Australian imprisoned for insulting Thai royal family begs for mercy

King Bhumibol and his queen entertain American aristocrats George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara at the royal palace.

Jailed Aussie pleads to say sorry to Thai royals to escape prison conditions

The Australian | Sep 6, 2008

Peter Alford, Bangkok

HARRY Nicolaides, the Melbourne writer arrested on a charge of insulting Thailand’s royal family, has described his appalling prison conditions and his fear of contracting tuberculosis, and pleaded to be allowed to apologise.

“I want to immediately apologise to the royal family for my reckless choice of words,” Nicolaides told The Weekend Australian at Bangkok Remand Prison.

“I want to write a comprehensive letter apologising with the greatest humility to the Thai people for the way the Thai press presented what was written in the book.”

Nicolaides is distressed by his conditions of imprisonment, which could extend for 84 days before he can be released on remand. Bail of 500,000 baht ($17,820) raised by his girlfriend and her friends has been refused.

He fears he has been deliberately isolated as the only farang (foreigner) in a prison cell crammed with 60 or more Thais.

Nicolaides said he entered the prison on Monday a healthy man, although almost suicidal over the threat of 15 years’ jail, but he now had swollen lymph glands, chest pains, constipation and stomach cramps and could not eat.

Almost all the other inmates in his cell were coughing and wheezing, he said. “There is a rumour going around that some of them will be transferred to the tuberculosis ward (of the prison hospital), which is terribly overcrowded,” he said.

He feared his condition was deteriorating so quickly he would be vulnerable to tuberculosis infection.

Nicolaides was arrested at Bangkok’s international airport as he tried to fly home to Melbourne on Sunday night, and held on a warrant charging lese majeste, or offences against the crown, a crime he did not know existed.

The charge was provoked by a passage in his 2003 novel Verisimilitude: is the truth the truth.

“I wrote that from King Rama, and I didn’t say which King Rama, to the Crown Prince, Thai men are well-known for having multiple wives and concubines for entertainment,” he said.

Nicolaides said the passage was in the form of “an omniscient narrator passing a rumour to the protagonist … it’s a work of imaginative fiction”.

He acknowledges the passage, from a period of his life when some of his writing was “flaky”, offended Thai culture and tradition. “But I’m not that person now,” he said.

He had returned to Thailand seven months ago, mainly to spend time with his girlfriend, who teaches at Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai, where he previously taught.