Koh Tao Mordfall: Todesurteil für Mörder / Hintergründe

http://thailandjustice.com/

Clean up Koh Tao

Everybody on Koh Tao is wanting to say that Koh Tao is safe. They scream it, they threaten you if you disagree…just peruse the Thai Visa forums, see for yourself. They just don’t get how a person with a sense of morality would see things any other way.

If a community allows their authorities to scapegoat 2 boys for a capital crime, without speaking up or protesting or demanding justice, and that evil is done in order to sweep dangers under a deadly rug so that tourists will feel safe enough to return and spend their money, then doing so, going there and spending your money as they had hoped is plainly saying to the whole community. “It worked. Your vile plan was a success. Here is your money…and BTW, next time there is a murder, do go ahead and sweep it under another little rug, and do go ahead and scapegoat the innocent, because, oh yes, it worked so very well this time.”

This site is dedicated to calling out for justice and a fair trial process that ensures a closure for the friends and families of the victims and also ensures that any suspects or perpetrators are investigated, caught, brought to trial and given a fair and transparent hearing. Unfortunately due to the disturbingly unprofessional Royal Thai Police investigation in this case right from the start and given the history of their previous arrests of Burmese that have turned out to be scapegoats, we along with the international community are watching and observing.

Zaw Lin and Win Htun the two Burmese accused arrested on 3rd Oct 2014 are waiting for the trial date in July without bail. A well known Burmese rights activist Andy Hall had this to say:

“It’s really challenging getting witnesses for them because everyone’s so scared,” Hall said. He said that Thais living on Koh Tao are especially scared to speak out, because they have names and addresses that can be easily tracked. This is their home, they can’t leave the way migrant workers or Western expats can. People are scared that their businesses will be closed or their lives will be threatened, even that they could be killed.” Andy Hall
Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were just two of 83 Britons murdered overseas last year, according to the Foreign Office. The brutality of their deaths on a sleepy and picturesque beach on Koh Tao island in September 2014 shocked the UK and Thailand, and made headlines across the world.

But the subsequent Thai murder investigation – one of the first tests for a military junta that took power in a coup last year – drew even greater international attention, amid allegations of multiple police failings and calls for justice for the two Burmese migrants whose guilt was implied many months before their trial even started.

“This is one of the highest-profile consular cases we have in the world right now,” a British embassy spokesman told the Guardian before the verdicts were delivered on Thursday, when the two men were found guilty and sentenced to death. Many speculate the killer still walks free.

Witheridge, 23, from Norfolk, and Miller, 24, from Jersey, were found by the rocks on the smooth sands of the Sairee beach in September 2014, both with severe head wounds.

Within days of the killings, Thailand’s freshly empowered junta was tripping over itself. Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha, who installed himself as prime minister, appeared to blame the victims, stating that tourists “think our country is beautiful and is safe so they can do whatever they want. But I ask: will they survive in Thailand if they dress in bikinis? [Only if] they are not beautiful.”

And when he later apologised for this remark, he made a second blunder, implying that foreign migrant workers, of which there are about 3,000 in Koh Tao, were guilty.

“We have to help take care of [our nation] and not let not-good people mingle with us, such as unregistered alien workers. We can’t let them work like that. It’s dangerous and it can cause damage to the country,” he said.

Soon after, the two young Burmese men were arrested.

Close to three million Burmese live in Thailand. They commonly experience low pay and poor conditions, and rights groups say it is not unknown for police to blame them for crimes.

Police extracted confessions from bar workers Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, both now 22, who were then paraded on Sairee beach to re-enact the murders in front of the media – a common practice in Thai investigations that is condemned as suggesting the suspect’s criminality.

Police said the pair were motivated by sexual jealousy after seeing the Britons together on the beach. But the case swiftly unravelled. The two later said they had been tortured during interrogation and forced to sign a confession.

The families of Miller and Witheridge ultimately backed the Thai police after a Metropolitan police review of the investigation, adding that the “suspects have a difficult case to answer”.

But when the trial started in July, more inconsistencies were gradually revealed by the defence, a team of Thai human rights lawyers and a British labour rights activist called Andy Hall.

Wai Phyo told the court during the last two days of witness testimony in October that a police officer took photos of him naked. “They also kicked me in the back, punched me and slapped me; threatened to chop off my arms and legs, and throw my body into the sea to feed the fish. They also said they would take me into another room and electrocute me.

“Police told me that as I had no passport, I had no rights,” he said, adding that his interrogators said Burmese migrants had been killed before for not cooperating.

The case against the men rests heavily on sperm collected from the crime scene, samples they say were taken from Witheridge’s body. But when the defence asked for an independent retest, police failed to retrieve the samples and one officer suggested they had been destroyed.

The police case was further battered when the head of the Thai forensics institute, Porntip Rojanasunand, told judges DNA on a garden hoe found bloodied near the deceased did not match the defendants.

Thai police deny any wrongdoing.

In a message passed to the Guardian through a member of the defence days before the verdict, the defendants said they were confident in the justice process. “We were not involved, we don’t know how they can try and match us to these crimes, but we had nothing to do with what happened, we too are confused how they can try and link us to this crime,” they said.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have become involved in the trial, warning about potential miscarriages of justice.

“The fact that the two Burmese suspects have been made scapegoats that quickly was just one part of an omnishambolic police investigation that doesn’t warrant any trust or faith in the whole case,” the Thai political blogger Saksith Saiyasombut said. “It also hints at a general attitude by many Thais towards foreigners from neighbouring countries – mostly guest workers – as something lower than themselves.”

The two men, who appeared in court wearing thick shackles on their wrists and ankles, have also drawn the sympathy of a group of British nationals living on Koh Samui who would visit them in jail every week to bring food and company.
Family-run islands

An alternative narrative to the one offered by the police – and which is popular among residents of Koh Tao and Koh Samui – is that the assailant was linked to powerful families on the islands.

Many Britons live on Koh Samui, the largest and most developed island in the archipelago, where the trial has been held in a fortress-like court surrounded by palms. They say privately that it becomes apparent fairly quickly that the islands are run my mafia-type families.

Koh Tao, much smaller than Koh Samui, is known as a laid-back diving spot and still hosts infamously drug-fuelled full moon parties. Cocaine and crystal meth – known here as “crazy drug” – are easy to find and their trade is controlled by families on the island, locals say.

These families are powerful enough to make deals with the local authorities, residents say, and are also seen as a longstanding stabilising force on the tropical islands far from the central government in Bangkok.

“In some places the police and organised crime are uncomfortably close together. So I wouldn’t be surprised if certain directions in the investigations are either not being investigated or even outright dismissed,” Saksith said.

Few Thai media organisations reported from the court for much of the trial. One translator employed by Sky News said she was “warned off” helping journalists by the Thai “mafia” after working for them for one day.

Read more:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/24/british-backpacker-case-thailand-on-trial-hannah-witheridge-david-miller?CMP=share_btn_tw

Ich weiss ja nicht wer diese Website produziert hat, aber jeder
der in Thailand lebt kann dieses Szenario nachvollziehen!
Koh Tao ist kein Einzelfall!

  berndgrimm(Quote)  (Reply)