Foreign Office won’t rock the Thai fishing boat

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 21 February 2006 00:50.

The first young English girl of whose death in Thailand I became aware was Serena Booker, a book researcher and sister of journalist Christopher Booker. She was murdered in 1982 while back-packing - then an uncommon but by no means unknown pursuit - in the north of the country. I have a strong suspicion that no one was ever charged.

Down the years I have noted occasional rapes and murders of Westerners in the country, alongside the promotion of Thailand and other far-flung places as suitable destinations for adventurous students in their gap-years. No doubt I am an over-protective parent, but something about this back-packing lark doesn’t sit well with me. I am a businessman. I know what business cares about and what it doesn’t. A self-interested industry selling a product whose whole point is lack of structure to young people freed of parental oversight, and who by definition are not schooled in human judgement, is likely to abuse the trust placed in it. It is likely to deliver the lowest-quality service with which it can get away.

Quite apart from my suspicions as to the motivations and standards of the Thai gap-year industry, I also recoil from the One-Big-Happy-World assumptions that underpin its message to our young. It is liberal and it is false. The warm, wunnerful Thai people are chiefly warm ‘n wunnerful, I think, when money is being spent. Their concerns do not extend per se to the care and protection of large, pallid-skinned, lazy, over-indulgent, immoral, drunken youths from far away.

That job, in the absence of all locum parentis, falls to the British Consulate. So it was with some interest that I read this quite shocking piece on the BBC News site this evening

After the killing of the 21-year-old Briton on Koh Samui on 1 January, officials considered revising advice.

But they decided not to give prominent mentions to hers and other murders on its website to "avoid disproportionate impact", e-mails from staff reveal.

The FO said Britons' safety and accurate information were "paramount".

Katherine, 21, from Cardiff, was raped and murdered after she wandered off from friends to make a mobile phone call on the beach.

Two fishermen are appealing against a death sentence for rape and murder.

Increased crime

On the news of her death, intensive consultations began between British diplomats in Thailand and London over how to update the FO travel advice.

There was already concern over increased crime in the area - she was the ninth Briton to be murdered in Thailand in 18 months.

But the emails, obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act, show that officials decided against mentioning the murders at the top of the FO web page.

“The trouble with that is that it will effectively highlight the number of murders over the last year or more here, which in the current circumstances could have a disproportionate impact on Thailand’s reputation and its legitimate commercial interests,” the e-mail said.

In explication the F.O. told the BBC that nine murders are but a negligible proportion of those tens of thousands of happy Brit holiday-makers who flock to warm, wunnerful Thailand. I can’t help but wonder what Christopher Booker, a good and honourable man who wrote passionately about his sister’s death at the time, will make of this excuse. It looks very like a callous treachery towards him and all the relatives of the murdered, as well as an abrogation of duty.

It can be very difficult to understand the values which move our betters. They are simply not our values.

Tags: Oh Tempora, Oh Mores

Comments:

Posted by karlmagnus on Tue, 21 Feb 2006 02:13 | #

Entirely reasonable; 9 in 18 months is nothing—there must be more Brits murdered in that period in New York. Anyway,. Thaksin Shinawatra is one of my favorite world leaders.

The trick is to fight back against the rubbish propaganda by the schools in favor of gap years and international travel. Student travel broadens no minds, it just gives opportunities for danger and dissipation, and the concept of a gap year is a huge waste of resources. Both in the UK and the US the schools shill for this rubbish, and it needs to be fought against.

Don’t put your daughter on the flight, Mr. Guessedworker!

Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 21 Feb 2006 02:48 | #

Thaksin is an ethnic Chinese and his role model in many respects ( the avoidance of corruption apart) is Lee Kuan Yew. However, the indigenous Thais arent so easy to govern as Singapore’s numerically smaller and racially different population. It is true that whilst there are parallels between Jews in the West and Overseas Chinese in South East Asia, the latter do not attempt the wholesale cultural annihilation of their hosts,unlike the former for whom it is a racial and religious obligation.
As regards the FCO, they have no interest in the welfare of UK citizens, only in the furtherance of UK interests - not the same thing at all.

Posted by Angela on Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:29 | #

to young people freed of parental oversight, and who by definition are not schooled in human judgement,

A good reason to teach children the facts of hereditary, from the day they born. One has to feel for todays Western kids, schooled in strong egalitarianism. Often they have no idea when they are in the presence of grave physical danger. Stars in their eyes, and a knife at their throat.

Posted by PCA on Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:54 | #

One thing to remember about Thailand is this.

Many problem children are sent to Buddhist monasteries to be ‘set straight’. Many of them are the worst of the worst.

Many of those young pious looking monks (that young western women fawn over) are recovering drug addicts, prostitutes, thugs, gang members and sexual deviants.

I have read quite a few instances of young women been raped in Thailand by monks. They younger ones should be treated with a great deal of suspicion.

Remember too, that Thailand is a TOUGH poor country. They do not suffer fools gladly. Many of village people on coasts are nothing more than pirates who make money on the side as fishermen.

I will say that I personally have much respect for the Thai people, in their tolerance of misbehaving western kids; know as ‘farang’. I have much less respect for the western kids.

The reason why young people go to Thailand is well known; ‘drugs, sex and partying’. Thailand as you know is awash with drugs and prostitution. These kids essentially fund prostitution, drugs and organised crime (those innocent little American, European and Australian kids).

Imagine, if thousands of cashed up Asian kids started turning up in your street, hiring prostitutes, screwing in your front yard, getting drunk and high and making a nuisance of themselves, how would you feel? I would not be too impressed and neither should they.

