![]() There was no advanced notice about executions, so when a pi liang came, they all knew someone would be dead within a few hours. Prisoners on death row are still shackled by foot 23 hours a day. It’s worth going through all the jobs to know the context in which he worked.įirst is the pi liang, whose job it is to get the prisoner from death row. Chavoret started at the lowest job, and because he was such a responsible and precision-oriented worker, he rose through the ranks to when he was offered the executioner’s job. Up through the 1930s there was even a practice of locking the prisoner into a giant hackeysack ball with spikes inside and getting an elephant to roll it around.įrom 1934-2003, executions were done by gun, until the switch to lethal injection.ĭuring Chavoret’s tenure at Bang Kwang, the process was – and still is – the epitome of division of labor. Beheadings were the legal execution method from 1903-1934, and these were pretty grisly events involving a second person whose job it was to dance in front of the prisoner and try to distract him while his head was hacked off and then placed on a stick for all to see. ![]() If you go to the Correction Museum on Mahachai Road in Bangkok, you can see paintings and dioramas of Thai torture and execution methods from the Ayutthaya Period (1350-1767) to the present.Īmong the 50 or so Ayutthaya Period tortures illustrated, my favourite (a strange word in this context) is when they cut off the flesh of a live prisoner, grilled it, and force fed it to him. Throughout history, executions in Thailand have always been very choreographed, and often very cruel. Then, a cousin told him of a civil service exam for prison guards.Ĭhavoret liked the guaranteed work, pension, and education benefits for his kids, so he took the exam. When Khun Tew announced she was pregnant, Chavoret, whose father was a teacher, decided he needed to do the “respectable” thing and get a practical job so he could support a family.Īfter leaving his first love (rock and roll) behind for his next love, he tried a succession of jobs – teacher, translator on an oil rig, paramedic – but none felt right. His favorite bar was aptly named (for an executioner-to-be) “Sorry About That” in Udon.ĭuring this time, he met his sweetheart, Khun Tew, whom he married and stayed with for 43 years until his death last year. He and his band, Mitra, played the bars in Udon, Ubon, and Bangkok where the American GIs partied on R&R from the Vietnam War. He was really cool, dressed in the tightest 60s pants and skinny ties. It turns out that in his late teens and early 20s, he was a wild rock and roller, who played guitar behind his back while his drummer hung from the ceiling, and sometimes smashed his guitars. Nevertheless, it was still very weird when, without any explanation, this 59-year-old executioner sat across his desk from me and for 30 minutes played air guitar and sang Beatles, Elvis, and Ventures songs. Of course, I’d read the book by then, so I knew of his background. I wanted to know more, so I introduced myself and asked for an interview, which his editor arranged.Ī week later, I was in Chavoret’s office at Bang Kwang’s Foreign Affairs Division which he now headed. At the time, this all smacked of a well devised construction of denial, or worse, an “I was just following orders” defense. It was his karma to do this job, and he was compassionately helping the prisoners to achieve their karma. I now know that Chavoret had answered variants of these questions a thousand times before. I ended up asking the last questions, which went something like this: “You seem like a nice guy and all, but how did you reconcile your work with your Buddhism? What did you tell your family? Did you go out for beers with the guys after executions?” (It turns out he did). When it came to the Q and A, the questions were unusually softball for the FCCT crowd. Watching him sitting there in a polo shirt and Dockers – no black hood and scythe – he looked like anyone I might sit next to on the BTS or in Starbucks. ![]() The others on the panel were Susan Aldous, known as ‘The Angel of Bangkok’ for her work with slum children and prisoners at Bang Kwang, and the Thai owner of a travel agency arrested for money laundering.ĭuring the evening, my overwhelming impression of Chavoret was that he was so normal. I first met Chavoret in April 2007 at the FCCT (Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand), when he was part of a panel discussion on prison life. The experience of writing the film has been almost as bizarre as the story itself. ![]() I wrote the screenplay of his life story – a story of life at its most beautiful and death at its most surreal – which will be released nationwide this month, produced by DeWarrenne Pictures. ![]()
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