Koh Pangan German shot at for 'opposing all-night raves'

[BahtandSold]

KOH PANGAN ATTACK
German shot at for 'opposing all-night raves'
The Nation April 1, 2009

Attackers must be local party planners, says 39-year-old victim

Koh Phangan, once made famous by its fullmoon parties, is becoming an uninviting, if not lawless, island after a German expat was woken up in the middle of the night and shot in the hip.

Flederer Ralf, 39, told The Nation that he had to run for his life on Sunday night when two men attacked him while he was in bed.

"Two masked men, about 20 years of age, entered my house at around 2am on Sunday night," said Ralf, who runs www.kohphangannews.org under the pseudonym Beckmann. "They woke me up and charged at me. I grabbed a baseball bat to defend myself. Then all of a sudden, one of them pulled out a gun and opened fire."

Ralf was hit three times in the hip before being able to escape. He is being treated at Bangkok Hospital in Samui.

The expat, who has been living in Koh Phangan for 17 years now, believes he was attacked by local party organisers upset about his complaints over the latenight partying.

Koh Phangan's famous fullmoon parties have been drawing thousands of young travellers, turning the small, peaceful island into a noisy place.

The sheer variety of moonthemed shindigs on Phangan is amazing, each one touted by loud psychedelic flyers posted all over the island. There's the Half Moon, the Black Moon and the Shiva Moon parties among others, and each is a bacchanal of allnight techno music and halfnaked foreigners unabashedly indulging in drugs and alcohol.

The local residents, led by Raft, kept filing complaints with the local police, who were far too slack in taking action. Then Ralf and other residents filed a complaint with a government anticorruption bureau in Bangkok, which is currently checking to see why local authorities have been allowing this nonstop partying.

"Once the Bureau started investigating, I started getting threats," the victim said. "Ten days before I was shot, a stranger showed up at my front yard in the middle of the night and shot at the coconuts."

According to Ralf, there are at least 16 parties a month around the tiny island, and many if not all of them start at dusk and carry on until the next afternoon. Also, more often than not, these moonthemed parties are rife with crime and drugs.

There have been several cases of foreigners being killed or hurt at these parties. Danny Hall, a backpacker, has been missing since last February, while tourist Astrid alAssad Schachmer was found dead shirtless near the party scene in Thongsala village.
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[BahtandSold]

Ed:

From what I can gather, it appears Becks wasn't trying to 'outlaw' the various full-moon parties, rather 'simply' try to make them more er, 'liveable' for residents... Sounds like another case that should be fwd to the PM's ofc (before it's too late...)

Read more here:
www.kohphangannews.org


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