to what I was told before arriving, English is not super prevalent over here. I'm told it is more common in the touristy spots, but as we live in a little bungalow away from all that, I'm left playing charades when one of my co-workers isn't with me.

Though I have a hard time communicating and an even harder time navigating around, I enjoy the city a great deal even though it smells awful. It has a very unique feel to it. An intimate charm in the midst of the sprawling metropolis. Every bit of sidewalk is cram packed with food carts and vendors of all varieties and at every street corner there are packs of motorcycle taxis and the ubiquitous tuk-tuks. The motorcycle taxis are a particularly thrilling affair. For 40 bhat (roughly $1.30) you hop on the back of some guys motorcycle and he zooms off to your destination. You are not provided with a helmet and since I would prefer to not awkwardly hug this stranger in front of me and no one else does it either, you spend most of the ride holding onto your own knees and and trying extremely hard not to touch the driver. Also, driving in Bangkok is an absolute cluster, particularly for the motorcycles. Rules of the road are more like “guidelines” and no one really cares about the guidelines either. The best way to describe it is a massive conglomeration of drivers ascribing to the “get in where you fit in” philosophy. This makes the motorcycle taxis even more fun as they drive on sidewalks, against traffic, in between cars and basically wherever the feel like it. And they are not shy about gunning it either. My first trip ever on one and my driver shot through a gap between cars like a bullet and clipped the side of his bike on a turning car. I was about 3 inches from losing a toe and he didn't even so much as look back. Its a whole different kind of ballgame over here.

To shift gears a bit, today was my first real day of work. By that I mean, the other 2 days in the office I've mainly be doing orientation stuff, signing papers and some research. Dipping my toes in the water, as it were. But today was the first time really swimming. The office crew and I had an appointment to visit detainees at the Immigration Detention Center. The IDC is, for all intents and purposes, a prison. It is where all the illegal immigrants in Bangkok are held. Many if not most of these detainees are people escaping political or religious persecution in their home countries. They fled to Thailand seeking asylum and either have not been granted it or are waiting for their applications to go through, a process which can take years.

As you enter the IDC compound, the first thing you notice is a giant poster of the King and next to it a diorama of bunnies around a tree stump. It is an incredibly odd and misplaced image considering what lies inside. We all walked up to the check in point and filled out the appropriate documents. Then, because we were early we went across the street to buy food to bring with us into the IDC to give to the detainees. When we came back, it was almost visiting time so we huddled in with the rest of the visitors and started storing our personal belongings in the provided lockers. There were about 20 of us so it wasn't overly crowded today but I'm told on Monday's you are packed in like sardines. After storing our things, everyone gave the foodstuffs they brought to security for inspection (we can only hope they make it to the inmates without issue but we never know) and we were then thoroughly frisked before being allowed forward. I was one of the last ones through and shocked at what was happening. This was not an intimate setting in which you could visit with your loved one or friend or what have you. The room is long and has 2 fences running parallel next to each other in the middle of it about 4 feet apart. On one side of the fences are the detainees and on the other side, you the visitor stand while guards walk between the gap to make sure nothing untoward is going on. Because there are so many visitors all at one time, and because there is a 4 foot gap separating the people, the room is filled with the cacophonous din of noise and conversation, everyone yelling trying to talk to their detainee or visitor.

When we found the people we were there to visit Maya, one of our office workers who speaks Vietnamese, translated for us and we spoke to them for about 45 minutes. The detainees we visited were Vietnamese men who fled from Vietnam to escape religious persecution; they are Hmong Christians. Vietnam's population is only 8% Christian and less than 1% of that is Protestant. Protestantism is viewed by the government as an invaders religion of the West and the Hmong in Vietnam have a long and tragic history of being persecuted for their faith. These gentlemen we interviewed fled Vietnam because they were being continually stopped from practicing their religion and when they did, being abused for doing so. So they fled for the safer harbors of Bangkok with their families but in Thailand they were illegal immigrants and they, and much of their families, were arrested and placed in the IDC.

When we first saw them I thought they looked little older than teenagers, but apparently they were all upwards of 28. They were all well groomed except for exceptionally long fingernails which could have been a personal preference or a lack of access to nail clippers I'm not sure. They wore bright orange t-shirts, not a prison uniform per se but certainly reminiscent of one. One, whose name will be omitted in the interest of protecting him, did the majority of the speaking for the other 2. He told us about their lives before detention and of the conditions inside. They were family men; one had a wife who was also in detention, but at a different location. He was supposed to be allowed to see her once a month but the last few months with the coup and everything, he hadn't been allowed to. Another's wife was outside of detention, still hiding while they awaited the decision from UNHCR. He hadn't seen her for 2 years.

The conditions in the IDC are purportedly close to inhumane though I cannot speak to that with first hand knowledge (I hope to be able to see the living conditions myself in the near future). The detainee's are separated by gender and housed according to global geographic lines, Southeast Asians in one place, North Africans in another, etc... Our detainee's were living in a large room with some 30 other people. Each room has a designated “room leader” selected by the guards who acts as liaison for the room. They detainees aren't given much. When I asked how they pass the time in the day I was told they pray. They have no cards of board games. The brunt of their “fun” derives from their exercise time where twice a week they are allowed outside to run, play basketball, or engage in other forms of approved exercise. Those who have money can purchase things from a commissary but the options are limited and simple things like boiling water are near impossible for the expense. All the food we brought them had to be dry stored, ready to eat foodstuffs. The men said the conditions are not too terrible (and I've since been informed that these are same conditions that Thai prisoners are kept in as well), they are allowed to practice their religion inside and there is a minimum of violence between detainees. We asked them why stay here instead of return home and they told us that it was better to be a prisoner here and wait for asylum than to return home and be thrown in jail where they will be beaten, tortured, and possibly killed. They say the best case scenario for returning home would be an extended period in jail where they would never see their families. The IDC, they say, is the lesser of two evils.

So there they wait for the UNHCR's (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) decision on their asylum application in a de facto prison; their only crime wanting the freedom to worship their God, the only alternative being to return to Vietnam where they will be tortured or worse. They've been presented with an impossible choice but to look at them you wouldn't know it. These three men seemed extremely full of hope when we spoke to them. Perhaps it was just having someone knew to talk to, but they were not the beaten down depressant I would be under their circumstances rather, hopeful for the future and adamantly sure of what they wanted. When we asked them what they would like us to help with for our next visit -books, food, medicine?- they replied “We only want help getting out of here.”

It seemed fitting to see these men on the 25^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres. There, millions had been protesting, voicing their displeasure with growing social disenfranchisement and a government that was becoming increasingly corrupt and self-serving and the image of a singular man standing in front of a procession of tanks sent by the military to quell the protests has become iconic. Yesterday, I saw 3 young men willing to spend years in prison, away from their families and stripped of their rights, so they could live in a country where their freedom was protected by the government instead of harassed. A photo of the three of them, standing opposite two steel cages with their arms around each other in brotherhood, would have been no less powerful or moving. Too bad the IDC won't allow you to bring in cameras.