Books about prisons in Thailand sell well and Welcome to Hell – One man’s fight inside the Bangkok Hilton” by Colin Martin is a bestseller which ends up in the hands of many foreigners who travel or work in Thailand. Although highly overrated, when you turn the last page of the book you feel overwhelmed by the injustice that was done to Colin Martin.
Colin, an Irishman who came to Thailand to do business, served eight years in two prisons, one from Chonburi and the other from Bangkok, where he witnessed things no man should ever see (beatings, humiliations, rapes, the degradation of human beings, etc). He was tortured by the police, beaten by the guards and other prisoners, and was refused medical treatment by the prison doctors. He lived in unimaginable conditions and had to pay for all his toiletries, food, and all other items of personal use. He had to bribe guards and prison captains to be allowed to play in the prison football team or to practice muay thai.
What a shocking book! After losing US$460.000, Colin Martin spends three years looking for the mastermind behind the bogus company that he dealt with. In the meantime the bank takes away his house from Holland and his wife divorces him and returns to Ireland with his kids. Collin gets married to a Thai girl who was only after his money. They have a boy together; he gets a job in Bangkok and continues looking for O’Conner, the Australian guy who stole his money.
He finds him, has a fight with his bodyguard (and apparently kills him in self defense), and then tries to get part of his money back. He prefers not to go to police, as he realizes that O’Conner had been bribing the Thai tourist police all along to leave him alone. When charged with the murder of the bodyguard, Martin refuses to bribe the police chief and is subsequently tortured and sent to prison after he signs a confession (in Thai, a language he could not read!). While waiting for his trial to begin, he is incarcerated. Now he’s in hell!
Colin Martin was convicted to more than thirteen years in prison after a trial that can only be described as a sham. The prosecutor’s main witness died during the trial, but his statement was accepted by the judge; the body of the man Martin had allegedly murdered was never found; the knife he allegedly used to kill the victim (in self defense, after he had been attacked by the bodyguard of a man who stole from him) was never presented to the judge (just a photocopy of a rusted knife).
Apart from all the above, he was also refused his right to appear in front of the judge in a suit, and was forced to wear prisoner’s clothes and chains around his legs (a common practice in Thailand). Plus, his lawyers constantly asked for more money to bribe the judges and cover their own “expenses.” The Thai police also asked for money he could not afford! To top thing off, his Thai wife stole the money his family sent for his bail, and when he was finally free, she literally sold their son back to him.
But Martin was strong. He fought and fought until, eight after his incarceration in one of the most dangerous prisons on Earth, he was set free in January 2005. His sentenced was reduced after the Supreme Court of Justice from Thailand admitted that the prosecutor had questionable evidence, but still the court thought that he had killed a man, although they couldn’t prove anything. With the help of his friends, he retuned to England to start anew.
An earlier version of this book review was published on Thai Blogs in 2007.
