Quiet here

[Gadfly]

LOL, YOU still have not proven anything. I am still waiting for stats to back up your (and your "buddy" Wm_Ginzer's) claims, not just "it is obvious, just look." Of course, you come back and say that the stats are flawed, to which I reply that without stats, it is just an opinion. A standoff, but the burden of proof is on you.

This is simply false. The facts are these: you said "Thailand is by any metric less dangerous and violent than my home country", I provided links to stats showing that Thailand has a substantially higher homocide rate (the best indicator of danger and violence) than the US, and explained why Thailand's statistics - according to its own leading expert in this area - understate the amount of violence.

 

You based your entire argument about Thailand's relative safety on your claim that "Thailand is by any metric less dangerous and violent than my home country", and it was very to establish that this was false. If you go back and check (see below), it is very easy to confirm this.

 

After our exchange, others (I don't know who 'William_Ginzer' is, but I recognize a red herring when I see one) pointed out that you were bending overbackwards to justify a horrifically level of violence in Thailand. Neo made a good point on this issue, and I quoted in one of my posts.

 

Don't believe me? Take a look at this post from July of 2005:

26-07-05 06:37 AM - Post#421310

In response to suadum - Teacher head batted by bar owner!

 

Quote:

 

Suadum says:

Thailand is by any metric less dangerous and violent than my home country.

 

Gadfly responds:

This is demonstrably untrue. Even using official Thai rates, the murder rate in Thailand is 36% higher than the U.S. (You are presumably comparing Thailand to the US (or is it the UK where we will get even lower rates?)) The latest statistics available for homicide and violent crime rates I could find in Thailand are for the year 2000 (»Thai Police Stats) when there were 5135 reported homicides. In that year the population of Thailand was about 62,000,000 (Thailand in Figures published by Alpha Research Co., Ltd.). This works out to about 8.3 murders per 100,000 people.

 

By contrast, in the year 2000, the murder rate in the U.S. was 6.1 per 100,000 (US Dept of Justice Stats« A homicide rate of 8.3 per 100,000 in Thailand makes its homicide rate 36% higher than the U.S. rate. I think that is a pretty clear metric where Thailand is more dangerous.

 

And quite frankly, given the differences in development, corruption and the infrastructure necessary to collect this sort of data, Thailand?s official figures are probably much lower than the real figures while US figures are closer to the mark. (See comments below on Khunying Pornthip's views on local forensics.) In other words, the 36% statistic probably understates the difference.

 

Quote:

 

Suadum says:

That is simply bullshit [violence in Thailand]. As far as Pattaya goes, you get the dregs of humanity there, including farang organized crime. Every one of the guys you read about are either unemployed overstayers, or dubiously employed; most all are down to their last satang. I know the type -- they scam everybody trying to get enough money for their next beer (have a drink in Cathouse some time and you'll meet a few potential baclony jumpers that haven't made it to the Shitty-City-by-the-Sea yet). They have no sense that it is time to go home. Likely they have pissed off the wrong person. Likely it is farang-on-farang violence too. Or maybe they really did jump off that balcony?

 

Gadfly responds:

Are you also including the guys that shoot themselves in the chest and then jump out off of balconies? Or what about the guy staying in a Nana hotel several years ago who handcuffed his hands behind and to a chair and then pulled a plastic bag over his head? The police concluded it was a suicide.

 

The most prominent name in crime forensics here, Khunying Pornthip (the Khunying title was conferred by the King for her work), is scathing in her criticism of police forensics here. She contends the police are constantly covering up murders and making police killings look like suicides. I guess you think she is taking a piss and the police have it right.

 

If so, you are not going to find very many educated Thais who share your views.

 

But now that we understand where you are coming from, let's go back to the English teacher in ICU because of a bar bill dispute. Neo sums it up well: "So basically you are saying when a bar bill is disputed, deadly force is the appropriate and justified way for the bar to settle it. Surely you are taking the piss here.?" Or, less charitably, you have totally lost touch with reality.

That was the debate. Go back and check. I not only provided statistics, I provided official government links to those statistics.

