Six weeks later, there is little to mark the spot on an idyllic, rocky, beach inlet on Koh Tao, Thailand, where Hannah Witheridge and David Miller met such brutal deaths — just two tiny piles of stones separated by a line of twigs in the sand; someone’s modest, anonymous and temporary memorial.
A few hundred meters away along Sairee Beach — the main tourist drag on the Thai island — life continues as normal. Business is busier than expected for the monsoon season, a French man running a dive shop said. Much of Koh Tao’s tourism is diving-related.
“After the murders, you did notice that there were fewer people for a bit, but it was only really the British who stayed away. With everyone else, they did not even really notice,” he said.
If this appears curious, then Koh Tao — the smallest and most remote among a trio of tourism-dominated islands in the Gulf of Thailand — abounds in such paradoxes.
It is a place where visitors spend their days learning the rigorous safety standards of diving before hopping — without helmets and clad in shorts and T-shirts — on rickety rental motorbikes. Tourist deaths are not unknown: Two bodies of drowned Westerners were found in the sea within a couple of days this month, but it is known as one of the safer spots in Thailand.
The biggest contradiction centers on the deaths of Witheridge, 23, and Miller, 24; two British backpackers allegedly beaten brutally on the head just meters from their hotel, with the former apparently raped and the latter left to drown in shallow surf.
Just about everyone on Koh Tao insists visitors are safe, but many also agree, quietly, that the Burmese migrant workers arrested in the slayings are innocent, meaning the real killers remain at large.
The island is two hours by boat from the nearest airport and has a low-key, undeveloped feel that primarily attracts younger backpackers. However, the ramshackle charm and gentle, palm-dotted beaches are drawing more visitors each year, necessitating new workers.
Many are Burmese, with about 3,000 now on Koh Tao, according to one community leader.
“The migrants come here for just one reason: They want a better life. They are looking for a job so they can send money back home,” said the man who, like almost everyone else on the island, asked not to be named.
Increasing numbers of Burmese staff the bars and restaurants, in part due to their competent English — an educational legacy of British rule in their home nation.
MIGRANT MORASS
More than 3 million Burmese live in Thailand. As well as low pay and poor conditions, rights groups say the frequently undocumented migrants face regular and open discrimination, and it is not unknown for police to wrongly blame them for crimes. As the hunt for the Britons’ killers dragged into a third week and Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said migrants were the most likely culprits, there was understandable nervousness on Koh Tao.
“Shortly after the killings, the migrant community started to tell us that there was a lot of torture going on, a lot of abuse by the police,” said Andy Hall, a British activist who has lived in Thailand for a decade, mainly working with Burmese. “We sent a team down and interviewed the workers, and they were saying: ‘Help us, or they are going to find a scapegoat.’ And then the Burmese men got arrested.”
Local police said the suspects had confessed, adding that the men had found Witheridge and Miller kissing on the beach and, being “aroused,” beat them viciously with a hoe.
The case was solved.
Except it was not. Within a few days, the men said they had been tortured and withdrew their confessions. Rights groups expressed alarm. The police deny the torture allegations.
The British government called in a senior Thai diplomat to express its concern. Finally, with deep reluctance and only after British Prime Minister David Cameron personally pressured Prayuth at a summit in Milan, Italy, the Thai government agreed to let UK Metropolitan Police detectives review the case .
Now the situation is at an impasse, with prosecutors still awaiting a much-delayed police report. On Wednesday last week, a judge remanded the suspects in custody for another 12 days, but said that without a prosecution, they must be freed in little more than a month.
Opinion in Thailand is split: While the government and police chiefs maintain they have the killers, others argue the investigation is too obviously motivated by what one English-language Bangkok Post editorial called “rampant ethnic prejudice.”
Among the skeptics is Nakhon Chomphuchat, the leading Thai human rights lawyer defending the suspects.
“If I thought they had done it, I could not work for them,” he told the Guardian. “Of course, no one can ever say with 100 percent accuracy, but I am pretty certain they did not.”
