ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
February 6, 2017
Thailand separates LGBT inmates, considers segregated prison
By Dake Kang
SAFETY OR SEGREGATION? Transgender
inmates play volleyball at Pattaya Remand prison in
Pattaya, Thailand. The prison separates lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender prisoners from other in-
mates, a little-known policy despite being in place
nationwide since 1993, according to the Department
of Corrections. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
The Associated Press
ATTAYA, Thailand — Theerayut
Charoenpakdee was terrified
when police stopped her outside a
mall in Pattaya, a Thai resort famous for
its sordid nightlife. A urine test on the spot
revealed meth coursing through her veins.
“I thought I was going to be thrown in
prison with all the men because I still have
the title of Mr.,” the transgender woman
said. “I was afraid. News and TV tells us
that being sent to prison is scary.”
It turned out not to be the ordeal she
expected. The prison she was destined for
— Pattaya Remand — separates lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
prisoners from other inmates, a little-
known policy despite being in place
nationwide since 1993, according to the
Department of Corrections. Thailand,
often described as a haven for gay people,
has around 300,000 prisoners, of which
more than 6,000 are registered as sexual
minorities.
And that’s not all. The Thai government
is also considering what could be the
world’s first prison facility exclusively for
LGBT inmates. While the plans are still
being discussed, in Pattaya and other
prisons across Thailand, LGBT prisoners
are kept apart to prevent violence, officials
say.
“If we didn’t separate them, people could
start fighting over partners to sleep with,”
said Pattaya Remand warden Watchara-
vit Vachiralerphum. “It could lead to rape,
sexual assault, and the spread of disease.”
By day, Pattaya LGBT inmates eat
together and do their morning exercises in
uniform. At night, they sleep in their own
quarters, apart from the other inmates.
But most of the time, they mingle freely
with the others, though they tend to stick
together for daytime activities like sewing
or football. Transgender women spike
P
volleyballs next to men pressing barbells
and sparing with punching bags; gay men
train together in first aid at the jail clinic,
sanitizing and bandaging the wounds of
straight men.
Many LGBT inmates agree the limited
separation is a decent compromise
between safety and segregation.
“There are people that discriminate
against gays,” said Chawalit Chankiew,
one of the gay clinic workers, sentenced to
nine years for document forgery. “If I
happen to sleep next to someone who hates
gay people, I wouldn’t know it unless they
show it. What if they hurt me one day?”
Theerayut says the prison’s segregation
makes her one-and-a-half year sentence
more bearable. “If we behave like others, if
we aren’t stubborn and don’t break rules,
this place actually isn’t so vicious,” she
said, sitting in a prison yard fenced with
barbed wire, her long hair bobbing up and
down as she spoke.
But the system isn’t without problems.
“Transgender women who have not gone
through gender reassignment surgery,
they have to shave their head and live with
the men, and there’s going to be problems,”
says Wannapong Yodmuang, an LGBT
advocate with the Rainbow Sky
Association. “Some of them are going to be
OK living with the men, but there are some
transgender women who might have a bad
experience with men and won’t want to
live with them.”
There are also concerns that the system
does not adequately tend to the specialized
health needs of transgender inmates.
Hormone therapy, for example, is written
off as a luxury by some. But LGBT
advocates say it is essential.
Plans for a separate facility for LGBT
inmates on the outskirts of Bangkok could
improve their treatment inside prison. The
idea was first proposed as a measure to
keep LGBT people safe, but it stalled over
concern it would keep inmates far from
their families.
“It’d be easier to control, easier to take
care of, easier to develop and improve their
habits and behavior,” said Watcharavit.
“But they have to mix with other inmates
because once they’re released, they’ll have
to rejoin a diverse society.”
Some activists worry it could stigmatize
them.
“Building and reallocating an entire
prison facility for LGBT prisoners is, as a
matter of fact, a measure of segregation,”
said Jean-Sebastian Blanc, an expert on
prisons at the Switzerland-based Associa-
tion for the Prevention of Torture. “There
is a significant difference between a
public-health policy aiming at preventing
transmissible diseases and segregating a
segment of the population on the basis of
their sexual orientation or gender
identity.”
Similar proposals in Italy and Turkey
were bogged down under heavy criticism.
Italy announced it was rededicating a
women’s
prison
for
transgender
individuals in 2010, but the move was
blocked by the Ministry of Justice over
concerns that a special jail was a form of
discrimination. Activists are attacking a
proposed “pink prison” in Turkey over
concerns that inmates there could face
worse conditions than regular inmates
because of anti-gay stigma.
But existing options leave much to be
desired. In many prisons in the U.S. and
other countries, transgender women face a
stark choice: get thrown into cells with
men or go into solitary confinement.
Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower
arrested for sending secret military files to
WikiLeaks, was sentenced in 2013 to 35
years at a male prison in Kansas despite
declaring herself a transgender woman.
She was thrown into solitary confinement
for attempting suicide last year, and was
granted clemency by former President
Barack Obama.
