Leading Swiss TV Reporter Arrested In Thailand

[Nerone]

It would be of help if somebody could go to check by person how this foundation looks like, maybe pretending to be interested in their cause and willing to make an offer.

[yeti]

In Thailand libel is a crimial offence, so if you file a complaint the person is summoned to hear the charges, if he doesn't come an arrest warrant is issued.

I guess that's what happenned here: TV guy makes a report about a dodgy character, said character files for libel, TV reporter is already out of the country and doesn't know about it, arrest warrant is issued, when he comes back to Thailand few years later the outstanding arrest warrant appears on the immigration computer, he is arrested.

You don't really need connections for this to happen, just a good lawyer (although knowing high ranking people certainly helps...)

[jeffer]

the press are not allowed in thai courts

Maybe you mean tv cameras are not allowed inside the court room? I've been in Thai courtrooms with multiple reporters gathered around the accused conducting interviews. No objection at all from the court officials present. Can't say if it's always allowed but it has been when I've attended a Thai court.

[dinthailand]

In Thailand libel is a crimial offence, so if you file a complaint the person is summoned to hear the charges, if he doesn't come an arrest warrant is issued.

I guess that's what happenned here: TV guy makes a report about a dodgy character, said character files for libel, TV reporter is already out of the country and doesn't know about it, arrest warrant is issued, when he comes back to Thailand few years later the outstanding arrest warrant appears on the immigration computer, he is arrested.

You don't really need connections for this to happen, just a good lawyer (although knowing high ranking people certainly helps...)

absolutely correct. just hope some diplomatic comment from the relevant embassies at the appropriate time might get the authorities to re-visit this. but clearly they have other more pressing things on the agenda. the current bad press for thailand may influence them though.

[dinthailand]

the press are not allowed in thai courts

Maybe you mean tv cameras are not allowed inside the court room? I've been in Thai courtrooms with multiple reporters gathered around the accused conducting interviews. No objection at all from the court officials present. Can't say if it's always allowed but it has been when I've attended a Thai court.

i bow to your comment. at a thai friends trial, they were not allowed in. i was asked who i was and was allowed to stay

[Scott]

It may be a simple matter of an arrest warrant being issued and him not knowing, but don't these things expire? Since he didn't abscond from the country initially, why put him in jail?

It needs to be something a little bit serious.

There was a time when you couldn't get the officials to do anything and now it seems they can't be stopped!

[yeti]

I guess arrest warrants expire after statuory limitation, which is probably more than the 7 years which have passed since he made the incriminated report.

They put him in jail until bringing him in front of a judge who freed him on bail, don't know what else you want the police to do when there is an arrest warrant against someone (who is not a PAD leader)?

I don't think the problem lies with overzealous officials, but it is that libel is a criminal offence (whereas in most countries it is a civil one).

As for the press not being allowed in Thai courts, I think dinthailand refers to the fact that some farang local journalist in Pattaya said they were banned from local court. It is not a nationwide official policy covering all journalists.

[Johpa]

And the beat goes on......

Chaiyo!

[Maestro]

Microsoft Word - rtp606EN.doc

This was a week ago. Wonder why it took so long for this news to get out.........................?

The first news report was on a Swiss online paper on 2 March at 16.51 hours, source SDA/ATS, but as it was in German I could not post it. The original post in this topic is the first I found in English language. But it’s tre that this arrest doesn’t seem to have made much news.

--

Maestro

[Maestro]

I would like to hear details of his 24 hours in custody. I wonder where he was held. Was it a prison or a police cell or an the immigration detention centre?

Was it the normal 36-inch width of floor space crammed between other sleeping Thai prisoners?

From the news report on 3 March about the phone interview with Mueller:

– Friday, 15.00 hours, Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok: SF chief reporter Christoph Mueller disembarks from SWISS flight LX 182.

– Mueller: “At the immigration desk the officer looked at my passport, stopped short, then a second officer came, a third, a fourth, a fifth. Then suddenly the handcuffs clicked” (Remeber, this is a tabloid paper)

– Mueller: “I was brought to the police station. The trip took two hours. I spent a night in a single cell, two by three metres. I had to sleep on the naked floor. Fortunately, I had a lawyer. He brought me something to eat”

– The following moring the police brought Mueller to a court. Here he is again put in a cell, this time together with 20 or 30 others.

