Death Islands Thailand and UK?

An excellent and horrifying article by The Sun on 1st March provides food for thought for UK and Thailand.

Across pages 16 and 17 Chief Feature Writer Oliver Harvey details nine deaths on Koh Tao since 2012 under the headline "This isn't paradise it's Death Island" and "Backpackers hotspot haunted by 9 tragedies".

The most infamous deaths being the murders of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller and subsequent arrests of Burmese migrants Wai Phyo and Zaw Lin. But also Kent tourist Christine Annesley found dead near Sairee Beach on 21st January 2015 and Belgian tourist Elise Dallemagne found hanged in May 2017.
And a petition of 15,000 names to be delivered to 10 Downing St yesterday Tuesday 6th March, is calling for an investigation into the deaths, by Pat Harrington the mother of Ben Harrington, killed in 2012 in a moped accident and possible robbery.

Beyond the personal tragedies of each death there are clearly wider concerns for the UK and Thai tourism industries: Koh Tao has just 2,000 residents with an influx of 500,000 visitors each year. Both UK and Thailand tourism are perhaps the most successful tourist industries in the world regularly reaching over 35M visitors each.

While The Sun article, one of Europe's largest newspapers, also cites 362 UK citizens dead in Thailand - one of the highest death tolls anwhere in the world - and Thailand's second-most lethal roads in the world after the warzone of Libya.

While both former Tourism Minister Khun Kobkarn and current Tourism Minister Khun Weerasak were both vigorous not just in investigating such incidents but attempting to move the dial on both Thailand's road accidents and wanton backpacker culture. The Sun article citing not just full moon rave parties but the availability of cocaine, cannabis and Yaba crystal meth.

Clearly there are concerns in Kent not just Koh Tao with quotes on: "I do not believe what the police have told us" and "Youngsters need to be warned about this island. It's comletely corrupt. Don't go" concerning for Thai and Kent police in their future work.

Similar problems surface here in Kent with the Infratil directors absconding from Manston to Wellington airport in New Zealand, the surge in knife crime in UK up 20% needing more than just knife amnesties and astonishng horror of over 100,000 rapes each year in UK.

The Oscar-winning 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is clealry not fiction in terms of highlighting police efforts on crime. While the spate of Russian spy murders and Magnitsky crimes with Litvinenko in London and Perelichnyy in Surrey and now Skripal in Wiltshire raise concerns over State terrorism in UK.

Russian MP Yuri Lugovoi - suspected of the Litvinenko murder - citing not just over 200 years of distrust between Russia and UK and USA but a flawed UK justice system hiding Russian oligarchs. The recent parliament debate on white collar criminals of accountants and lawyers etc is hardly surprising given the activiities of One Essex Court under Lord Grabiner of BHS and Laurence Stephens solicitors Andrew Conway posing as HMRC officials and Palmer Biggs law faking costs with their barrister.

In my Kent politics campaign "Stop the Pollution. Stop the Corruption. Stop the Construction" now moving into the Ramsgate Mayor stage after the collapse of Manston airport drugsmuggling, Iran Air sanctions, banned Russian aircraft and widespread council corruption on airport monitors and construction projects such as Pleasurama and Dreamland tax havens, I've long urged a closer partnership between Kent and Thai police.

Improvements in Road Safety are surely a nobrainer given the excellent UK work on roads over the years - albeit with the slight increase in road deaths. And Resilience work - snow not so much of a problem in Thailand - on floods and Missing Persons. Lincolnshire Police storming ahead on road work and a Resilience Forum and conference sessions of Police, Red Cross, Salvation Army etc.

The upward tick in hate crime in Kent - minor but persistent hate graffiti, insults and bullying - has been aired through the UKIP blip. Kent unfairly tarnished as a heartland of UKIP after the wipeout and dismal efforts of UK's only UKIP council now ended after lasting just two years.

Bizarrely Mayor Trevor Shonk, a nice enough chap, one of the two most senior UKIP elected figures in UK with the appalling Neil "cash for questions" Hamilton of the Welsh Assembly. The UKIP MEP's already resigned to redundancy after the 2019 elections even without Brexit.

The casual racism of UKIP MEP's such as Janice Atkinson filmed by BBCTV in Ramsgate referring to her own Thai constituent, a friend of Surin restaurant, as "a ting-tong from somewhere". And other pejorative references to coconuts and golliwogs and so on suggest an insular and backward-looking Kent. The above race jibes are hardly likely to encourage Thai-UK trade nor say Jamaican tourists - Ramsgate long a destination for London faith group awaydays from the wider Caribbean and Indian and Bangladeshi communities. Archbishop Trevor Wilmott of Canterbury Cathedral long a bastion of tolerance and inclusivity even citing the aim of a Buddhist temple. East Kent, despute the UKIP stain, a home for various dissenter groups and mosques and synagogues along with Greek orthodox cermonies, jehovah's Witnesses and so on.

The Koh Tao 2014 murders though were also the subject of a detailed BBCTV documentary and The Sun article citing Koh Tao police chief Lt-General Chokchai Sutthimek on how the island is safe for tourists. Moped accidents and suicides and swimming pool drownings are a part of the grim litany of deaths in any busy tourist destination - yet with 362 UK deaths and the scourge of yaba and Myanmar heroin closer police cooperation rather than Scotland Yard detectives turning up for a few days of sunbathing (not even Johnson and Johnson suncream?) is vital. And 15,000 people may be wrong in petitioning Downing St but they certainly should be heard.

The Kent Police Innovation Fund already deployed on work around the New York City Predictive Policing Programme dramatised by Tom Cruise in Spielberg's Minority Report. And for Kent's small towns perhaps best shared on a regular basis with ASEAN and USA's smaller towns.

My rival Police and Crime Commissioner candidate rightly citing the need to maintain police tech capability as part of its STEM work (the potential closure of Broadstairs campus of Canterbury Christchurch University yet another dimunition of East Kent's socio-economic improvements. A forensics lab as part of a Hendon of the South for police and forensics training hardly outragously complex or expensive.

It's worth quoting though Lt-General Sutthimek from the Koh Tao article:

"The causes of tourist deaths are varied from drowning and motor accdents to suicide. Only David and Hannah were murdered and that case was solved".

Defenders of the Burmese migrants have yet to state who, if not them, carried out a double murder that evening. Television footage showing a very narrow track to the beach and a very small beach.

But how much support could be given by a dedicated UK police team to such issues? The website FarangDeaths also highlighting the real concerns of large number so deaths of foreigners in Thailand: Russian, Chinese, German, Italian as well as UK.

While the EU 112 emergency 999/911 helpline is surely the forerunner of a global emergency helpline with 101 as its non emergency variant. Much as Thai Police and Thai tourism's xxxx helpline requires a global rollout. Stumbling out of a car crash in Kent, Kenya, Kingston or Kunming you hardly want to be struggling to remember the emergency phone number (if there is a phone signal) or struggling with the language if you do get through.

The deaths in a ditch after days of car crash, a warning not just of Police Scotland emergency call centre delays and errors but also wider Resileince measures whether floods or forest fires or snow and sickness. And with the bloat of a $1M fire station in Ramsgate - my first act as Mayor will be wrecking ball politics to demolish it and dig up the runway at Manston - it raises questions with Grenfell and the absurdly expensive and never used regional fire centres over Fire safety budgets.

9 deaths on Koh Tao is a tragedy for both UK and Thailand.

But Death Island UK a little harsh? Perhaps not: UK life expectancy falling two years in the last five and Flu and Measles Pandemics.


Time for Change
@timg33