เรื่องที่น่าขนลุกเกี่ยวกับคุกส่วนตัวของกษัตริย์ที่วังทวีวัฒนา
โดย :Andrew MacGregor Marshall
BEWARE THE BLACK RIBBON
Inside King Vajiralongkorn’s dreaded military punishment camp
Under
a merciless sun, hundreds of soldiers and palace servants stood stiffly
to attention, waiting for King Rama X of Thailand, Vajiralongkorn
Bodindradebayavarangkun, to emerge for another ritual in the five-day
funeral ceremony for his father.
It
was the climactic day of the funeral rites — October 26, 2017 — when a
gilded royal urn symbolising the remains of King Rama IX, Bhumibol
Adulyadej, would be slowly pulled through the streets of Bangkok’s royal
district on an ornate chariot to the vast crematorium complex where his
body would be burned on a soaring pyre.
The
funeral ceremonies were particularly punishing for soldiers in the
Royal Guard, whose dress uniform includes red jackets buttoned tightly
right up to the neck, and towering furry hats modelled on the bearskin
helmets used by some European armies centuries ago.
This
uniform is totally impractical for the tropical heat of Thailand, but
in the 19th century King Rama V, Chulalongkorn, sought to protect his
monarchy against encroaching colonial powers by copying some of the
uniforms, ceremonies and customs of Western royal houses.
Vajiralongkorn himself wore the full uniform during some of the funeral ceremonies, and was photographed dripping with sweat.
The
funeral ceremonies were broadcast on every Thai television channel.
Hundreds of thousands came to Bangkok to witness the rituals, and
millions more tuned in around the country to watch. Everything had been
painstakingly planned and choreographed, and three full dress rehearsals
had been held. The palace wanted everything to be perfect.
But
one Royal Guard officer was overcome by the heat. Thais watching the
live broadcast saw him suddenly topple to the ground. Officials raced to
help him, and lifted him back on his feet. He continued to sway,
apparently still lightheaded, but managed to recover and continue with
the ceremony.
It’s far from uncommon for troops to faint in such circumstances — in Britain, for example, five soldiers in the Queen’s Guard fainted
at the Trooping the Colour ceremony at Buckingham Palace in June 2017.
Officials blamed unusually warm weather, but even in a heatwave London
is much cooler and less humid than baking Bangkok.
Vajiralongkorn,
however, demands perfection from Thai soldiers. He has a fetishistic
obsession with ensuring their uniforms are exactly right, that they
follow drills and ceremonies without a single error, and that they are
in peak physical condition.
Thai
soldiers have learned to dread ever coming to Vajiralongkorn’s
attention due to even small mistakes. They know they face punishment at a
military boot camp at the king’s Thaweewattana Palace north of Bangkok.
Vajiralongkorn personally decides the length of punishment, based on a system of “black ribbons”, or “โบว์ดำ” in Thai:
- One black ribbon: one month.
- Two black ribbons: three months.
- Three black ribbons: nine months.
The
man who fainted at the funeral was Commander Kritanai Pantabutr, a
naval officer in the Royal Aide-De-Camp Department. He was given three
black ribbons by a furious Vajiralongkorn, military sources say. He
faces nine months in the king’s punishment camp, and was also demoted to
become an ordinary soldier in Vajiralongkorn’s personal Rachawallop
military force.
[UPDATE—As of March 2018, Kritanai remains in detention and has not been home.]
Sources
say one reason for Vajiralongkorn’s wrath is that Kritanai was carrying
one of the most important royals flags at the ceremony — the yellow
royal battle flag with an image of a garuda. The extremely superstitious
monarch believes it was a bad omen for the royal battle flag to fall to
the ground.
Vajiralongkorn
has several palaces in and around Bangkok. Thaweewattana was where he
spent time with his third wife, Srirasmi Suwadee, a former nightclub
hostess who he secretly married in 2001.
But
from 2007 onwards he started spending most of his time in Munich,
Germany, with former Thai Airways flight attendant Suthida Tidjai, and
in 2014 he divorced Srirasmi, stripped her of her royal rank, and
banished her from Thaweewattana. In a further act of cruelty, he jailed
most of her close relatives, including her elderly parents and three
brothers who had formerly worked as his bodyguards.
The palace is now mainly used as a prison and military punishment camp.
