Koh Tao murders: Myanmar urges 'fair' investigation
Many Prayut today on the front page of Bangkok Post and for that matter, every day at all lately. If you don't know who Prayut is yet: that is the leader of the military junta and recently also prime minister of the country.
Prayut has been in Myanmar for the past two days. The newspaper singles out as the main news item of the visit Prayut's statement, yesterday after his return, that President Thein Sein understands how the Thai authorities are handling the Koh Tao double murder case. Sein has expressed no doubts about the arrest of the two Myanmarese, says Prayut.
The president has, according to the AFP news agency citing a Myanmar official, asked for a 'clean and fair' investigation. So still in doubt? And Thein Sein is not alone, as Myanmar's commander-in-chief of the armed forces has also pushed for justice, the UN's website said. Democratic voice of burma.
General Min Aung Hlaing has asked the Thai government to allow the Myanmar embassy's special investigation team to conduct their work freely to uncover the truth.
According to the Myanmar newspaper 7DayDaily, quoted by a local website, the two suspects have retracted their confessions. Their lawyer says they confessed to being tortured. However, a source at the Myanmar embassy denies that they retracted their confessions, but he does confirm that they were tortured, a practice that the Thai police often use to 'solve' a case.
The file is now with the Public Prosecution Service. Deputy Director General Thawatchai Siangjaew of the Regional Public Prosecution 8 says police have been asked to investigate some of the incomplete cases.
Prayut yesterday urged the media to stop criticizing the arrests. 'No one would even think of such a thing high profile case to arrest a scapegoat. But perhaps the international community is surprised that the police arrested the suspects so quickly.'
Former Myanmar dissidents and activists say Prayut's visit to Myanmar was ill-timed as the murder case is hotly debated. "Whether or not those two had a hand in the deaths of the British tourists, the Thai police and justice system are in a bad light," says an exile.
The newspaper writes little about the other topics of discussion during the two-day visit: four paragraphs at the end of the article and those are also short paragraphs.
(Source: Bangkok Post, October 11, 2014)
Rightful appeal from the president of Myanmar to conduct the investigation correctly.
By the way, torture to obtain confessions is highly reprehensible and proves the ignorance of the investigators and the level of civilization of a country.
The Thai police clearly have little experience and expertise in investigating murders and due to the international commotion that exists about this double murder, they may be influenced by the (local) government to arrest innocents (Thai or non-Thai innocents).
I would rather have several guilty go free than just one innocent person in prison, is my conviction.
It must be you or me who are the innocent at some point!
I would actually like to see statistics of crimes in Thailand, presumably they are quite positive.
Otherwise I cannot explain why they have so little expertise in the police, it is not a really poor country (like many Latin American countries) is it? So I come to the relative safety of Thailand.
Or am I seeing all this wrong?