On the night of 31 August 2008 my life took an unexpected turn. I had spent months preparing for an interview in Melbourne with the InterContinental group. I was looking forward to working in the luxurious surrounds of the city’s newest five-star hotel.

“Do you have a case, sir?” asked the official at Bangkok Airport’s passport control, minutes before I was to walk into the departure lounge for the midnight flight to Melbourne. Within hours I was questioned, photographed and arrested by uniformed immigration officers, and taken to the Crime Suppression Division.

In a dark, damp cell I stripped off my clothes and laid them on the floor, fashioning a bed with my shoes as a pillow. Sleep was impossible: I was thirsty and hungry, confused and alone. In the morning I made a short court appearance, before being handcuffed and shuffled onto an overcrowded prison bus bound for the Bangkok Remand Prison.

A report on the article was in The Age today:

HE WAS shackled, propositioned by an inmate and weakened by fever in the cramped conditions of a Thai remand prison.  Shortly before he was freed, writer Harry Nicolaides was leafing through a book about escape artist Harry Houdini, which he says was provided by the Australian embassy. He was the subject of campaigns and prayer vigils, and said he met former champion boxer Jeff Fenech, who visited him at the Bangkok remand prison.

Nicolaides’ crime was to have offended the Thai monarchy in a book called Verisimilitude, written years earlier. In a 5000-word essay published today by The Monthly magazine, Nicolaides describes his life in the cramped and often brutal conditions at the jail, where he was confined in August after being arrested at Bangkok Airport. In prison, he mixed with drug lords, sex offenders and refugees from around the world. He said men were hospitalised after being beaten for breaking prison rules, and bodies of dead inmates were dumped, or left to hang from the rafters where they committed suicide. Prisoners queued for contaminated food, earned three dollars a month for performing menial tasks in a ramshackle workshop, and were placed in leg irons for their trips to court.

“Nothing can prepare a person for the experience of being shackled,” he said in the article. “In front of us was a giant iron pincer bolted onto a slab of wood the size of a sleeper. Each of us selected a pair of heavy, rusted leg chains.” After describing how brackets were fitted and clamped around his ankles, Nicolaides said his real fear was that with a slip of the wrist, his ankles could be crushed like walnuts in a nutcracker. He said the prison had a population of ladyboys – young men who applied make-up and sought sexual encounters. Nicolaides said he received a colourful illustrated letter one night from a ladyboy who confessed “intimate desires”.

Despite the appalling conditions of the prison, Thai inmates loved their ruler. At the ceremony where he was pardoned, Nicolaides bowed before a portrait of the Thai king, and gave thanks for the monarch’s benevolence. 

“His Majesty the King is revered by Thais and admired by foreigners from afar because of his intrinsic goodness and dedication to improving the people’s livelihood, yet many foreign friends of Thailand are now casting doubt on the broad application of lese majeste.

Authorities may have intended to achieve deterrence from offending and disrespecting the revered institution, but the international community sees a witch-hunt.”

- An extract from “Harry Nicolaides and lese majeste”, The Nation, 1 March 2009.

By the title I wonder (in passing) if this is meant as the inversion, or some such, of a piece that appeared many moons ago.  It would have been nice if at that time the editors of The Nation tasked some of their reporters to chase the Nicolaides story.  As far as I’m aware they never sought to do any investigation while he was locked up.  As such, their current call to find “some common ground” is unimpressive.

For The Nation employees who do drop by may I suggest that this website or this one will give you a few leads if you are actually serious about pursuing the issue of lèse majesté.  It has not ended with Harry Nicolaides or Giles Ji Ungpakorn.

In the meantime, those who have been following the Nicolaides case may find this post-release analysis eye-opening.  It describes how our essay, since published here as “Lèse majesté and Harry Nicolaides”, was commissioned and then, at the last minute, withdrawn by Eureka Street.  Their Assistant Editor, Tim Kroenert, provides insights into what happened at their end.

He and his colleagues are to be commended for their excellent work at the time.  We certainly didn’t mind getting bounced on that unusually hectic evening.  We are just happy, after all is said and done, that Harry and his family are back together.

But the episode raises some possible issues for the future.

The number of lèse majesté accusations currently working their way through the Thai legal system means that questions remain about the best strategies that individuals, families, journalists, academics, politicians, diplomats and others can take to help facilitate a speedy release if, heaven forbid, more people start getting locked up.