I remember watching a program on British TV, about some english hippie types starting up a LSD driven rave scene on a Thai island about 15 years ago. These enlightened individuals did not bother to tell or ask the locals. They started up 3 or so days of drug induced mayhem and public sex. Anyway, when it all died down they realised that a number of them were missing.

The Thai villagers had murdered those that had strayed too close to the village and the young boys in the village had left to get some free sex from drug induced white women (aka rape and murder). Needless to say, there were no more parties on that island.

I would be more worried about the influence that other westerners. Especially the creepy older ones, who seem to just hang around for months on end with no discernable means of financial support, not to mention their fellow travellers.

The temptations will be too much for the average idiot that is pumped out of public schools. Many end up washed up on the rocks. I guess that is also much of the appeal, trust me they aren’t going there to brush up on Thai history.

Posted by PCA on Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:40 | #

‘Well, let us not elevate them here. There is self-interest involved on both sides. Thailand would be a basket-case without tourism. They don’t do it for charity. They do it because they make enormous sums of money from this.

To say that they “tolerate” Western kids gratuitously is absurd.’ -(Phil Peterson)

I really believe that ‘tolerate’ is not that far from the truth, if not the truth.

The average Thai has gotten very little out of bars and brothels. How much does the average Englishman take home from Soho. Your average pimp, gangster, drug dealer are more than happy to reap the rewards and that does flow through to the economy.

The average Thais consider themselves as quite conservative and find most of this behaviour abhorrent. From what I am lead to believe the prostitutes form a type of underclass or untouchable class and are almost exclusively excluded from normal Thai life.

You are exactly right, in that Thailand gets an enormous amount of money from tourism. The government will always put under enormous strain from business interests and organised crime, however, there have been enormous pressure placed on government to start to ‘clean things up’ by normal Thai people (this has happened by no accident as Thailand has gotten wealthier).

Thailand has become quite a large destination increasingly for families; namely from Russia, Eastern Europe and some European countries (namely for the how cheap it is). This has lead to a decreased reliance on the seedier trades.

You need only look at the massive recent initiatives taken by the government (at the behest of the hugely popular royal family), at decency drives or “social order’ crackdowns on prostitution (prostitution is technically illegal and it tried to force the most blatant offenders to at least try to conceal their activities- it is also illegal to have naked strippers in Thailand, even topless – believe it or not) and the crack down on drugs (which resulted in the shooting deaths of hundreds of suspected street dealers in months following its pronouncement).

Posted by Rick Darby on Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:39 | #

I have only just found this site, thanks to Guessedworker, but it looks like I will be able to learn quite a bit here that doesn’t appear in the politically correct media.

Posted by AD on Wed, 22 Feb 2006 02:35 | #

If it were thousands, and not millions; if i knew they would be leaving in a week, and not stayin in my country permanently; i’d feel better than i do now.

those young pious looking monks (that young western women fawn over)-PCA

Yes, i’m sure that’s someone’s fantasy, PCA.

the young boys in the village had left to get some free sex from drug induced white women (aka rape and murder). Needless to say, there were no more parties on that island. -PCA

Serves them right, needless to say.

They do not suffer fools gladly.-PCA

Of course, they’re noble(as you can no doubt attest, having such an unusally deep understanding of Thai social structures).

I would be more worried about the influence that other westerners. Especially the creepy older ones-PCA

I’m sensing a pattern, PCA.

Posted by PCA on Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:29 | #

Good for you AD,

Keep on ‘sensing your patterns’.

Posted by Al Ross on Wed, 22 Feb 2006 04:21 | #

The Thais, a gentle, peaceful mainly-Buddhist people with a horrendous per capita homicide rate have an inflated idea of their place in the world. This is because they believe their own propaganda which states that Siam resisted colonisation by South East Asia’s British and French interventionists solely because of their own efforts. The truth is that the British and French tacitly agreed to leave Thailand alone in order to create a buffer-zone between their respective colonial territories of Malaya/Burma and Vietnam/Laos.

Posted by German backpacker raped, murdered in Thailand on Thu, 11 Apr 2019 20:15 | #

Backpacker found raped and murdered on Thai island

Yahoo News Australia Yahoo News Australia and agenciesYahoo News Australia10 April 2019

Source: Facebook/Miriam Beelte

A young German backpacker, whose body was found buried under leaves and rocks on an island in Thailand, was raped before her face was smashed with a rock, police have said.

Miriam Beelte, 26, was travelling on a rental motorbike at Koh Si Chang, an island south of Bangkok, where she was approached by local man Ronnakorn Romruen.

He allegedly asked her for sex, and when she refused he followed her and attacked her in a woodland area, pinning her to the ground where he raped her, police said.

The 24-year-old then allegedly used a rock to repeatedly beat her in the face.

Ms Beelte suffered severe head wounds and a broken leg in the attack. Her body was found on Sunday.

Miriam Beelte’s body was found on Sunday with severe head injuries and a broken leg.

Thai suspect Ronnakorn Romruen is escorted by police as he arrives at the Koh Si Chang police station in Thailand, Monday.

An investigator at Chonburi police station, Somkid Kaensa, said police have charged Romruen with murder, rape and concealing a body.

Police said the suspect, who operates a trash collecting boat, admitted to the crimes and said he used drugs before the incident.

Koh Si Chang is a popular weekend tourist destination for both locals and foreigners with a population of only 5000 people.

Mr Kaensa said a Thai tourist called police after they saw Romruen’s clothes covered in blood and police then searched the area and discovered the tourist’s body.

Mr Kaensa said a flower vendor who knew Romruen also saw that his clothes were covered in blood and asked him what he was doing.

The maximum punishment for premeditated murder is the death penalty.

Associated Press

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