Drugs dealers on death row make the best of their time
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
Twenty-three-year-old Thai national Nothanam M. Saichon never expected to find herself counting off her final days on death row in a prison in Indonesia.
After being sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle one kilogram of heroin into the country through Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in August 2001, Saichon is now making the best of her time behind bars at the Tangerang Penitentiary for Women.
"I am awaiting the results of my case review at the Supreme Court. If it is not good news, then I will ask for a presidential pardon. If the President rejects my clemency request ... I will leave it all to God," she told The Jakarta Post.
Saichon speaks fluent Indonesian, a skill she picked up from her fellow inmates and guards.
Saichon is one of three Thai women now awaiting a final say on their death penalties. All three women are also alone, receiving no visits from family or friends since being jailed.
"We have only received visits from Thai Embassy staff members, but they don't come any more," she said.
Saichon, Bunyong Khaosa Ard and Parkhan are not as lucky as the four Indonesian women on death row for the same crime -- Meirika Franola, Rani Maharani, Edith Yunita Sianturi and Merry Utami, who can least take some comfort from their family.
The loneliness gives Saichon time to think and to pick up new skills that could be useful if she ever gets out of prison.
"I have learned how to cook many Indonesian dishes, sew and embroider," she said.
Saichon was working as a masseuse in Bangkok, which allowed her to make enough money to pay the hospital bills of her sick father.
After three months at a massage parlor, one of her co-workers offered Saichon US$500 to fly to Jakarta and deliver something.
Before leaving Bangkok, her co-worker took her to a hotel and asked her to wear special underwear, Saichon recalled.
"When I arrived at the airport (in Jakarta), the customs and excise officers found drugs hidden in the panties I was wearing," she said.
Since the passage of the narcotics and psychotropic substances law in 1998, the Tangerang District Court has taken advantage of the regulation that allows for the death penalty for drug traffickers arrested at the Soekarno-Hatta airport, which is under the court's jurisdiction.
Since January 2000, the court has handed down death sentences to 23 people, mostly foreigners. At least five of these sentences have been commuted to life in prison by higher courts.
Mohamad Abdul Hafeez, a Pakistani sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle 995 grams of heroin into Indonesia from Karachi in May 2001, said his death sentence was too harsh.
He has done what he can from his cell at the Tangerang Youth Penitentiary to have his sentence reduced, so that maybe one day he will be able to see his home and family again.
"When I left Karachi, my wife was several months pregnant. We have lost contact ever since. She doesn't know that I am here in this jail, facing a death sentence ... I haven't ever seen what my child looks like," he said.