There is, it seems, no silver bullet.  Is less coverage preferable to more?  What role should local lawyers play?  Can the Thai media be used to help get out a call for compassion?  How important is the content and tone of early statements to the foreign media?  Does Internet coverage help or hinder an early release?  What sorts of (public…or not so public) noises should be made?  What role can academics play?  How much does it matter who is being charged (Nicolaides compared to Darunee, etc)?  How much about these cases remains shrouded in secrecy?  Does anyone really have the answers?

I am sure you have your own questions to add.  Thoughts from New Mandala readers are, as always, very welcome here.  Of course, I should point out that few, if any, of us know what happened behind the scenes in the Nicolaides case (or, frankly, in any of the other cases).  Perhaps somebody with better information will feel free to fill in some of the blanks.

“The guards are lazy, corrupt and self servicing and they beat people for no reason. I remember near the last day when we were eating they picked a poor Thai man and made him bend over and beat him with a heavy wooden pole across his back. When I asked some Iranian prisoners who spoke some Thai why they were beating him, they said because the prisoner had not finished laundering the guard’s clothes in time.”

- Harry Nicolaides quoted in “Harry’s back!”, Neos Kosmos, 22 February 2009.

UPDATE: Forde Nicolaides statement

Dear all, there has been some media attention today claiming that Harry’s book was a ‘publicity stunt’. The suggestion that Harry intentionally sought a charge of Lese Majeste and a term of imprisonment in Thailand is baseless for the following obvious reasons -

1. The book was submitted to the Palace, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Thai Ministry of Culture for approval. The book was also accepted in to the National Library of Thailand and issued an ISBN number in 2005
2. The maximum penalty for a Lese Majeste offence is 15 years and there was no guarantee of a royal pardon in his case
3. The book was published 3 years ago and attracted no attention
4. The charge was only laid when the political situation in Thailand deteriorated
5. Harry’s case has been supported by Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders, International Pen, The International Commission of Jurists, the Australian govt, the Federal Opposition, the Victorian govt and thousands of people who have signed a petition of support
6. Harry spent 6 months in extremely harsh conditions in Thailand during which time his mother became very ill
7. The allegations made by Mr Heath Dollar, the person named in the Age and SMH today, claim that he advised Harry not to publish the book. Mr Dollar has a Myspace.com profile at http://www.myspace.com/heathdollar that records that in April this year, which must mean 2008, he “returned to the United States after twenty months of teaching at a university in Northern Thailand”. That means his time in Thailand commenced from August 2006, which is well after December 2005 when Harry’s book was published. This indicates he could not have given any advice to Harry before publication.

The suggestion that Harry would have deliberately brought this experience on himself and that all the organisations that supported him were somehow misled is completely without foundation.

Forde Nicolaides

UPDATE 2: More on Heath Dollar’s accusations

Readers keen to learn more about this story will find this more recent article helpful.

UPDATE. Statement from Forde Nicolaides:

Some fantastic news! Harry was granted a Royal Pardon by his Majesty the King of Thailand on Wednesday afternoon Bangkok time. The Nicolaides family is grateful to his Majesty the King for the decision he has made and to the relevant Thai authorities who dealt with the pardon application in an expeditious manner. Harry has been released from prison and has arrived back in Melbourne today. For a short time, Harry will not be speaking to any media as he will be initially focusing on regaining his health and rejoining with his family in Melbourne.

The last 6 months has been an extremely difficult and trying time for my family and our mission is now accomplished – we brought Harry home. I would sincerely like to thank everyone who has supported the family’s efforts and in assisting with encouraging the Australian government to take affirmative action to secure Harry’s release.

Harry Nicolaides, the Australian facing three years in jail for insulting the Thai monarchy, has been recommended for a royal pardon by Thai corrections department officials.  …

Thai corrections department officials said yesterday that a recommendation had been made for a royal pardon from King Bhumipol Adulyadej. But the complete documentation was still to be finalised, the department said. The investigation was in the final stages, with further evidence pending from the court.

A spokesman said: “We are waiting for evidence from the court and we will make a petition to the minister and then send it to the king. We continue to recommend pardoning Harry [but the process] is not finished yet. We are waiting for when we get the evidence, then it will be finished to sign, then continue to the king.”

A one-month limit for Nicolaides’s lawyers to lodge an appeal to his jail sentence lapses this week. Once passed, this would allow for the pardon to be presented to the Justice Minister and then to the royal palace. Corrections department officials said notification of the pardon could take place within the next month.

A human rights lawyer, Somchai Homlaor, said the department’s recommendation was very important in that it would clear the way for the granting of a pardon. “I believe that with this recommendation [Nicolaides] will be granted a pardon from His Majesty.” …