On
March 27, 2012, Thailand’s Justice Department approved the construction
of a jail within the Thaweewattana Palace complex. It is known as
Buddha Monthon Temporary Prison. Officially it is under the authority of
Klong Prem Central Prison, but in fact it is a place where
Vajiralongkorn can incarcerate and punish anyone who displeases him with
impunity and without any oversight at all.
According to research by exiled academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a crematorium has also been built inside the Thaweewattana complex adjacent to the jail.
In
2015, three members of Vajiralongkorn’s inner circle — his former chief
bodyguard Major General Pisitsak “Jack” Seniwong na Ayutthaya,
celebrity fortune teller Suriyan Sucharitpolwong aka Mor Yong, and
police Major Prakrom Warunprapa — died suddenly after being accused of
corruption in royal projects overseen by Vajiralongkorn. Before their
death their heads were shaved and they were imprisoned at the secret
jail at Thaweewattana. The authorities claimed that Prakrom committed
suicide in custody and that Mor Yong died of a “blood infection”.
Pisitsak’s death was never officially announced but his family was told
that he, too, had hanged himself.
The corpses of all three men were quickly cremated without an autopsy.
It
remains unknown how many people are held in the prison at
Thaweewattana. Pavin says it is described by some of those who have been
imprisoned there as “hell on earth”.
It
is forbidden to visit the jail, and Thai human rights groups and media
have said nothing about it, due to fear of the draconian lèse majesté law that criminalises discussion of abuses of power by the royal family.
Besides
the prison, the Thaweewattana Palace complex also includes a training
camp for young cadets in the Rachawallop Infantry Unit 904, a military
force under Vajiralongkorn’s command. Two vintage planes, including a
1940s Douglas C-47, are parked in the palace grounds. They were
previously on display at the Royal Thai Air Force Museum at Don Muang
before Vajiralongkorn demanded them for himself in 2007.
In
recent years a military punishment camp has been established in the
complex. This punishment camp — separate from the prison — is where
soldiers get sent if they displease Vajiralongkorn and are given black
ribbons.
Testimony from soldiers who have spent time in the camp reveals a brutal regime.
On
the day soldiers arrive at the camp, they are each put into a sack and
then kicked and beaten by the “instructors” in charge of the punishment
programme.
Then
the routine begins. Each day starts at 4:45 a.m. when camp inmates are
awoken, and they are expected to be ready to begin the day’s activities
by 5:00 a.m. They are required to do an hour of physical training before
breakfast, and then must assemble in uniform for individual inspection
at 7:00 a.m.
Whatever
their rank, officers at the camp are bullied and abused like raw
recruits, and disciplined for the slightest imperfection in their
uniform or any mistake in the drills they are forced to do. Punishments
for infractions can last for hours, and include having to crawl through
sewage pipes, having to carry heavy logs past the point of exhaustion,
and being subjected to beatings by instructors with sticks, fists and
boots.
Once
each inmate has had their daily punishment, the rest of the day
involves intensive physical training. There are one-hour breaks for
lunch and dinner, but otherwise only five minutes rest per hour is
allowed. Training goes on well into the evening, and inmates then have
to prepare their uniforms and polish their boots for the following day
when their ordeal begins all over again.
Because
of Vajiralongkorn’s obsession with physical fitness, overweight
soldiers face particular hardship at the Thaweewattana punishment camp.
Their food is restricted, and some inmates are allowed only one meal a
day. They are not allowed to drink any water, except at mealtimes, and
they are not permitted to rest in the shade during their five-minute
breaks in training. Sometimes they are forced to train wearing heavy
coats, to make them sweat even more, which the instructors apparently
believe will speed weight loss. Some inmates have come close to
suffering kidney failure as a result of this treatment.
Inmates
are usually forbidden from having any contact with their family while
at the punishment camp. In some cases, their families have no idea of
their whereabouts for weeks or months.
Instructors
at the camp film the daily punishments of the inmates. The footage is
routinely sent to Vajiralongkorn, who apparently enjoys watching video
of soldiers being beaten and abused.
At
midnight, inmates are allowed to return to the barracks building in the
complex for a few hours of sleep. The barracks is a cramped one-storey
building with a ceiling so low that inmates have to crawl to their
sleeping mats. There is a dirty squat toilet, and a small washing area.
Lights in the barracks remain on all night.