– Eventually, Mueller is released on bail, but his passport is confiscated. He is not allowed to fly back to Switzerland.

– No date has been set yet for a court hearing.

--

Maestro

[Oberkommando]

As for the press not being allowed in Thai courts, I think dinthailand refers to the fact that some farang local journalist in Pattaya said they were banned from local court. It is not a nationwide official policy covering all journalists.

Several recent high profile cases, some involving Westerners, the media have been discouraged to attend court. I believe local media was banned from covering certain events altogether.

[Maestro]

Photo of Christoph Mueller:

Source: www.20min.ch/news/kreuz_und_quer/story/SF-Chefreporter-verhaftet-19685623

--

Maestro

[Camelot]

Usually the only time a judge will order a court closed to the media is when a lese majeste case is being heard. Testimony by minors in sex abuse cases can also be given in camera.

In major cases such as those involving Thaksin and his ex-wife or rulings by the Constitution Court the presiding judges may allow photos to be taken or the proceedings to be televised. They have a lot of discretion.

Libel cases are both criminal and civil. Usual procedure is to try for a criminal conviction and then use that to press for compensation in a civil suit but they can just be one or the other.

[jeffer]

Usually the only time a judge will order a court closed to the media is when a lese majeste case is being heard.

No shortage of press coverage in the most recent lese majeste case involving a foreigner, at least 5 camera crews outside the courtroom and a dozen reporters inside. Might be different for Thais up on the same charge as it does seem to take a while for their case details to make it in to the media or it could be simply no notice given of a date when a case is going to be heard.

[peecee]

Feeedom of the press is west of BANGKOK, something this guy will learn the hard way!

[geriatrickid]

They put him in jail until bringing him in front of a judge who freed him on bail, don't know what else you want the police to do when there is an arrest warrant against someone (who is not a PAD leader)?

I don't think the problem lies with overzealous officials, but it is that libel is a criminal offence (whereas in most countries it is a civil one).

You're right. The official probably didn't even comprehend the mess he got himself into. He couldn't just let the guy pass without investigating. However, the Thai government just got itself some very extensive bad publicity. This will be taken as far as it can , since it makes for good reading and gets the Tabloid some good publicity. There may be some good to come out of this if it forces the Thais to wake up and do something about their cumbersome and inefficient judicial process. The tourism industry didn't need this and I bet the PR folks were reaching for their bumwad and immodium cuz this is going to cause them to have loose bowels for as long as the story is given airplay. If it wasn't so pathetic, and an infringement of basic civil rights, it might be funny.

[connel707]

Who would like to bet the dubious charity, C-Care International, has some high-ranking invisible police protection as the boiler rooms did 5 or more years ago?

with all those burning chickens running around, more likely "broiler rooms"....

[MeetJohnDoe]

In Thailand libel is a crimial offence, so if you file a complaint the person is summoned to hear the charges, if he doesn't come an arrest warrant is issued.

What you say probably covers pretty much what happened in this case...not all the rank speculation about anti-farang bias posted by many. This is the problem when you have legal systems (not only Thailand's) where citizens can file criminal complaints with the police on their own accord...it easily leads to abuse to settle personal or business disputes. In many other legal systems, criminal complaints are investigated by the police but the decision to bring a criminal charge is made by a prosecutor, who has the descretion to make the charge or not. The crinimalization of many things are are only civilly actionable in the West does not help matter either.

My question is do the immigration counter folks know what the charge is for someone for which there is an arrest warrant outstanding? Does the computer say the guy is wanted for murder, child-porn, libel, etc. or only that there is an outstanding arrest warrant out for him? No that it would make any difference but if they knew the charge, it might make some difference in how they treat someone during the arrest.

[Ned]

This C Care Asia has suddenly brought a lot of attention on itself and especially its patrons.

[jfchandler]

Reporters don't belong in jail for doing their jobs, either well or even poorly (at times).

If (and just saying only IF here) there was something inaccurate or defamatory about the original report, let the aggrieved party sue...

Alleged libel should not be a criminal offense fought out in jails. It should be a civil one fought out in courts.

[bungy007]

This is one of the reasons Thailand has such a wonderful reputation on the world wide stage now.......just keeps getting better and better. It would be nice if they could at least tell him why he was arrested, what the charges are etc.

