GRIM PENAL COLONIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1929, Page 10

GRIM PENAL COLONIES

GUIANA AND DEVIL’S ISLAND. . ’■ ''' . ■Once or twice a year die last convict ship afloat leaves France, bound for the most famous penal colony in the world. -.The. head-lines announce its departure: “Passengers for Eternity Board the Martiniere—Broken Men Sail for Devil’s Island—Condemned to a Living Death.” (writes Biair Niles in-.the. “New York Times’” Magazine.) After this, silence. It is as if the melancholy craft had sailed into the great unknown. No word comes of what happens at the end of the strange voyage. For shipping lists are not concerned the arrival of such a barque, and in French Guiana there, are no newspapers to herald its arrival.

A few weeks ago We watched that ship come in. We had made the long journey to South America because we wanted to know what lay behind the silence into which the grim/yessel has so often' sailed' to learn something of the tragedy that is being played in those black prisons against the back* ground of primetai forest. - So wo stood 'on the pier at St;'Laurent and watched the Martinierie wind slowly up life broad tropical-river. St'. .Laurent is the great distributing centre for the penal colony, and most of its population had assembled with us on tile river bank —as if they had gathered to meet friends or to d'b honour to some arriving celebrity. But there are no passengers on ; the decks iof the/Martiniere —only a row of armed keepers waiting at the head of the gangway. And from the shore to that weird ship no greeting passes; the crowd has merely put pn its* bc\t clothes and come down to stare. For tills ship ..carries convicts only —nearly 700 of them —and save for the faces pressed against the closed portholes they might all be corpses. 'Looking into those wan faces which peer so ■ anxiously through the dim glass one suddenly understands that they are passionately eager to look upon the land tp which they have been condemned to prison—and to exile. They are puzzled by that crowd on the bank,»not knowing that in the monotony of Guiana the arrival of a convict convoy is a Roman holiday.

As the ship slowly edges in, broadside to th© pier, the men at the portholes begin to distinguish Chinese girls in gay, light dresses Martiniquaise women who lift'their full sweeping skirts’to‘show a triangle of white embroidered petticoat; with no colour too vivid, no pattern too flowcry, for their calico gowns and gorgeous turbans. It is a bizarre panorama for French eyes: the Regresses and mulat’coes of Guiana copying’ the Paris mode in every violent hue; the prison officials on'the "wharf in white uniforms and white cloche helmets, and, drawn' up behind them, keepers in khaki armed with revolvers. Here and there, too, is a French wife with her French .children, looking like fashion plates sketched at Deauville or the races. when iho shin has made fast the

men pour out of the barred cageo in her hold, like gray rate, in the thick woollen uniforms of the French prisons. They pour down two gangways and form four abreast on the wharf. In obedience to orders the fours move forward to make room for those who follow, until, four by four, the lino soon extends the length of the pier. There they let. slip the canvas bags, containing all they own, from the shoulders to the floor of the dock. And alt has been done as silently .as if they had really been the rats which their loose grey garb suggests. In i dlencp .they- : wait, blinking in the strong, tropic sun, with rivulets of perspiration, trickling down their' faces. And then,' .with the command “MifrchP’ the lino passes from the pier

Info the streets'of St. Laurent. hi the'line are men of all ages and of many nationalities, for France sends to her Guiana penitentiaries criminals' from all her colonies. There are An.namit.es hud Chinese from French In-do-China, negroes from Madagascar and Reunion, Arabs from Northern Africa., and occasionally a Spaniard, .Belgian, a Briton or a. German, caught in the web of the French convict system.

And all manner of crimes as well as ■ criminals are represented. Murderers, burglars, forgers, deserters from the army—all bunk together. There is variety, too, in the sentences to which they are condemned. No man sentenced to dess than five years is deported to French Guiana, dud the ’ terms run from that comparatively brief period to “forced labour for life.” It is the unique feature. of this French penal colony that for every sentence up to eight years the convict must serve an equal term as an exijA in Guiana; while for every sentence of eight years and over exile for life follows.

Such uro the men who yearly march from the deck at St. Laurent into the prison gates. The streets through which they pass are the work of convicts who have preceded them. The Palais de Justice, bright blue and white in the sun; the keepers’ houses, surrounded by ornamental brick walls; the shrub? qnd trees which- give St. Laurent its air of tropical beauty—all these are the work Lof condemned "men. . And condemned men cook and servo their keepers food and wash thqir keepers’ clothes. The very prison, is the work of condemned hands. French Guiana itself rests upon this drab convict foundations. -

The tentacles of the octbpus which is the penitentiary system reach out in many directions. They, include those, three famous islands off the coast wnigh are called the Iles due Salut—Devil’s Island, lie Royale and lie ; St. Joseph. '

