169 Bodies Found In Mass Graves In Rayong

[limbo]

By The Nation

Published on August 19, 2011

 

Police will examine the 169 bodies found buried at two temples in Rayong province to determine if they could be the red-shirt protesters said to have gone missing during last year’s riots. Pol Lt-General Santhan Chayanont, commander of the police bureau’s Law and Case Office, led a team yesterday to inspect Wat Klong Takwa and Wat Huai Yang of the eastern seaboard’s Klaeng district. The police discovered 72 bodies at the first temple and another 97 at the second. According to the temples’ abbots, the bodies had been brought in by two men from a local charity organisation who told them that the corpses had not been claimed and there were no legal cases related to their deaths.

 

Couldn't find a link in the Nation to this report, but the original link where I found this is here, but did find this in the Nation.

[Flashermac]

How did 2 men move 169 bodies by themselves? That's a bit much for the back of a pickup.

[cavanami]

Check the pickups heading to Isaan during Songkran...169 bodies, mai pen rai.

[Julian2]

I think even the most amateur forensic pathologist could tell the difference between bodies that have been dead since 1989 and ones since last year.

[Flashermac]

I glanced at the headlines in the Thai language papers on the way home. They are saying the bodies are not red shirts, but that they are unclaimed bodies and bodies of foreigners that had been gathered over a period of about 10 years.

[Flashermac]

Bodies 'unlikely' to be missing red-shirts

 

 

Suspicions that missing red-shirts may be among 169 bodies found in Rayong are likely to carry little weight after a Chumphon-based rescue group confirmed it handed over the bodies to its counterpart in Rayong as part of a cemetery clean up ceremony there.

 

Sanguan Nilrattanothai, president of the Association of Buddha Prateep Lang Suan, a community based volunteer rescue organisation in Lang Suan district of Chumphon, on Friday insisted his group sent the bodies to one of its affiliated organization in the province in August last year.

 

According to Mr Sanguan, the Rayong-based group wanted to host a clean-up ceremony at a local cemetery but found out that there were a few unidentified corpses there. It then asked his agency to send more bodies to take part in the religious event which was a usual tradition practice.

 

He said the delivery of the bodies had already been on the news once when they were sent to attend a cemetery clean-up elsewhere. However, he did not elaborate.

 

Chukiet Chanbamroong, a rescue worker, said the 169 unidentified bodies had been collected in the past 10 years. Most of them were foreign migrant workers who worked in the fishing sector. He said the transport of the bodies to Rayong was legal as it was approved by Pol Col Supoj Boonchooduang who was then chief of Lang Suan police station.

 

Pol Col Supoj, who is now chief of Sawi district police station in Chumphon, told reporters he had endorsed the Association of Buddha Prateep Lang Suan’s request to transfer the bodies to an Eastern province but could not remember the number of the bodies. He said he examined the skeletons and gave his permission as there were no irregularities.

 

 

Bangkok Post

[Bangkoktraveler]

Sounds like the end of a sad story for some.

 

When I first read this article I wondered if the guy who got attacked before me a few years ago was one of them.

 

He didn't look too good - actually we thought he was dead when he was brought into the hospital.