 

After my post, further comments were made about your position, such as:

If you assume the official homicide number stayed roughly the same and count the 2,000+ extra-judicial killings as homicides, the official rate jumps by a whopping 40-50%. And I am sure there are other causalities we are missing.

Some asked if you were "taking a piss". Check the thread.

 

These posts - which anyone can check (the post number, thread name and approximate dates are included - establish that with the passage of time you have simply you have "forgotten" the debate, or less charitably distorted it.

 

Now why is this forum so quiet. Posters have stopped taking such outlandish positions because they realize that it is pretty easy to establish that there positions are ridiculous. They also realise that this board creates a record of what was said, and what was said before can be quoted to estabalish that a contrived summary of what was said before can easily be shown to be false. That is what has just happened here.

 

The board and its members are evolving.

[Guy Himmaparn]

The board and its members are evolving.

 

Thank God!

 

[Bangkoktraveler]

Hard to believe that some actually believe the judicial killings in Thailand are a step further ahead of the US. It is just like when anybody gets victimized in Thailand, it is the victims fault. When 4 men tried robbing me, it was claimed it was my fault. When another farang got attacked and robbed in the same area on the same day, I assume he deserved it also. Dumb reasoning.

 

Thailand is a nice country but in the last five years, its dark side has been coming forth more and more.

[the_numbers]

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

 

This places Thailand above the United States at #14 and the United States at #24 The statistics are per 1,000 people. I don't know how accurate these stats are, and as we know information gathering based on precincts reporting is an issue for all countries not just Thailand.

 

I find it funny not to see Brazil quite high on the nationmaster ratings. Something tell me that has to do with information gathering in that country.

 

I don't know that a per capita murder rate necessarily indicates a place is more dangerous than another spot, however, and that would require a more detailed examination of violent crime, age groups, and the nature of the crimes committed.

 

Violent crime and robbery are certainly still problems in the United States. The other side of it is being an expatriate or tourist and Thailand and seeing how much of the violent crime or murder is directed at that community.

 

Given government stats I have in hand about the total numbers of foreign nationals entering Thailand via the TAT it would be interesting to examine that number with the number of crimes against foreigners. Don't have any data on crime against foreigners in Thailand available

 

Funny it is the same issue as the registration of publications given it is done by a special section of the police the data for number of publications registered in Thailand is not broken down by magazine, newspaper, language, or anything it is just a lump number.

 

Analysis is only as good as the information at hand. To me being a farang on Sukhumvit Road is an incredibly safe proposition if you aren't doing anything randy, aggressive, or out of hand.

 

Best,

 

theNumbers

[chelseafan]

I could be wrong here, but as a tourist in Thailand I feel safer than being a native in the UK. I suppose it depends on where you go, if you stray off the beaten track then the chances are higher that you may suffer a mishap, however, if you stay in the tourist areas then you should be safe.

Gun crime is high in LOS, but IMHO it seems its thai versus thai....

I also wonder about the farangs that DO get killed, have they had a shady past or dodgy dealings with the Thais to make them 10ft under ?

 

 

[Gadfly]

This is an interesting source of information which also demonstates, again, Thailand's very high homocide rate.

 

There are problems with statistics, but it is safe to conclude that the US provides more reliable statistics on homocide rates than Thailand. Thailand is much less developed, and it is therefore understandable that its data will under-report homocides. Thailand's own chief forensic scientist, Dr. Khunying Pornthip (the "Khungying" titled awarded by the H.M. the King for her work in this area), has repeatedly said that Thailand's data seriously under-reports crime in general and homocide in particular. She frequently clashes with the police over cover ups of murders.

 

In brief, crime is seriously under-reported in Thailand, but even with this under-reporting, Thailand's "official" statistics reflect a high homocide rate. This means the actual homocide rate is very high - substantially higher than the US.