New Indonesia tsunami network could add crucial minutes
CRUCIAL EXTRA MINUTES. A buoy that is part of a tsunami
warning system developed by GITEWS (German Indonesian Tsunami Early
Warning System) floats in the sea as German R.V. Sonne is seen in the
background during an installation simulation on Sunda straits off Java is-
land, Indonesia, in this November 15, 2005 file photo. Indonesia’s tsu-
nami detection system, made up of seafloor sensors that communicate
with transmitting buoys on the surface, has been rendered useless by
vandals and lack of funding. Now Indonesian and U.S. scientists say
they’ve developed a way to dispense with the expensive buoys and
possibly add crucial extra minutes of warning for vulnerable coastal
cities. (AP Photo/Fadlan Arman Syam, File)
By Stephen Wright
The Associated Press
AKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s tsunami
detection system, made up of seafloor sensors that
communicate with transmitting buoys on the
surface, has been rendered useless by vandals and lack of
funding. Now Indonesian and U.S. scientists say they’ve
developed a way to dispense with the expensive buoys and
possibly add crucial extra minutes of warning for
vulnerable coastal cities.
The prototype, nearly four years in the making, is
designed to detect so-called near-field tsunamis and has
been tested off Padang on the western coast of Sumatra. It
awaits a decision on government funding to connect it to
disaster agencies on land.
A tsunami triggered by a December 26, 2004
earthquake in the Indian Ocean that killed or left missing
nearly 230,000 people, a large share of them in Indonesia,
raised the urgency of ensuring communities have the
fastest possible warnings.
But when a sizeable earthquake struck near the
Mentawai islands 106 miles from Padang in March last
year, none of the buoys in the area meant to transmit
tsunami warnings were working. A disaster official said
all of Indonesia’s 22 buoys, which cost several hundred
thousand dollars each and are expensive to operate, were
inoperable because of vandalism by boat crews or a lack of
funds for maintenance.
That quake didn’t cause a tsunami, but there was a
chaotic evacuation in Padang, population 1 million, and
other cities, which have at most 30 minutes before
tsunami waves hit. Because of lack of information,
officials didn’t cancel the tsunami warning for two hours.
“Now we have no buoys in Indonesia. They are all
damaged,” said Iyan Turyana, an ocean engineer at
BPPT, Indonesia’s Agency for the Assessment and
Application of Technology. “Where do you live in
Indonesia? Jakarta! It’s ok. But if you live in Padang, if
you live in Bengkulu, your life is [in danger].”
Germany and the U.S. provided 12 of the buoys, but did
not maintain them, he said.
For Indonesians, Aceh province in the north of Sumatra
where more than 100,000 people died after the 2004 earth-
J
quake, is synonymous with tsunami risk. Now, however,
Padang and nearby cities face the greatest danger of being
wiped out by giant waves.
The magnitude 9.1 quake in 2004, centered in the north
of a subduction zone where one major section of the earth’s
crust is being forced under another, released enough
energy to make a similarly powerful quake in that area
unlikely in the foreseeable future. In the section of that
“megathrust” off Padang, pressure has built relentlessly
and an undersea earthquake greater than magnitude 8.5
is possible in the next few decades.
To boost its detection ability, tsunami-prone Japan has
linked dozens of seafloor sensors off its eastern coast with
thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cable. That cost
several hundred million dollars and a similar endeavor
would be impossibly expensive for Indonesia, a vast but
poor archipelago in one of the most seismically active
regions in the world.
But with $3 million of funding from the U.S. National
Science Foundation, a prototype network of undersea
sensors has been deployed between Padang and the
Mentawai islands.
Buoys are not needed because the undersea
seismometers and pressure sensors send data-laden
sound waves to the warm surface waters. From there they
refract back into the depths, travelling 20 to 30 kilometers
to the next node in the network and so on.
At its final undersea point, the network needs a few
kilometers of fiber optic cable to connect it to a shore
station in the Mentawai islands where the cascades of
data would be transmitted by satellite to the meteorology
and geophysics agency, which issues tsunami warnings,
and to disaster officials in Padang.
“This entire process likely takes one to three minutes
instead of the five to 45 minutes typical of the buoy
system,” said Louise Comfort, a University of Pittsburgh
expert in disaster management who has led the project,
which also involves engineers from the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute.
“We get a more immediate record of the seismic
movement and with that more immediate record we gain a
few minutes of very valuable time,” she said. “And we get a
clearer signal of whether or not there is going to be a
tsunami.”
Laying the cable will cost the Indonesian government
about 1.5 billion rupiah ($112,000), said Turyana, the
ocean engineer. The Ministry of Research, Technology,
and Higher Education is considering a funding proposal.
The system has not been deployed elsewhere, but could
be an option for other poor countries or regions that are
vulnerable to tsunamis.
Since 2004, the mantra among disaster officials in
Indonesia has been that the earthquake is the tsunami
warning and signal for immediate evacuation. Not
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