Jailed woman avows love for son

By Yogita Tahil Ramani

JAKARTA (JP): Khanchana Thiangtum is really having a bad year. Her first trip to Indonesia last August landed her in a National Police cell thousands of kilometers away from her home in Bangkok.

The divorced mother of a 12-year-old boy was financially independent last June until her employer, who was also her husband, stopped her salary.

"I need money to feed Bia, my son, and to get him through school," the woman, who was apprehended recently for alleged possession of heroin, told The Jakarta Post in broken English.

"All my life, I haven't had money. I don't care much (for it). All my life, nobody loved me. I don't care. I only care (for) Bia. Only he loves me."

The 28-year-old Thai national started working at her husband's small luggage factory when Bia was only six months old.

"I had to work for him, making bags, because I'm not smart. Still, he cheated on me with another woman," she said.

"He gave me money every day. I got 50 baht (US$1.20) a day, 1500 baht a month. That (was) not enough. Not enough for me and my baby," she said, shifting uncomfortably in her prison clothes of a blue top and blue shorts.

Khanchana was stopped at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport for reportedly attempting to smuggle 1.75 kilograms of pure heroin into the country on Aug. 31. She disembarked from Thai Airways flight number 433 from Bangkok, which landed at the airport at 12:30 p.m.

The heroin, found in the sides of a travel bag, had a total street value here of some Rp 700 million (US$92,000).

She said that none of her family members knew about her situation here and that she missed her son very much.

"I don't know how Bia is now. He is 12 years old ... in his sixth year at elementary school. I could not keep him with (my) brother. My brother has two babies. Bia is with his father's parents now," Khanchana said.

She, however, dismissed the possibility that her former husband might take her "baby" away from her.

"If that man cared, he would have taken my baby away when he divorced me. Why now?" she asked.

In a pained voice, the lady cried that she was always cursed with bad luck.

"My father divorced my mother when I was a baby... only two (years old). My brother was five. My father got a new wife. When I turned 10, my father died," Khanchana said.

As a result, Khanchana was sent to stay with her father's sister who had four children.

"My aunt never gave me good food, clothes, or new underwear. There was nothing new for me. For a long time, there was no new (stuff) for me," she said.

Khanchana met her husband, who came from a village near Bangkok, when she was 15. She stayed with him since then and claimed he was her husband.

She declined to describe whether her marriage was a formal one. "I married him by my heart," she said.

"One day, he (husband) did not come home. And he didn't come home the next day, either."

"A neighbor told me that he was with another woman. I went to work the next day. True enough, I saw him with his arm around a woman."

Khanchana said during the course of work, a Nigerian customer often came to the small luggage store in the Pathumwan shopping district of Siam Square in Bangkok.

"He always went to his friend's ticket shop in Pathumwan," she said.

Due to financial desperation, she went one day in August to meet her girlfriend who worked at the crowded shopping district.

Khanchana said that to go to her friend's store she had to pass that "ticket shop".

"On that day, this Nigerian met me. He asked me where I had been."

Khanchana told him that she had no money and that she and her "baby" were starving.

"He told me to meet him the next day at the Bangkok Center House. I met him the next day. He told me to go to Jakarta with a blue bag. He did not tell me what was in the bag. I also didn't ask," she said.

When asked why she didn't, she said quite angrily: "I did not think anymore. I didn't care. He promised me that a man in Jakarta would give me US$2,000 for the bag."

When asked if she called her in-laws to tell them about her current situation, Khanchana said that she could not do it now.

"Not now. They would be ashamed of me. Not now," she said crying.