First Person: Surviving death row in Thailand

A Thai woman who spent more than 20 years in prison after being found guilty of drugs trafficking – including eight on death row – has told the UN how learning to sew helped her find meaning in life behind bars, and a job when she was released.

Mariyam Tadein was 21 years old when she was sentenced to death.

Police found over half a million tablets of “yaba”, an illegal cocktail of methamphetamine and caffeine popular in many parts of Southeast Asia, in the house she was renting in southern Thailand.

“I spent 20 years, five months, and 15 days in prison. I was sentenced to death, along with a person who was executed by lethal injection.

I knew I was next, that I was going to die.

There were enough yaba tablets in that house to fill an entire truck. They weren’t mine; but it did not matter.

I got to prison and everything happened fast: I was charged with drug trafficking and sentenced to death. Back then, I was ready to die.

Death penalty stigma

For the next two years, I had to wear a sign at all times that said Death Penalty. I faced death for eight years. But it was during the last two that I accepted it as I was put on a special training course on how to face the countdown to death.

That same year, there was a big flood and I was transferred to another prison. It was there I was told I had been granted a royal pardon over the death. My Nigerian friends also received a pardon. We were nine people. We baked a cake.

We were relieved to be alive, although I felt I was already dead, as I was facing the rest of my life in prison.

However, I told myself: this is going to be a long wait, so I might as well focus on something.

I learned how to sew in prison classes, and then I was put to work. The more I worked, the more meaning I felt.

I concentrated on the pattern of the fabric and the thread. Thread by thread. Every day.

I also earned privileges in a prison I shared with 4,000 other women, like showering later in the day. Life got easier.

The most difficult time for me was when I was transferred to Songkhla prison in southern Thailand. The other inmates were very poor.

It was tough for me because at some point my family stopped coming to visit. They thought that I would stay in prison forever. What was the point of visiting? My husband moved on; he remarried. That was very hard, finding out.

I am very proud of how I was able to focus on work. I would focus on the different patterns.

I would not allow myself to focus on my story, on what led me to prison. Or on my husband’s new life. I could not change that. It was done. I needed to move forward.

When I felt the bad thoughts coming, I would go back to the fabric, back to the pattern.

Patterns of life and death

Everything changed during the 2004 tsunami. I was told to sew cloth bags for the bodies. I kept cutting lots of fabric because there were many deaths.

That’s how I got distracted about my own life. I would focus on the pattern.”

In 2021, Mariyam at age 52 received a second royal pardon for good conduct and was released from prison. The owner of a sewing business who had trained previously prisoners offered her a job. Today, age 56, she works and sews, and lives with her children and husband, with whom she is reunited.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has provided vocational training equipment to almost 60 prisons in Thailand, enabling access to practical skills such as woodworking and sewing, enhancing opportunities for prisoners during and after incarceration.

Originally published by UN News