Christopher V. V. Parnell

Author

  The Sunday Smuggler    Hell's Prisoner  Aimless

Authors Note: The Title "The Sunday Smuggler" published HarperCollins is the same book retitled and published as "Hell's Prisoner" by Mainstream Publishers

GALLERY  1    

PHOTO 45

Malang  Prison, Malang, Java, Indonesia 1992-1993

This is a photo of one of our cells in Mal

ang… Nice hey!                

We all used to tie strings across the bars to keep the guards from using sticks to reach in and 

steal our food, or ciggies, or whatever else they could knock off.

The string wasn’t to keep cats out, why would you want to do that?  

In prison we always ate each other’s cats.  We call them Klinchi Penjara (prison rabbits).

When you skin a cat and knock off the head, tail and paws they look just like a rabbit… Don’t  taste like one though.

PHOTO 12

Madura Island Prison – Indonesia.

This is photo of Pamekassan Prison on Madura Island. This is D Block. Each door leads to a single cell less than 2 metres by 2 metres. Between each door is a wall that is over a foot thick or about 30-35 cm.

These cells have no toilets no showers no taps or water. Nothing but a cement floor. Some prisoners have spent over 20 years living, sleeping and finally dying in them.

PHOTO 26

Pamekassan Prison, Madura Island, Indonesia 1988

This is me after I was transferred out of the Leper Block and into the main stream Prison yard or Block on Madura Islands Punishment Prison.

I paid the head of Security a sizeable sling to get this cell. In Indonesian Prisons, Prisoners are given very little in the way of comfort… no mattresses, no toilet, no electricity…and no clothes apart from rags.

What you see in this photo was my entire worldly possessions.

NOTE: The gold wedding ring on my left hand, just after this photograph was taken, I nearly got killed for that gold wedding ring. So to save my life and the ring, I wrapped it up in a piece of plastic from an old plastic shopping bag and stuck it up my bum.

PHOTO 1  

Malang Prison – Indonesia - 17^th November 1994

This is a Photo taken by my sister Lynette. She came to visit me 6 weeks after I was stabbed. It was the first time I had seen her in over 20 years

Here I am, with the Prison security (to my left of the picture and far right seated.) I of course am the one wearing the black eye patch (second from the left.)

My now deceased, brother in Law, Ken Mansfield (standing to my right.) was under going Cancer therapy and medication, he put it all on hold to come and visit me in an Indonesian Prison.

The guard sitting down in the chair, was the head of that Platoon as they called each shift or group of guards.

Note…. The hockey type stick leaning against the wall behind him. If you look carefully you will see nails sticking out from the inside of the horizontal section of the stick.

These sticks are used to break up fights or riots. As soon as those nails dig in to the soft skin and flesh around your neck, legs or arms and start tearing into you, you definitely have second thoughts about carrying on as a participant in any fight or riot.  If the stick is pulled across your throat, the nails would rip your throat out….

Leaving just another casualty from the Prisons many fights and riots. Sadly he died not long after this Photo was taken.

PHOTO 2

Malang Prison - Indonesia - 19^th October 1994

This Photo was taken Eleven days after I was stabbed. A prison guard took this photo, to show it to the Australian Embassy to prove that I was still alive and now back in Malang Prison.

Before I was stabbed I weighed 66 kg’s. When this photo was taken eleven days later I weighed 54 kg’s.

I removed all my own stitches, using a razor blade and a piece of bamboo bent over its self to become tweezers.

I spent nearly a year in this cell before being transferred to Jakarta on the

13-06-95. And in all truth, it wasn’t a bad cell. It was clean; it was bigger than most I’ve been used too. I even paid to have it painted myself.

PHOTO 9

Tanggerung Prison - Indonesia - 1996

This photo was taken in Jakarta. We were all eating when a Guard came in to take all our pictures. Of course we had to cover his costs.

