Police, courts, govt all to blame for Koh Tao verdict
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The Thai press has done a terrible, if typical, job of reporting on the Koh Tao rape-murder case, just parroting whatever the police say, not that any of what the police said made any sense.
It is actually surprising the Thai police didn’t try to claim the deaths of the two British victims were suicides.
Everyone, even my Thai friends, believes that locals backed by “big money” are responsible for the crime and that the Myanmar accused are completely innocent.
In my humble opinion, the government did not consider the consequences of allowing the courts to bring a verdict of guilty and thus created an international crisis. Was it intentional, or is the government actually that stupid?
The guilty is also illogical in the sense that the two accused are so short in stature, even by Asian standards, that could hardly have overcome and kill a burly foreigner and an independent Western woman.
An armed person or a gang might have a chance against a pair of Westerners, but never one on one. And the hoe allegedly used in the killings is so unwieldy as to be a hindrance rather than a weapon.
Michael Weldon