Some
inmates who have been singled out for special punishment are not
permitted to go to bed at midnight — they are kept awake for beatings
and abuse well into the night. Some soldiers report that they were
ordered to eat worms and drink urine.
The
most severe punishment of all is to be sent to the jail in the palace
complex, which is known as the “dark prison”. Soldiers in the punishment
camp have very little information about what goes on there, and have no
contact with prisoners held there.
At least one officer has died during punishment at the Thaweewattana training camp.
Lieutenant
Colonel Kitsanapol “Bom” Pochana, commander of the 12th Artillery
Battalion, was an extremely popular officer and a proud royalist who
often spoke to military cadets and high school students to promote the
monarchy.
On
June 18, 2017, a taxi driver quarrelled with two soldiers from the
battalion in front of Major Cineplex at Rangsit. The incident was shared
on social media and reported in some Thai newspapers.
Vajiralongkorn
became aware of the incident and ordered Lieutenant Colonel Kitsanapol
and the battalion’s S3 officer, Major Thanakit “It” Deesonthikun, to
report for punishment at Thaweewattana Palace. The king was apparently
angry because he believed the senior officers did not control their
soldiers properly and did not ensure the soldiers were correctly
dressed.
After
arrival at the palace, both officers were initially imprisoned in the
palace jail. Their heads were shaved, and they were forced to wear
prison uniforms and shackles. They were later transferred to the
military punishment camp.
During
his detention, Kitsanapol lost around 30 kg in weight. He was subjected
to daily humiliations and abuse. He went missing from social media for
weeks, with his Facebook page dormant from June 19 to July 10.
On July 10 he posted a song called “The Lesson” on Facebook, with the comment “I would love to leave this song with you”.
By
August, his treatment had become less harsh but he was still required
to do daily training at Thaweewattana with young cadets seeking to join
the King’s Guard and the Rachawallop Infantry Unit.
On
the afternoon of August 13, Kitsanapol was ordered to join the cadets
in a 2 km run and fitness test, inside the grounds of the palace. He
collapsed during this ordeal and suffered cardiac arrest. Instructors
attempted CPR but by the time an ambulance arrived, he was pronounced
dead. The military instructors at the palace told the cadets to say
nothing about the incident.
His
funeral was held on August 15 at Wat Phra Sri Rattana Mahathat in Bang
Khen. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of colonel on the orders
of Vajiralongkorn.
Soldiers
can be given black ribbons and sent to the Thaweewattana punishment
camp for the most trivial of reasons, depending on the whims and moods
of the notoriously volatile Vajiralongkorn.
One
senior officer endured three months at the camp after Vajiralongkorn
noticed that one of the buttons on his uniform was loose. Another was
sent to Thaweewattana and demoted to the rank of private because the
king was not happy with his style of saluting. One soldier even ended up
at the punishment camp because Vajiralongkorn thought he “looked too
Chinese”.
The
king’s fetish for perfection in military uniforms contrasts with his
peculiar behaviour in Munich where he has been photographed semi-naked
several times, often while wearing crop-tops and low-slung jeans, and
sporting fake full-body tattoos.
But
since childhood, Vajiralongkorn has been a bully who enjoys tormenting
others, with an obsession for military drills and clothing, as a fellow
pupil at the Millfield boarding school in England reported in an article in The Daily Telegraph last year:
“He
wasn’t clever, he wasn’t in any teams and despite a previous sojourn at
a prep school … his English remained imperfect and idiosyncratic. But
what marked him most was his enthusiasm for the Combined Cadet Force, a
Friday afternoon misery that everyone else loathed. Here, he so excelled
in the meticulous wearing of kit, the parade-ground drills, the
shouting and saluting that he was promoted to some sort of officer
status…
“Like
others whose sense of superior status is toxically combined with
insecurity and isolation, Mahidol could suddenly drop his pretence of
amiable normality and become a vile bully: indeed, his behaviour might
now be described as bipolar. His joviality could quickly boil to manic
pitch, and the dormitory would often be rudely awoken in the small hours
by his sudden melodramatic cackling, as though he had just dreamt up a
scheme of bloody revenge and mayhem on those who had crossed him.”
Half
a century later, Vajiralongkorn is still the same insecure bully, but
now he is king of Thailand, with the power to torment others with
impunity. The abuse and torture at Thaweewattana demonstrate how he
behaves when he can do whatever he wants.
While he remains on the throne, Thailand is a nation living in fear.
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