Mea culpa.

During my brief involvement with a local Hua Hin newspaper I met Biff (Donald) Whiting a couple of times. A former US marine, Biff was full of energy and enthusiasm as he singlemindedly pursued his grievances against a prominent Hua Hin developer. Biff's charm and persistence influenced me to arrange a meeting for  him with  Luang Tuck, a fomer vice mayor of Hua Hin, journalist and commentator, and the self appointed righter of wrongs on behalf of the farang community. While I didn't attempt to understand the particular circumstances of Biff's case I felt that if it had any merit then Luang Tuck offered his best hope of redress. I thought this because Luang Tuck had been close to the developer in question and, as a long time veteran of local politics, he might be able to achieve some sort of informal resolution... I left them to it and my involvement ended with the introduction. Biff stayed in touch with the occasional email after I left Hua Hin. Some months later a fellow member of the FCCT called me one day and asked me if I knew any interesting Hua Hin stories. From a distance I had been following with interest the efforts of Luang Tuck, Hua Hin Hotline, various bureaucratic figures and even some developers and real estate agents to get some sort of control over various property related disputes. I gave Peter Jansen some names and an article followed... To use the journalist's own words, "That story got me into a lot of trouble"... I wasn't in touch with Biff but I was aware through the grape vine that he was continuing to plug away at his case against the developer in question. Attempts at mediation involving well known local figures were the subject of rumour but I was completely out of the loop as far as Biff and his case were concerned. 

If I don't know anything more about the background to the recent shooting I certainly can see how it must look... It looks like Biff was the target of an assassination attempt. Why shoot him? Well this is Thailand and there are many reasons why people can get shot. "Loss of face" is right up there with more conventional motives like money, sexual jealousy and appearing as a witness in a case against a prominent foreign developer... I don't know why Biff was shot. Its possible that even the people who shot Biff don't know why he was shot. Clearly its a matter for the police to investigate and hopefully prosecute. What disturbs me most about the shooting is that, simply by helping him meet some potentially influential people and giving his telephone number to a journalist, I may have contributed to escalation of tension that is probably behind the shooting. The resulting article got him exposure and notoriety and may have contributed to the calculations of some unknown person of  murderous intent.

According to the remarkably quiet forums covering the shooting, Biff is permanently disabled and unlikely to ever be able to lead a normal life again. I would have expected that the foreign community in Hua Hin would be outraged about this but the atmosphere of fear and intimidation has effectively silenced many of the critics. The local forum HHAD seems to engaging in self censorship with the encouragement of the same police force who are happy to accept expensive gifts like police stations from foreign property developers... There is a barely a flicker of activity on the heavily edited forum thread about the shootings. Why are they so afraid? I think its because, if our worst fears have any basis in fact, then there will be no suspects arrested, no murderers charged. In a town with as many property scandals as this one, that means that it is effectively open season on anyone who stands up for their rights... While it might always have been that way for the locals (the son of an owner of Hua Hin's Grand Hotel was recently assassinated while he sat in his car), the local farang community normally assumes that it is immune from this sort of thing. You can get wounded in a crossfire (like the American who was shot earlier this year outside the Style pub) or provoke a violent reaction in a confrontation with a local thug (numerous recent examples) but the generally held assumption was that assassination was not even a remote possibility... What is most stomach churning about this is the unwillingness of leading members of the local farang community to come out and say what many people are thinking. If the authorities let this crime go without a proper investigation then a very dangerous precedent will be set. The last time there was serious media attention focused on Hua Hin was when the wealthy scion of an English landed family was brutally murdered. The international public outcry at what was by any standards a horrendous crime of betrayal and murder forced action on the part of the local law enforcement bodies. In Biff's case I don't think there is quite the same interest. However, if I was living in Hua Hin, I would be very anxious that this crime was properly investigated and the perpetrators identified. If I was living in Hua Hin I might be wondering who is next...

What was I thinking?

I have been coming and going from Thailand for a few years now. Over time I have learned a little, lost some innocence and gained the occasional insight into the - I almost said "murky" - workings of this place. I briefly worked for a local newspaper here... A close friend asked me what was the point of writing in a "suck rag" when the fears of the owners would ensure than nothing remotely interesting or controversial could be written without risking their business benefits and my own safety... As an old Asia hand, he had immediately spotted how vulnerable a locally based writer would be to the pressures that can be brought to bear officially and unofficially.... They say that prose is a mirror for the soul but in the highly censored media of Thailand, the best that a reader can hope for is a mirror that is broken, distorted and occluded. The foreign journalists who represent large media conglomerates and news agencies have a certain measure of freedom if their work is appearing outside of Thailand but where there is an overlap, as in the recent case of Jonathan Head of the BBC, pressure can be brought to bear... So, to find out what is actually happening in this country, I am increasingly turning to the blogosphere... So far at least, the net has remained relatively free of censorship. I suspect that Australia's new laws are probably more restrictive in practice, than the Thai "lesse majestee based attempts to ban certain sites. The net is heavily monitored of course, and as a tyro in such matters, I may not be very good at finding the more interesting sites. Still, I find that the internet, as accessed from Thailand using a normal server, contains plenty of critical commentary and otherwise difficult to access information... As most of the mainstream media in Thailand are enslaved through advertising, political alleigance or regulation, the vested interests that are responsible for most of the country's problems escape public censure except in the most egregious of cases. The classic Thai response to their problems is well known and regularly rehearsed. "Don't think too much" the newly arrived farang is instructed. And carried in that injunction is the implication that if you do think at all, the thoughts may not be pleasant. Choosing to act on your thoughts, to stand on principle as they say, would be at best foolhardy, and at worst suicidal... Knowing this, I will abide by Thai rules, but there are a surprising number of interesting facts, that are already in the public domain. If people already know then can I be censured for discussing the implications of this knowledge?  I hope so. Full, free and frank discussion of the shortcomings in my writing and thinking will be greatly appreciated. If I genuinely thought that I understood what was happening I think I would be less motivated to write about it...  Whatever I was thinking when I arrived here, I contrived to deny the obvious and ignore the outrageous... These days I think a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but the more I know the less I understand and the more I wonder... When I arrived, what the hell was I thinking?