Next to Napoleon’s St. Helena, Dev--1 il’s Island is the mqst notorious place in the world. There Dreyfus spent •th© 'five years of his solitary banishment. Alone, falsely charged .With h’gli treason, he brpke his heart-while, the sun beat, dpw-n on the dangerous seas which swirl about that little- Island. France has long ago ’given Dreyfus the justice he demanded, 'het she still' retains Devil’s ..Island as her Island of Treason; and to-day nineteen ■meh, convicted of treachery to-the riation, watch the . ocean foam dash and break -on the rocks of tlieir island 'prison;'' ‘ , ; . ■/ '. * Second in interest to Devils Island is its neighbour,',St.-Joseph. This is tjio island of solitary confinement and silence, 'the ..island pf ; punishment to which all prisons of Guiana send their “incorrigibles.”'.' If is a place of mystery. Men speak of it with, a shudder. To the prisons of Royale—the third and largest island of the-, trio—those men go who have so repeatedly attempted escape that only the heavy seas about these islands discourage their restless spirits. They are lonely little islands, No

ship flying other than the French flag may pass within a mile and a-half. ; None but those with official authorisation may land even on Royale; and such permission. is restricted |o officials on business.. Ships pause, therefore, merely for transference of mails. When,.they pull up anchor and go away the only cbmmunicatiQn with the islands is by the uncertain and antiquated semaphore; a useless me.-: thod when any haze lies bn the coast. Of-, the 7000 prisoners now confined in Guiana, the inhabitants of the three islands total about 600, : and the rest 1 are housed in the prisons on the main-, kind. ■ . . MOSTLY JUNGLE. The. mainly of French. ! Guiana is mostly jungle-r-miles of' it unexplored —with only a fringe of habitation along the coast.and for a Short distance up the main . streams. Where there are settlements of any size they have grown up about one of the larger prisons of .the great, system- There are prisons at Cayenne and at Kourou, on the north coast; while radiating from St. Laurent, on the Maroni River, is a network, of jungle prisons, where every night the men locked in their dormitories hear the wild, frpe chorus of the howling' monkeys. But of the whole intricate'organisation St., Laurent is the /inexorable heart. All the convicts know it, for its prison was their first experience of (?uiana.

Later many of them, are distributed to the various other prisons; but .in 'the beginning they must march into the penitentiary of St. Laurent, over whose gates stand the official words, “Camp de la Transportation”—words, which the inmates s'oon interpret to read “The Dry Guillotine,” for imprisonment in French Guiana is to them only a degree less fatal than the descending knife itself. !

These prisons are made up-of ipany buildings within one great enclosing v. ..11. The kitchen and the storehouses, che dormitories,, the blockhouse, the banks of punishment cells, the infirpiary—these are all separate buildings, generally whitewashed, always barred and always pla/nly* labelled in huge black letters. Sometimes there are breadfruit or mango trees in the space between the rows of buildings. Black vultures sit in silent rows on the top of the wall or on the roofs of the houses. There is no sanitation; but then there' is none in all of French Guiana. At‘a tank in the yard the men wash their clothes or themselves. There are no public rooms, no chapels, no dining-rooms, no gather places. Between the hours of work the men are locked in their dormitories, for within the gray and salmon-colour walls routine is inflexible. From the moment the new arrival’s fingerprints are registered at St. Laur‘ent and he is assigned a number he is no longer a man; he has scarcely the individuality of a number. He has become merely a. Guiana convict. Nearly 50,000 have preceded him and only the future knows how-many will, follow. Perhaps he ihay be one of the many who die during their first year of adjustment to prison in the Guianp. climate. Across his record. card the

authorities will then write “DCD” the French abbreviation of “Deceased.” But should he live, the passenger on that convict ship bound for Guiana soon'realises that he has lost everything but his tortured, physical body and his troubled spirit. _ He has lost the right to send or receive 'a letter that has not been read by some employee of the Administration, and ho suspects that much of the prison correspondence ends in the waste,flasket. Ho has lost,- also, his right to handle as he pleases what money he. may happen to have. -He may not wear a. moustache or beard. He must dress in prison ’ clotjies. Nothing of the little he owns is free from prying eyes. And so faint, so Uncertain is his contact with the woi;ld .that he wonders which it is that has died—himself or the world. , , But such life as remaiijb to' him is lived tvith desperate intensity. Sis wits are now to be pitted against .an armed and organised Administration.

The convicts who have gone befpre him have left a legacy of devious devices more ingenious than anything ever invented by the American “bootlegger.” For the convict in Guiana inherits elaborately worked out subterfuges. He is instructed in the. simulation of various diseases; he is initiated into the; extraordinary prison method'of secreting money; he is informed who may be bribed and hqw; there are at his disposal hand-traced maps on iwhicli are indicated all the tried routes of escape Ry sea or land, with advice about vyinds, currents and trails. But all this is a story in itself and sometimes not a story for overfastidious ears.

