Welcome to the Bangkok Hilton: Inside Thailand’s notorious drug prisons | 60 Minutes Australia

You would have to be very desperate or very stupid to do

drug

s in Thailand after all the warnings, they couldn't be clearer, the penalties harsher, but still Australians still get caught and are shocked when they find themselves in some of the countries in the world. The most gruesome and brutal

prisons

, like the famous Bangkok Hilton, in a way, though they are the lucky ones. Thailand is a place where when they say zero tolerance they mean it, where more than two thousand

drug

dealers were murdered in the streets last year. of the infamous Bangkok Hilton and it is the number of women that overwhelms the number of those who have risked almost 6,000 in this small prison most have wasted their lives for drugs with an average sentence of 25 years or more many will die in this place it is not a good life is not a goal because it is only a long time because drugs are a very serious crime in Thailand during the day the prison works like a sweatshop the women spend the endless hours learning skills they will never use during the night they fill the cells like sardines how many women are in this cell 200 200 women here yes, how do they fit in yes, during our time in Bangkok Hilton prison, officer pashruporn made sure that we saw only what they wanted us to see at this time some parts of the prison were strictly prohibited, as is access to foreign prisoners, including three Australian women, which is why they are here.

If you are stupid enough to commit the crime in Thailand, then maybe you deserve the monumental time, but being here at the Bangkok Hilton is difficult. It's hard to imagine how anyone could spend 25, 30, 50 years here in a division as sanitized as the one we have today. This is not a nice place across town. The male version of the Bangkok Hilton is Bang Quang, known as the big tiger because he eats people alive. it is the toughest prison in Thailand, yes, it is the head of the

prisons

in Thailand, when you hear that you are coming here, you are very scared as a prisoner, yes, because this is the maximum security prison, like the women's prison, this prison It is terribly overcrowded, but for us the cameras only show a handful of the six thousand inmates down there, there is one, not two people, well, those two people are prisoners here, there, see that there is a prisoner, aha, most of the Prisoners are here for drugs, including Australian Bobby Halliwell. and robert foley so you don't have to worry i'm not going to speak ill they agreed to talk to us about life in bangkuang but the thai authorities insisted that we film them from behind it's numbing it numbs your soul it just makes you come back to me I can't speak for anyone further.

It just makes me hard. The prisons are overcrowded. It's like a time bomb waiting to explode. You sit here and tell me how terrible the conditions are here, but it doesn't look that bad. beautiful, make up my dear snow cosmetic work, why don't they let you enter the hell hole? I thought you had to die to go to hell, but hell is here. What would be your action? Life sentence in prison. I do not have much. life is gone anyway there would be some who would think hell is too good for bobby hollywood having already served a five year sentence for a previous drug offense in

thailand

he is now sentenced to life in prison for trying to smuggle heroin into

australia

what were you doing with the heroin, do you know the rules and regulations of this country, when you are addicted to heroin, you don't think about any rules, what are you thinking about every day about making some feel normal or whatever you want go back to being, you're still a drug addict no, no, I haven't done any drugs for a year, but if you want the material, everything is here except the woman.

I am ashamed. I'm ashamed of myself. She says she is innocent. Thai police accuse Robert Foley of being the Australian liaison in an international drug ring now in his seventh year in prison. He is still waiting for his appeal to be heard. Is it difficult to keep your sanity? Yeah, but I mean there are guys walking around here. I'm not kidding, they're zombies. These are Westerners and I'm talking and I'm thinking my God, you know, it's me, you're me, but I'm not, I'm not like that. I have maintained a high level of sanity, I think for six years, Lal Donega was one of those zombies imprisoned in bangkuang for trying to smuggle heroin now after a rare pardon from the king of

thailand

he is a free man in his home in sydney things can always get worse when you are there they always get worse and there are even worse things than death daniel what are you being among the people who are dying watching them die and not being able to help la donega was caught with 34 grams of heroin at the

bangkok

airport he was sentenced to death later reduced to life in prison because he pleaded guilty behind he saw that it was was and he would learn long enough to know that immediate execution ah, then they went in with those five judges, they went into an energy well for about 10

minutes

and they came back with , you know, a 50 year sentence, that sentence was easier to hear than death uh well that's why I screamed you know what the difference is you know 50 years of death is the same I just think an execution would have been a little quicker Just contemplate having to spend the rest of your life in a prison like this.

