JAKARTA, Jan 17 AAP –
Visiting Indonesia? Why not pamper yourself with a luxurious five-star suite at one of the country’s prisons? You’ll have to commit a serious crime to get in, of course.
But once you’re in, you’re in for a real treat – if you’re a VIP with plenty of cash. Like Artalyta Suryani, a wealthy Indonesian socialite and lobbyist who was convicted of bribing prosecutors and sentenced to five years in Jakarta’s Pondok Bambu Prison. Artalyta bribed the right people and was rewarded with a spacious apartment-style “cell” with private kitchen and bathroom, a comfortable double bed, a leather couch, air conditioning, an LG flat-screen television, a children’s play area and domestic staff.
Artalyta was also allowed a computer so she could continue to run her business from the inside. Employees and clients were free to visit her whenever they pleased. She was also given access to a beautician. In fact, she was enjoying a treatment earlier this month when an anti-corruption task force conducted a snap inspection of the prison and uncovered her lavish lifestyle.
The public was understandably outraged by the revelations, though perhaps not entirely surprised – it’s long been an open secret that the rich and powerful enjoy special treatment in prison. Authorities acted quickly to clean up the public relations mess. Artalyta was moved to another prison. Pondok Bambu’s warden was sacked. Other prison wardens were quick to distance themselves from the scandal. Siswanto, the head of Bali’s Kerobokan Prison, where Australians Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine are incarcerated, declared all his prisoners were treated equally. ”I assure you we don’t provide any special rooms or privileges to inmates at Kerobokan,” he said. Hmm… In her recent book, Hotel Kerobokan, Australian author Kathryn Bonella describes how new inmates could “pay for a room upgrade at check-in”. ”Powerful Balinese drug dealer Iwan Thalib’s luxuriously comfortable cell could rival a five-star hotel room,” Bonella writes. ”Iwan had designed the interior, decorating it tastefully and with a state-of-the-art Bose sound system. ”He had his workers hand-craft wooden furniture to fit the space perfectly.
“They laid a sumptuous Bordeaux red carpet and painted the walls a light coffee colour. ”His home theatre comprised eight speakers mounted on the walls for surround sound, a plasma screen at the foot of his bed, a DVD player and a PlayStation. ”In the corner, he had a small fridge for beers, a freezer and a microwave. ”His builders had expanded the cell by knocking down a wall to an adjoining communal toilet and turning it into an en-suite bathroom.” But, bear in mind most inmates of Kerobokan – indeed, most inmates of all Indonesia’s prisons – live in filthy, rat-infested, disease-ridden, overcrowded cells where rape and murder is as common as lunch.