 

Homocide rates are a damn good indicator of violence - or at least the violence that concerns me most. As for violence against Farangs, I suspect there are no figures, but this board itself provides plenty of anecdotal evidence. The news section of this board includes scores of stories about dubious suicides, particularly in Pattaya. A few may indeed be genuine suicides, but it defies commonsense to believe all of them are, particularly when you read the surrounding circumstances of some "suicides". Indeed, when you look at what is available in the news on some reported "suicides", it is pretty damn obvious that something else was going on.

[the_numbers]

I agree a little bit with you, but not so much about the suicides in Pattaya being that substantial a number. As I said before we have no stats or viable way to examine violence against visitors to the Kingdom, and then cross reference the info with the number of tourists and residents.

 

Plus the number of suicides in Thailand is very low if you look at it worldwide. So, the "staged" suicides would not substantially raise the homicide rate, IMHO. I would say given no statistics that the deaths of foreigners and violence against them are generally quite low. I find this even more impressive given Pattaya is an open sewer of humanity with lots of foreign people involved in shady business (Herpes sore of a city, IMHO, I know some people love it).

 

I just am trying to contextualize it with the number of expatriate residents and tourists in Thailand, which is staggering.

 

In regard to your discussion of forensics. If you spoke with Khunying Pornthip candidly she would also tell you the problem in Thailand isn't so much the reporting of homicides at all. Reporting is fairly decent with the exception of extrajudicial killings in the drug war years back, which was known just not reported because they deemed the attacks not to be homicides

 

I guess Bush might not consider all the Iraqis he killed homicide/genocide either Either way it was an exceptional situation in Thailand all those killings by police.

 

I say this because from talking to Pornthip in the past she blames training more than anything else in Thailand. She often has said cover ups are also not always what happens with the police here, but it is in certain cases of course.

 

The reality is the polices forensic investigators are not fornensic scientists and really don't know what they are doing So, alot of times they botch crucial information just because they don't know what they are doing. They've also allowed bodies to degrade, and stored them improperly damaging the possibility of toxicology reports in cases she's been called to advise on.

 

I would say as I said before that being a farang in most major tourist areas and not behaving like a fool or being outwardly aggressive is very safe. I would say that alot of the violence detailed here is Thai on Thai (no stats to prove it with just experience).

 

Best,

 

theNumbers

[Bangkoktraveler]

Being a tourist in Thailand can be interesting. How many tourists have given the taxi driver a tip of 100 baht for a 350 baht ride that most people pay 40 baht for? I could name other little scams that go on all the time, but the point I am trying to make is most Tourist have no idea they have just been scammed.

 

Feeling safe is relative. If a person has just been ripped off but doesn't realize it, they would not register a threat had occured. Now if they realized somebody is scamming them[color:red][/color], that same person would probably feel unsafe.

 

As for safety, what happened a few years ago on soi 8 is something unheard of in first world countries. If you follow up with that case, the main person walked, some of the people who were involved in demolition, etc. died mysterious deaths and/or just plain disappeared. Most tourist are oblivious that such a thing could occur let alone realize it did occur.

 

Add the violence in the south, the continuous war on drugs and all of the judical executions, makes you wonder why Thais lock their stores and homes as if they were securing a fort and line the top of their outside perimeter walls with broken glass.

 

 

 

[..]

Why on Earth would you equate safety with being scammed? I certainly do not equate losing some bit of baht to bodily harm.

 

And what does a shady Thai-on-Thai business deal have to do with farang tourist (or even expat) safety?

 

Perhaps this is why we have such differing opinions...

 

Regards,

SD

[Bangkoktraveler]

So I assume what happened on soi 10 was okay? A large number of businesses were destroyed that night [color:blue]and some of them belonged to farangs. [/color]mai pen rai

 

That [color:red]"shady Thai-on Thai business deal"[/color] would have been classified gangster activity if it happened in the US. [/b]

 

from what you said, I assume that when a person is getting scammed a person's safety is never at risk in Thailand. Can I also assume when a motorcycle taxi driver demands 10 baht more then what every one else pays, it would be proper to pay the going rate instead of the demanded rate? [color:blue]Or would it be correct to pay the demanded price because your own personal safety may be at risk?