But however great the ingenuity born of . their extremity, in the epd t almost without exception, the system" “gets” the Gtiiana convict. Eventually the vitality of the prisoner fpdes until there is no fight left and he submits like'' an automaton to the routine laid down,hi Article Number This and Decree Number That to the regulations of ordinance rind proclaipation in .which commissions, chiefs of bureau, governors and directors regulate the penal colony of Guiana. - - j v i.. There is no incentive to wprk under the blistering sun. Outwardly the convict moves through the routine — the rising at 5.3J3, coffee at 5.45, leaving the prison with his work squad at ‘6, returning at 10.30 for the main meal of a chunk. of meat, a slab of bread and the water in which the meat has been cooked; working again from 2 to 5, returning for supper of a cup of rice, plus the water in which it is boiled; and, finally, being locked into the dormitory for tlje night at 5.30. There he will sleep oh a plapk or strip of canvas, according to r his grade as'a prisoner. It is a continuous round of being counted and searched, searched and counted again, Ipcked up and unlocked. This tedious job is, as a v rule, allotted to hardened old Arap convicts who know scarcely a word of the prisoner’s beloved French. This is the outward rhythm of a prisoner’s existence. Inwardly he will live the life oi. an agonised human being. Usually his mind is upon the everlasting - problem <of how tp add enough to the prispii. fare .to keep ’thp heart beating,; in his body. For the red tape which has measured his days, defined, his status and sef boundaries to' the punishments which may be inflicted '• oir him- has ppg|ecte4 to count 1 the calories of h|fl daily ration..

• 'the black cell. . "■ Due to the effort of two French journalists —Lonfires, and Le Feyrp—the black cell has beep abolished and the use of irons, except for “strictly neces ;

sary restraint,” Jias been suppressed. But what matters more to the' convict than degrees of punishment—more than the scorching sun, the. mosquitoes or the vermin of the old wooden prisons—is the fact that night and day he must fight tn© gnawing paving of semi-starvation. Therefore the perpetual struggle, to add, by any means to the prisop ration. Because the authorities, so adept at formulating decrees, are ignorant of the necessity of,vitamins, acids and potash salts, many of the suffer from scurvy. All the elements to produce it flourish in the Guiana prisons: exposure to torrid s.un and to rain measured in feet instead of inches; dark, damp punishment cells; distress of mind; insufficient food; lack of fresh vegetables and fruits. And. all the inevitably follow: -exhaustion, susceptibility tp a complication of diseases, loosening and falling of'.the teeth: Guiana is full of toothless young men. Because of the "discomfort of the wooden sabots provided. by the auth.orities, ipost of the men prefer to go barefppt; and since there is no sanitation, all of them haye hookyropn, with its resulting anemia. - With their lowered physical resistance and with; mosquitoes prevalent, every one is; of course, infected with plalaria. One never sees a fat man in the prisons of Guiana. , And to illness is added a brooding sorrow. I know the inside of thpse prisons and I know what the men on the convict ship are coming to. They are entering a world where a laugh or a song is as rare as a meteor passing across the sky. Occasionally, hut not often, a man will make for himself a guitar’ and strum for himself a tune* Others will gambleJn as deadly parnest over their sous as* though millions were at stake. Some will read, renting books from the limited number accumulated by vanished predecessors. Many occupy their locked in hours with making boxes, paper knives; tiny model guillotines to be used as, cigar cutters, etc., in the hqpe of making a sale when the', cargp steam®!’ or the monthly courier come? in. But whatever alleviation there is niust come from within tjhemselves. And these outcasts? le.arn to hide eypry fine feeling. They would have no on© guess that they- are withered by the contempt in the voice of , every free pian, by the fact that no free man will ever offer them his hand,, and that./they never receive a kind sniil®They face ten, twenty? forty years, perhaps a lifetime of this. They are lonely and ill and They reason that they might as well. be as wholly evil as they are thought., - •

Before they reach the dull resignation point they have many such fits of brooding in which they realise the length of their sentence, speaking of it always as their “peine.” ■ What'does it matter what they do, they who have- so little to lose? If they live through their imprisonment, Which they know is a faint hope, why, then, what will become of ‘them in the exile.years which follow on their “pain.” They are now.condemned to Guiana, and in Guiana there is pot enough work properly to sustain life. They have known too many of the socalled “free” convicts who, having survived their “pain,” failed to survive their freedom. They have . known them to steal to get back to the halfstarvation of prison. * In the street if is not uncommon to hear one man say casually to another, “You know, II haven’t had a . thing to eat for two days.” And have alpo seen men. with enough energy jqft after prison to tgkp up art agricul-' tural concession, . They liavp. seen them vanquished by ants; or, having vanquished the ants, pjjiigpfi tobjiy a pig.'to eat up the prpduc.e grown wHh such patient toil, Fap WhP i? there in Guiana to buy thgjr prqduce? Th® 'penitentiary staff use convicts to grow their vegetables, npd the Creole population retains a primitive food standard, preferring to spend its money bn the toys pf Jifq. ’ ■ Whpri all thls overwhelms the prisl°!ier hAs reached the fieripair pojnt at which .he escape, fully realising that half of those who do-so ‘ '' / , ■ ’ -= ‘ '

pay with their lives at > the hands; of sea or jungle—that one. perhaps succeeds and that the rqst are captured and sent back for punishment. But at the despair point none, of them caputs risks br costs. Thus only attempted escape; pun? ishment and occasionally a few weeks in tfie hospital. break the relentless routine. Until pt last.the Dry Guillotine has done its work and the blue pencil scrawls across another card the dnal “DCD.”