#Thailand - Koh Tao run by mafia

Gangster’s Paradise: Foreign papers allege ‘death island’ Koh Tao run by mafia

Since the reopening of the case on the April death of Belgian backpacker Elise Dellamagne this week, stories have been coming fast and furious in international news about Koh Tao, nicknamed “Death Island” by some press due to all the mysterious foreign deaths on the small isle.

While most stories have been updates on Dellamagne and the last backpacker to disappear, Russian tourist Valentina Novozhyonova, 23, back in March; others have been roundups of all the foreigners to die or disappear on the island over the last three years. The most famous of these being Hannah Witheridge and David Miller, who were savagely murdered on the island’s beach in 2014. 

Today, a writer for the UK’s Independent, who used to live in Thailand, wrote about the island’s “dark side” and strongly urged tourists to avoid the destination. 

 

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 She wrote about how both locals and expats on Koh Tao are afraid to speak on the deaths and disappearances since it’s allegedly an open secret that the island is run by a mafia family that has no qualms about killing those they see as opposition. 

  The writer claims that the mafia family “demanded protection money, controlled the local police force, and were not above attacking or burning down the homes and businesses of people that crossed them.”

The Sun followed up with the story this afternoon of a young man, Sean McAnna, who claims he had a run-in with the Koh Tao mafia family and they threatened his life.

 McAnna spoke to the press back in 2014 and is a friend of the murdered David Miller. He fled Koh Tao a week after Miller and Witheridge’s bodies were found amid alleged threats on his life. Two newspapers saw fit to repackage and republish his story today in the wake of the latest foreign death. 

The young man said he was drinking at the same bar Miller and Witheridge visited just before they were murdered. He claimed that two men approached him, claiming that McAnna had murdered the Brit backpackers. 

He alleges that they told him they were going to take him into the jungle and hang him to make it look like he hung himself. The claimed to tell him that this would make him look like he was was responsible for the murders. He believes these people were part of the island mafia family. He fled from them and spent the night hiding out before taking the first flight he could from the island paradise. 

He echoed the statement made by the Independent writer when he said he would never return to Koh Tao. 

Source + Photo - Coconuts.co

 

 

#Cambodia - The mysterious ‘foreigners’ carved into the temples of Sambor Prei Kuk

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At an ancient Chenla site, a series of carvings depict men who appear to be foreigners. Their identity has confounded, and divided, archaeologists and historians and raises questions about the interactions of the Khmer empires with the outside world.

 

Leading off of the main highway 10 minutes north of Kampong Thom city, the road to Sambor Prei Kuk is seldom travelled by tourists. But after 16 kilometres, the road reaches an ancient temple at the site of the former capital of the Chenla Empire. 

The ruins provide not only a glimpse of the Pre-Angkorian period, but of a mystery that has confounded researchers – one that, if solved, could shed light on the people and cultures that interacted with ancient Khmer civilisation.

Amid the dense tropical rainforest and bomb craters left by American attacks in the 1970s lie 150 ancient sandstone temples, all pre-dating the Angkorian era. Constructed on an area of 4 square kilometres, the temples are divided into three clusters: the North Group, South Group and Central Group. 

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 The southernmost is the home to the puzzle.

Facing the main temple, Prasat Yeah Poun, is a derelict construction called Kda Ouk. Its architrave – the beam above the columns – bears the carvings of 12 men. Each is different – some with strong, chiselled features, and others more delicate – but they have notable characteristics in common, including moustaches, long curly hair, big eyes, thick eyebrows and pointy noses. 

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The unique features of these men do not fit with the statues and engravings at the rest of the temples – nor, researchers say, with the physical appearance of Cambodian people. This has led to speculation that they are the portraits of foreigners. But who were these outsiders and why, in the seventh century, would they have been important enough to the Khmer people to have been literally put on a pedestal? 

Chiv Heng, a 52-year-old farmer who has lived near Sambo Prei Kuk for his entire life, said he has always wondered about the identities of the men since he was a boy, but no one in the area had any answers for him.

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 “Some elderly people told me that they were Indian, and some said they were religious idols, but no one is sure,” Heng said. “But, when UNTAC [the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia] came to Cambodia to organise the election, I noticed that the faces looked similar to the face of the UNTAC’s barang [Western] staff.”

“Although I stayed in school for only five years and do not know much about Khmer history, I could tell that the heads must have been the copies of barang men who came to Cambodia in the past.”

Smey Smak, 59, a tourism police officer born in Kampong Thom and stationed in Sambor Prei Kuk since 2004, shares the same hypothesis with Chiv Heng.

“I usually hear the tour guides explain to the tourists that they were Indian, but I do not believe that,” he said. “The busts look like the Spanish people, if one asks me, but I never learned that Spanish people came to Cambodia in ancient times.” 

A foreign concept

Given its decay and remoteness, today it is easy to forget that Sambor Prei Kuk was the capital of the Khmer Empire during the Chenla period, beginning during the reign of King Isanavarman I between 616 and 637 AD.

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