There has to be more to this story.

For sure. Some one in 'uniform' is less than impressed with the over exposure of the 'charity' and wants to issue a warning shot over the boughs. I mean, he/they may have looked-up the word 'charity' in the dictionary and seen the example sentence stating that 'charity starts at home' and took it literally

[bungy007]

Yeah there's so much bullshit here, do anything to anyone and you stand a chance of ending up in Jail, watch any of those customs tv shows where they show asians and americans entering england and australia, they get held up and start abusing the customs staff and nothing happens, do it here and you end up in jail, say anything here and you end up in jail.

i've always felt like thailand is very communistic, there's no freedom, no freedom of speech or press, its just a country being run by corruption and the rich ad middle levels.

I think the word you are searching for is 'repressed' - a far cry from the land of free

[bungy007]

I would like to hear details of his 24 hours in custody. I wonder where he was held. Was it a prison or a police cell or an the immigration detention centre?

Was it the normal 36-inch width of floor space crammed between other sleeping Thai prisoners?

From the news report on 3 March about the phone interview with Mueller:

– Friday, 15.00 hours, Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok: SF chief reporter Christoph Mueller disembarks from SWISS flight LX 182.

– Mueller: "At the immigration desk the officer looked at my passport, stopped short, then a second officer came, a third, a fourth, a fifth. Then suddenly the handcuffs clicked" (Remeber, this is a tabloid paper)

– Mueller: "I was brought to the police station. The trip took two hours. I spent a night in a single cell, two by three metres. I had to sleep on the naked floor. Fortunately, I had a lawyer. He brought me something to eat"

– The following moring the police brought Mueller to a court. Here he is again put in a cell, this time together with 20 or 30 others.

– Eventually, Mueller is released on bail, but his passport is confiscated. He is not allowed to fly back to Switzerland.

– No date has been set yet for a court hearing.

--

Maestro

Get out! Get out now while you still can! There is a well stacked deck waiting for you if you stay! Maybe that is why they gave you bail - its like Thaksin being allowed to visit the Olympic Games in China while on bail. Listen to the message they are giving you - get out before its too late.

[dominique355]

In Thailand libel is a crimial offence, so if you file a complaint the person is summoned to hear the charges, if he doesn't come an arrest warrant is issued.

I guess that's what happenned here: TV guy makes a report about a dodgy character, said character files for libel, TV reporter is already out of the country and doesn't know about it, arrest warrant is issued, when he comes back to Thailand few years later the outstanding arrest warrant appears on the immigration computer, he is arrested.

You don't really need connections for this to happen, just a good lawyer (although knowing high ranking people certainly helps...)

As you say: "in Thailand libel is a criminal offense", but Mueller's TV documentary was only aired in Switzerland. Does Thailand again try to impose it's antiquated laws to the whole world?

Imagine what would happen if Switzerland would apply its law about abandoning wife and children to Thai nationals traveling to Switzerland; just about every Thai tourist might end up in a Swiss prison. (Although a Swiss prison is probably much more luxurious than most Thai homes

[permanent_disorder]

The website for this "charity" is quite vague about what they do, besides their restaurant and ostrich farm.

it's a copy and paste job. content, text and images taken from somewhere else in the internet.

the pic of the bunch of kids in the header image¹ is taken from a thai-blog article by Stephen Cleary (a forum mermber, right?) "Give The Kids A Break!"²

on the c.care website:

> our work > project healthcare³

is copy&paste from the website of the St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic⁴ in San Fransisco. just the names of the organisations are exchanged.

the image of the nurses is an AFP/ Getty Image borrowed from here ⁵

everything on c.care website, what is written under

> our work > project Animal Therapy⁶,

the cool stories about dog therapy, horse riding and even Dolphin Assisted Therapy, that looks like just copy&pasta from this website equine-therapy-programs.com⁷ (this website isn't so 'original' either, generic informations, maybe just created to have a good google page rank and sale that domain or links on it. whatever, it looks like c.care copied from them)

> our work > Child Protection

the text "Child Abuse (Signs of child Abuse)" is taken from another online magazine child-abuse.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_did_you_hurt_me⁸

just the telephone number on the end of the article is changed to the number of a thai police department

the photo is taken from an older bbc report⁹

the only "authentic" seems to be that ostrich farms and the restaurant.

