PostBag
On July 24 at about 5.30pm, I witnessed an event in Bangkok that has left me shaken. It has changed the way I view Thailand.
It was a double shooting and a possible murder cover-up. I say "possible murder" because uniformed police were involved and I can't be certain the bodies were dead, but judging from the number of shots heard, the amount of blood and the lack of movement from the bodies, I assume they were dead.
The aftermath, with no news reports of the horrible incident, has made the whole experience surreal.
I was with a dozen people on the 8th-floor pool deck of Pathumwan Princess hotel which adjoins MBK shopping mall. We heard about eight gunshots from the street below. Within seconds, I was looking down and across Phaya Thai road to the footpath in front of Chulalongkorn University. Two bodies were lying on the footpath, one on either side of a gated driveway leading onto university property.
As if on cue a plain, dark blue sedan stopped at the curb. Four men in street clothes appeared. They picked up one body, throwing it into the back seat of the car. I cannot say if the men got in the car as well, as I was looking at the other body, which had a rapidly expanding pool of blood forming around it.
The car with the body drove off quickly down Phaya Thai. The other body was then lifted and moved to the curb, leaving a large trail of blood. Another car pulled up and that body was also whisked away.
By this time there were about five police officers on motorcycles at the scene. One officer was vainly trying to sop up the largest pool of blood with a rag or towel.
The whole episode took about two minutes. No sooner had the second body been taken away than people were again walking along the footpath, literally stepping over blood, seemingly taking no notice or perhaps too afraid to stop.
No crowd of onlookers gathered and no crime scene was set up. There was no collection of evidence and any forensic evidence was being contaminated. The waiting vehicles, the quick removal of the bodies and failure to establish a crime scene - never mind police acting as if they were part of it - was very odd. It seemed like a planned hit rather than a police action in pursuit of criminals on the run.
There has been no mention of this in the broadcast or print news, in Thai or English. Every day, I have googled news sites and found no mention of it.
Had this happened 30 minutes later, I would have been at that very spot hailing a taxi home.
I realise I don't know the details, but two people were shot down on a main Bangkok street in broad daylight outside a major hotel, shopping mall and large university campus. This has been very disturbing for me and while I am not sure what benefit may come from sharing this experience, I feel that I have at least done what I can to make someone aware of this tragedy.
TROUBLED
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Motive for the attack
The violence that erupted in Udon Thani on July 24 was caught on videotape; therefore, it shouldn't be hard to identify the assailants, especially if they were local men. I wonder why police have not caught those thugs. Maybe they were from other provinces or even from our neighboring countries, making it hard to track them down. But what was their motive?
The consensus is that they were pro-government and the government must take responsibility by resigning.
But one must not leave out the possibility that they were secretly hired by the PAD itself to incite hatred against the government.
Whatever the case may be, we may expect more violence in the North and Northeast, the PPP's stronghold. Note that the PAD always chooses to rally at sites where it knows it will face hostility, as if to provoke bloodshed.
I don't belong to any political spectrum but my point is: always look at things from different angles before making a judgement.
SOMSAK POLA
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Smoking in bars
As an athlete of many years' standing, I applaud the Thai government's approach to smoking bans in bars and restaurants, and the promulgated fines that have been sufficient to ensure that the policy is enacted. I was even more impressed by a recent article published in the Bangkok Post claiming that the Thailand approach was so sound that their policy was to be accepted throughout the world.
While holidaying here, I visited a number of bars and restaurants and was very impressed by the rule that all smokers had to exit the premises to smoke.
You can imagine my disgust when entering a bar in Sukhumvit Soi 8, to be confronted by a thick haze of smoke, with the majority of patrons happily puffing away on cigarettes.
My request to a patron to refrain from smoking was met with a claim that the management had bought a licence which exempted them from following the laws of the country. I complained about the smoking to a farang who appeared to have some authority in the establishment. With cigarette dangling from his mouth, he quite impolitely told me I had the choice of leaving if I did not like the atmosphere there.
I am appalled that a much-touted smoking law that has achieved international praise can be so blatantly ignored by the appropriate authorities, and that regular checks are not made to ensure compliance.
DISGUSTED MIKE
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