These cells were in Tanggerung Prison, in the central tower block. Here they kept all the foreign prisoners. There were eight of us altogether including myself.

Seated from front left is Wong the Chinaman, with glasses, he was serving time for corruption.

Second from the left is Hussan He was a Burmese student, turned guerrilla, then turned smuggler for the cause. He loved Ong Sung Su Chee, the tightly controlled female democratic leader of Burma, or should we now say Miramar. He was serving a life sentence.

Third on the left is Prem, the Nepalese serving a life sentence. Sitting centre facing the camera is Ram; he used to be a Nepalese Policeman in the third city of Nepal, Bhaktapur. But now he too is serving a life sentence. He trusted the wrong people.

The second person sitting on the right is Nishat the Paki; he was serving a one-year sentence for Forgery. Nishat was involved in a Travel Agency in Jakarta that specialized in fixing visa extensions and work permits. Only problem was that they made their own visa, work permits and extension stamps in the back of their office.

Nishat was questioned about a number of Australian. American and assorted European Passports in his possession. But no charges were laid regarding this. It was only the Tourist Extension stamps that he was using to extend tourists visas that got the Indonesian Authorities really pissed off with him because of all the hard cash revenue that Nishat and his mates were pocketing. Did it for years! He said before he was caught but once he got himself another Passport, back in Pakistan, he would be back. Lickety split.

The prisoner sitting on the right in the forefront is Jacob he was a political prisoner, from Irian Jaya, serving 17 years. Because of the Indonesian Government’s fear of the OPM or the Free Papua Movement, as it is known. Jacob had been transferred away from Irian Jaya and moved on an irregular basis from prison to prison for security reasons. His family and friends seldom knew where he would be held on any given month. Like myself he was moved a lot.

  PHOTO NUMBER EIGHT

Malang Prison - Indonesia – 1993

This is a photo of four pieces of meat!  Yum!… Yum!…

The prison authorities were supposed to give us 65 grams of meat weekly. But we never received more than 10-12 grams per week, if we were lucky.

The guards used to knock off between 80 to 100% depending on who was visiting or checking on the prison at the time.

The small amount of meat in these hands is an impressive amount, though you could never be sure exactly what it was or where it was from or when it died

PHOTO 14

Tanggerung Prison, Jakarta, Indonesia 1995

This photo was taken in Block E in Tanggerung Prison Jakarta.

Three Prisoners shared this cell. Victor (right) Amil (Far left back) and Arnel seated left, resting his hand on my knee. As you can see the cells were pretty small. New paper and sticky tape are stuck up against the windows covering the bars.

These Ambon Prisoners are all members of the Ambon Christian Party.

From my eleven years in Indonesian Prisons and among its Islands, I have learned that just as the Islamic Community has its radicals and extremists who will kill and murder in the name of Allah.

So to does Christianity have its defenders, I am more than confident that the people of Ambon would quickly go militant should Christianity be threatened in Ambon.

Its pretty much a well known fact that throughout the Islands of Ambon there are already many militant Christian Fractions prepared and armed for what they see as an eventual conflict with Islam.  

This Christian uprising is already in the process as I write.  

The Indonesian Security Services such as INTEL and LUXUS are fully aware of these Christian Militant Fractions but as yet they have held their hand. But eventually Ambon will assert its own independence upon the World Stage, and with the Central Government in Jakarta.

When this happens, and Ambon finally does assert its own identity and seek independence from Indonesia. It may just cause a snowball effect causing other sections of Indonesian Minorities to rebel against its central Government

With the Political climate as it was in 1996. Representative of the OPM or the Free Papua Movement had already been working closely with the Ambonese Independence Movement.

It would be obvious that when these two large Christian populated Provinces of Indonesia. Makes their bid for Independence. It will be together. Logically that would put more pressure on Jakarta and stretch both its Military and Finances.

This in turn would cause a large growth in Islam, throughout the rest of the Islamic Provinces, which in turn would ferment extremist Fundamentalism.  