Even the guards know how hard it is. They put leg shackles on prisoners for the first three months, not to prevent them from escaping, but to prevent them from committing suicide. They put them in with a mallet so you can't pick a lock or anything to get them out. and uh, yeah, I had infections around my ankles and the scars took years to go away. Do you accept that if you take the risk in this country you deserve whatever punishment they give you? Well, I could say that and I could. Don't you know that a clean copy in Australia for a kilo of heroin costs six years and you serve four years and you're free?

But here in Thailand I don't know why they are killing people and sentencing, there are people here 20 years old and they will never get out because they are very old and you don't really know why they are trying to arrest people like you. Well, how can they? I'm a little fish, darling, what's up with the big 600 kilo bus? in

australia

you know where all that thailand comes from, there is myanmar, the former burma on the other side of the river is laos and here is thailand, this is the golden triangle, one of the largest producers of opium and heroin in the world, but when it's about amphetamines, the numbers are It's also astronomical, just to give you an idea, about 700 million amphetamine tablets are smuggled across the Myanmar border every year to counter the fact that Thailand has declared war on the drugs.

In the last 12 months, more than 72,000 arrests have been made in two and a half years. Half a thousand suspected drug dealers and traffickers have been shot to death and the drugs continue to arrive. The enemy of the drug barons is the narcotics commissioner, General Watropole. He can't say he's won the war on drugs yet, but he certainly is winning some of the battles. a lot of heroin there is here the real heroin weighs about 15 kilograms in his last victory he sees 280,000 amphetamine tablets and 15 kilograms of high quality heroin you can see why people take risks in the golden triangle you could buy this heroin room for three hundred thousand dollars, but I sell it on the streets of Sydney or Melbourne and it is worth 40 million.

Can you tell from this if it is of good quality, yes, how is the color, because it is fast and at the same time it is quite surprising to see this amount of drugs up close. What's even stranger is the calm demeanor of this man caught red-handed with heroin and now basically a dead man walking if this guy is found guilty what happens to him because of the amount of drugs found, he could get a life sentence so at the very least if he is a caretaker he can get a life sentence if he is more involved than this man who will receive the death penalty will die of course the court will decide the fate of this man but the most these are probably real bullet holes, it will end here, the execution chamber in bangkwang prison, now prisoners sentenced to death die by injection until last year they were murdered by this man the musical chawalat jaraban bang kwang the main executioner has killed 55 prisoners do you think drug offenders should be executed if they are criminals and do something really bad?

They deserve to be executed. What makes Thailand so attractive? For foreigners that is what makes it so dangerous a quiet place where almost everything is available for almost nothing the most forbidden the cheapest of all as long as you are willing to bet your eh how you live life is not very good it is not very good thank you. It was very stupid, but I did it. Did you know at any point that you were putting your life at stake? Not until we caught a nice rock every time, so you were out of danger on the surface.

Lyle Donega is a lucky man. He is no longer an addict and in 2002 he was released from Bangkuang, but two years later he is still serving time, only here the bars are invisible. My family is growing, especially the little kids. The last time I saw them, I put them to bed and read them bedtime stories. Now they don't even know me they don't call me dad anymore that hurts uh and I realized that you know my life back here is I don't have a life back here that's good what a shame you didn't have it Think about all that before you try to bring heroin from I come back to Australia, of course, in retrospect, but how many people you know think in retrospect that?

But like I said, if I can't change history, that's been done, I know you're saying you were an addict and therefore weren't thinking clearly, but even as an addict, is it worth the risk here? I couldn't stop, but as a warning to others, what would you say if you were thinking about coming to Thailand and you think I'll get away with it, be very careful. Your family in Australia will probably see this. Do you have a message for them? Yeah, I'd just like to say hello to mom and that's it. What more can I say? I'll see you soon.

It's you. be strong i'm strong let them be strong it's disturbing spending time with these particular men bobby halliwell faces the rest of his life in prison but shows no remorse for his actions i don't know if it's the prison or the drugs but there's something very strange about your sense of reality is it worth wasting your life? If you ask me if I would do it again, I would say yes, I can't change what happened and I can't change the future, do you know what will happen? It will be what happens, so it was worth it, yes, I have had a good life.

Hi, I'm Tara Brown, thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia. Subscribe to our channel now to receive new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out. Discover our bonus minute segments and full 60 minute episodes on dot com dot a u and the nine now app