> our work > farm&restaurant project: http://www.ccareasia.or.th/project_farm.html

but what have a big bird farm and a restaurant that served steaks from this birds to do with Animal Assisted Therapy and child care?

the name of the restaurant and or the owner you can put into google. they seems to be real.

google bring us to TVmember of the same name.

a restaurant with the same name is also listed on a information-portal for the gay&lesbian community. there it is recommended as popular spot : Gay-owned Fasirung is a restaurant and pub serving Thai and western dishes in an exotic tropical garden setting located on the main road between the cities of Pitsanuloke and Sukhothai. Open daily from 11am onwards till the last custumer, the later the gayer. Every October 31st they hold a Miss Fasirung gatuey (transgender) contest, a popular event for the area's gays (i don't give the link/url. that's maybe against the TVforum rules. try google.)

i found also a photobucket account of the same name http://s711.photobucket.com/albums/ww118/fasirung/ showing pictures of a restaurant

if i skip to the photos there i am pretty sure that is the same restaurant mentioned on the c.care asia foundation.

i found also pics that are from the same session like the pics in the c.care gallery.

like this one and this. but there it is just called "Children day at Fasirung". looks just like one day of free icecream for the kids. the c.care foundation is not mentioned.

the are other pictures that show the restaurant owners social activities. according to that he is a well respected member of the community, there in Sukhothai. meetings with the govenor, donations to the city hall. awards for the cleanest rest rooms in the province and awards for the healthy food there, children day... and so on. but no word about c.care asia foundation. that doesn't have to mean anything bad, but it is odd.

is that restaurant and the farm really related to "c.care asia foundation" or not? maybe they just take the photos from the internet and put it on the c.care website???

the website http://www.ccareasia.or.th doesn't make the foundation look like a charity organisation i would trust. look like a phantom company. but maybe those philanthropists are busy with work in the villages and have no clue about the internet and asked somebody else to make a website for them. and this person makes some big mistakes.

1. http://www.ccareasia.or.th/images/header.jpg

2. http://www.thai-blogs.com/index.php/2007/0...title_41?blog=8

3. http://www.ccareasia.or.th/project_health.html

4. http://www.stanthonysf.com/services/services-clinic.html

5. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=16296677

6. http://www.ccareasia.or.th/project_animal.html

7. http://www.equine-therapy-programs.com/spe...s-children.html

8. http://child-abuse.suite101.com/article.cf...did_you_hurt_me

9. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/153849.stm

[Maestro]

Nothing new in the media today, except that the website of “FACT - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand” has what appears to be a machine translation of a report in another language of the arrest of Christoph Mueller, on this page:

facthai.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/swiss-reporter-arrested-baz/

--

Maestro

[Steve2UK]

The website for this "charity" is quite vague about what they do, besides their restaurant and ostrich farm.

it does raise a number of questions.

But - so far, they're only questions. This organisation appears to have shown that it's ready to start legal action - I suggest that people are careful about the wording of any comments before dependable facts are established.

[TheWalkingMan]

...it's a copy and paste job. content, text and images taken from somewhere else in the internet...

A copy and paste job makes me wonder about the vetting process used by the charity for their web designer. If they asked for original content, they might want to look into getting a refund.

TheWalkingMan

[yumidesign]

Bangkok Post 8 March

Journalist charged over 2002 report

Published: 8/03/2009 at 12:00 AM

Newspaper section: News

A leading Swiss TV reporter arrested nine days ago has described the defamation action bought against him by a local Aids charity over a documentary made six years ago as "bizarre".

Edit:

You can only post the first 3 lines of an article, for the rest you should provide a link to the story.

//Edit: Link to article in Bangkok Post: www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/12962/journalist-charged-over-2002-report -- Maestro

[Estrada]

...it's a copy and paste job. content, text and images taken from somewhere else in the internet...

A copy and paste job makes me wonder about the vetting process used by the charity for their web designer. If they asked for original content, they might want to look into getting a refund.

TheWalkingMan

Looks like the one done by Kurt who worked for the Charity and took a lot of money to make the Web site, when there are plenty of Thais who could have set this up for next to nothing. You are correct, a lot of the photos have been grabbed from the Internet, but a lot of Professionals also do this. Kurt later worked for Der Farang in Pattaya but has since died of Chronic Heart Disease.

Estrada