PHOTO 18

Pamekassan Prison, Madura Island, Indonesia 1989

This Prisoner was chopped across the arm with a prison made machete.

NOTE: The white spot on his arm.

The white spot is cotton wool that he had to stuff inside a hole in his arm that wouldn’t heal up and constantly oozed puss.

PHOTO 19 

Pamekassan Prison, Madura Island, Indonesia 1989

This is a photo of Farta, who I mentioned was involved in a fight in the Prison Kitchen on Madura Island’s Pamekassan Prison.

He was chopped across the left shoulder, by a Prisoner called Jarb. When Jarb pulled out the meat cleaver from Farta’s chest, the gapping hole left behind was so big that Farta’s left lung popped out and up looking like he had just given birth to a new head.

The scar under Farta’s arm stretching from just below his nipple and reaching around to his back was caused from the Doctor’s in Surabaya who had to hack that hole into Farta’s side. So that they could put their hands up inside his chest and pull his lung back down into its correct place.

He said that the Doctor’s couldn’t just push his lung back in; it had to be pulled back down from beneath 

It took the Prison Authorities well over a day to get Farta from Pamekassan Prison on Madura Island to the Hospital in Surabaya on the Island of Java.

PHOTO 24

Pamekassan Prison, Madura Island, Indonesia 1988

In this picture there are four Prisoners carrying a four handled box.

This box is a very handy apparatus, it acts as a rice carrier at meal times… and after the gang fights and riots these food boxes are used to carry the dead and injured.

PHOTO 25

Pamekassan Prison, Madura Island, Indonesia 1988

This is suppertime on Madura Island. These Prisoners get fed twice a day.

Check out what’s in the centre of the plates…

Those little dark stains are your vegetables.

None of the Prisoners ever liked getting the bottom plates; the reason is there's always bits of crap stuck to the bottom of the plates sitting on the bottom of the box.

PHOTO 27

Pamekassan Prison, Madura Island, Indonesia 1988

This is the front of the Prison Morgue. They had to post a Guard on the Morgue because the Prisoners had no qualms about robbing the dead. Remember that this Prison is a Punishment Prison, with a collection of Prisoners from all over Indonesia.

Within this Prison, there were Prisoners from Sumatra, Borneo, Iran Jaya, Sulawesi, Sumbawa, and many of the more Primitive Islands scattered around the vast network of Islands, which is Indonesia.

Apart from Indonesia having Islam as the State Religion there are many other religions or beliefs, much older than Islam which are still practiced today throughout the country.

I discovered quite to my amazement, that animism or the worship of animals along with ancestor worship flourish quite profusely though out these Primitive Islands of Indonesia.

In many cases where one Prisoner killed another, It was excepted practice to cut off a piece of your dead enemy and eat it…. A piece of ear was the most popular, but fingers, noses, eyelids, tongues or toes…. Depending I guess on how hungry you are, would depend I guess on the size of the trophy.

Hence they always try to keep a Guard on the Morgue.

A second reason for the Guards on the Morgue is to supervise the splitting open of any dead Prisoners. It was common knowledge that many Prisoners swallowed their valuable or stuffed them up their arses. This is a very safe way of carrying, say your gold necklace, rings, gold earrings and such.  

Having them inside you meant that the only way that someone could get them would be if you were dead….fair enough…. That’s good logic… and that’s why the Guards used to insist that we split open all corpse’s to see if the dead Prisoners had any treasures stuffed up their arses or down their gullets hidden amongst metres of intestines.

Send mail to chris@christophervvparnell.com with questions or comments about this web site.

Copyright © 2002 The Sunday Smuggler-Christopher V V Parnell

Copyright © 2002 HarperCollins Publishers "The Sunday Smuggler"

Copyright © 2003 Mainstream Publishers "Hell's Prisoner"

Last modified: February 17, 2006