This is Super Maximum Security, or the Tower, at Bali's Kerobokan Jail, home to the eight men from the Bali Nine and where three of them live every day under the shadow of the death penalty.
One wall is covered in happy snaps. A poster for this year's NRL footy tipping competition is stuck to another wall.
Tennis racquets and caps hang on a rack and cooking spices sit on a shelf. Religious textbooks are lined up on a desk. The paint on the walls is chipped and the space is crowded. But it is tidy and its occupants have made every effort to create a homely atmosphere despite the fact they are a long way from home.
Next month marks five years since they were arrested in Bali and charged with trafficking 8.2kg of heroin from Bali to Australia. The arrest came after a tip-off from Australian Federal Police to their Indonesian counterparts.
This week, The Advertiser was granted exclusive access to the cell block where the Bali Nine live. They live two and three to each cell. The sleeping area is only a couple of metres wide by about 4m long and the ceiling feels impossibly low. An Indonesian squat toilet and mandi - a big tub of cold water to throw over yourself to wash, using a bucket - is at the end of the sleeping area.
The cell's entry area is about the same size again. Here is where they store their food, shoes, tennis racquets, sports gear and the other limited possessions. It looks disarmingly normal.
Andrew Chan shares his cell with Matthew Norman and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen. It is the same cell that Amrozi, the smiling Bali bomber, lived in when he was at Kerobokan Jail until 2003. His brother Mukhlas and Imam Samudra were in other cells now shared by the Bali Nine. All three were executed.
There is a desk where Chan does his study, a cupboard with an Australian flag draped across the front, a rack of shoes and tennis racquets hanging up next to a calendar of a woman.
It is here that Norman sleeps on a mattress. Chan sleeps in the bedroom on the bed next to the wall, which is plastered with photographs - snapshots of his family and friends at home, weddings, babies, dinners and parties.
Despite the crowded space, Nguyen says the trio don't mind and get on really well.
"We don't feel it. We actually enjoy it, so it's all right," he says.
Myuran Sukumaran and Si Yi Chen share another cell while Scott Rush, Michael Czugaj and a prisoner from Sierra Leone share another. Martin Stephens has a cell to himself. As three of the nine prepare to lodge their final appeals against the death penalty, they have started a series of education programs to help local prisoners.
Five of the nine are now involved in helping run English, computer and graphic design courses, boxing classes and an art class as well as arranging for a silversmith course and for some guards and prisoners to do a first-aid course.
Andrew Chan, Myuran Sukumaran and Scott Rush are expected to launch their final appeals against the death penalty this year. No date has been set yet for Chan and Sukumaran but lawyers for Rush say his could be lodged next month.
If the judicial reviews fail, there is only one other avenue - a plea for clemency from Indonesia's President. He has never granted one. Chan and Sukumaran, sentenced on the basis that they were the heroin gang's ringleaders, were instrumental in getting the new courses set up in the jail and it was their Australian lawyers who donated the computers for the course.
Both say they now try to keep thoughts of the death penalty to the back of their minds, instead focusing on the programs which have given them new purpose behind bars. "I am not going to say it's not real. Be realistic. I am here," Chan said of his death penalty. "I know it's there but I am not even going to bother thinking about it constantly. There's no point for me."
The jail's governor, Siswanto, welcomes the involvement of the Australian prisoners in the new programs, saying they proposed them sincerely. He highlights the importance of rehabilitation and assimilation of prisoners back into the community.
Renae Lawrence, the only female of the nine, showed us around the cells, where 72 women live seven to eight to a cell.
For now, the Bali Nine are making the most of where life has taken them. Only time will tell if they all get to keep their lives.
Source: adelaidenow.com.au, March 30, 2010
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