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Are women safe on Thailand's beaches?
Though forensic examination has yet to determine whether Hanna Charlotta Backlund was raped, the murder of the 27 year-old Swedish woman on Phuket on Saturday March 15 seems horribly similar to the rape murder of Katharine Horton, who was walking alone on a beach on Ko Samui at night on January 1, 2006.
Katharine was raped and killed by two Thai fishermen from a boat moored offshore. Apparently the fishermen had been drinking and watching porn videos before they waylaid and set upon the hapless 21 year-old British girl. As is often the case when foreign tourists are victims of vicious murderers, the CSD (Crime Suppression Division) was brought in and the two murderers were quickly apprehended and sentenced to death in court.
Ms Backlund was alone on an 11-kilometer beach that is often devoid of people in the middle of the day, separated from the safety of company by only a few minutes on foot. What happened on Mai Khao Beach will only be determined by forensics and by a confession if and when the police catch the perpetrator. This is quite likely since, as with all cases involving violence upon tourists, the CSD pursues investigations with utmost vigor. Already a suspect has been indentified and the manhunt is on (Warrant out for beach murder suspect, Bangkok Post, 19 Mar, 08).
That the Tourism and Sports Ministry is considering a variety of measures to improve the safety and confidence of visitors, even to the point of suggesting issuing whistles to foreigners entering remote places (Women to be given whistles; more police patrols in wake of Phuket Murder, Bangkok Post, 18 Mar, 08) shows that the authorities are acutely aware of the danger to tourism that has come from what seems to be a spate of murders in recent months.
How safe Thailand is for young women compared with other countries is uncertain. That there is a risk, however small, to foreign women in situations where they are vulnerable, is indisputable.
While the average Thai person would appear to be incapable of such brutality, it is as well to remember what happened to the Vietnamese boat people who sailed into the Gulf of Siam escaping the communist regime after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. Once in open waters, certain bands of fishermen from the littoral of the Gulf of Siam would on occasion turn into pirates. Coming across a boat filled with refugees, these pirates would rob everyone and then force the young women aboard their own boat before sinking the refugee’s vessel together with the remaining people still on board.
Piracy and rapine has long been a fact of life in the coastal waters of Southeast Asia, but for the most part the kind of extreme piracy that befell the Vietnamese boat people is a thing of the past. However the mentality that creates a pirate may yet persist in certain people from the poor coastal communities of the Malay Peninsula. Young women would do well to be careful about putting themselves in situations where they might find themselves alone and without help available nearby.
Posted by: ConcernedExplorer on 19 Mar 2008, 04:54