Chomphuchat and others highlight numerous concerns apart from the confessions. A key part of the police case is DNA evidence supposedly tying the men to the scene. However, Thailand’s most senior pathologist expressed alarm upon learning that the samples were not collected by trained forensic officers. Meanwhile, CCTV of the key night shows one suspect, Wai Phyo, wearing the same pristine white T-shirt in which he was later arrested.
Chomphuchat and others also stress how unlikely it is for two unworldly young men to commit such a vicious crime and then work as normal for three weeks, even volunteering for DNA tests.
In an interview with the Guardian during their court hearing, the pair appeared awed and naive, talking excitedly about their love of Manchester United and the thrill of being transferred on a police helicopter.
On Koh Tao, many Thais believe the culprits are Burmese.
“A local would not do it; the locals are friendly,” a man in his 40s said. “However, with more development, we need migrant workers to help, and these can bring more problems.”
Another man, a taxi driver, said: “CCTV shows the men were there and there are the DNA tests. Even if we do not know who the real killer is, they are not Thai, for sure.”
DARKER SUSPICIONS
There are several other theories circulating on Koh Tao about who killed Witheridge and Miller. Most center on men associated with a dominant Thai family on the island, one of several who run dive schools, resorts and bars. A version recounted repeatedly — without any evidence — is that Witheridge had an argument with one of them at a beachside bar run by the family shortly before the killings.
The associated media coverage has seen Koh Tao characterized as “mafia-run.”
One Englishwoman who has lived in the area for many years said the term is misleading: “The mafia here aren’t the sort who carry guns in violin cases, or knock on doors extorting people. They’re the families that go back for generations and who ran the islands before the police even got here.”
Nonetheless, there is real fear. Several islanders who believe they know who killed Witheridge and Miller have fled.
Those who remain stay silent, for good reason, according to the woman: “If you speak out, you’ll suddenly find the landlord of your business doesn’t want to know [you] anymore, or you can’t get a visa. Very occasionally, people disappear.”
The curiosity is that for the vast majority of tourists, Koh Tao is safe, at least by the perilous standards of Thailand.
In the past 12 months, 362 Britons died in Thailand; more than did so in France, which attracts nearly 20 times more British tourists. This is partly down to Thailand’s younger tourist demographic, but also the nation’s treacherous roads.
Tourists do fall off motorbikes on Koh Tao — one diving instructor said one student per week is unable to finish a course, as they are swathed in bandages — but the slower, sparser traffic makes very serious incidents less common.
Sairee Beach has its rowdy bars along the narrow network of lanes by the beachfront. However, the nightlife culture is tempered by the numbers going diving early in the morning. Drugs are not unknown, but not endemic as on Koh Phangan, the adjoining island famed for its “full moon” beach parties. Likewise, swimmers do get caught out by currents, but not notably more than elsewhere.
There is even a local theory that the dominant families actually keep Koh Tao more secure, as they have become fantastically rich through tourism and take a dim view of crime.
“I’ve never felt as safe living anywhere,” one young Canadian woman based on the island said.
This is what makes the murders of Witheridge and Miller simultaneously so exceptional and difficult to resolve. If the theories are correct and the real killers are wayward elements of a dominant family, their wealth and hold over police makes it very unlikely they will face charges.
At the center of this impasse — and facing possible execution by lethal injection — are Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo. However much the evidence might tip in their favor, to not prosecute would mean acknowledging that a high-profile investigation endorsed by the junta was flawed.
Equally central, and in danger of being forgotten amid their current silence, are the grieving families of Witheridge and Miller, who have yet to express a view.
Last week, lawyers for Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo passed a handwritten letter from the pair to the Guardian, appealing to the British families to share any information that could spare them.
A key moment comes with the completion of the Metropolitan Police report, which is to first be shown to the grieving relatives. They have so far ignored their right under Thai law to participate in the judicial process.
Amid the maze of contradictions and powerful vested interests, one of the few optimistic voices comes from Zaw Lin, usually the less buoyant of the arrested pair.
Asked by the Guardian how he judged his fate, he replied: “There are so many people helping us, we are sure we can get justice — and we didn’t do it.”
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