(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 February 2003, RSF expressed outrage over the murder of a journalist on the tourist island resort of Phuket. The organisation called on the Thai authorities to find and punish those responsible. Journalist Surapong Ritthi, aged 43, a correspondent in the southern province of Phuket for “Thai Rath”, the country’s biggest Thai-language […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 February 2003, RSF expressed outrage over the murder of a journalist on the tourist island resort of Phuket. The organisation called on the Thai authorities to find and punish those responsible.
Journalist Surapong Ritthi, aged 43, a correspondent in the southern province of Phuket for “Thai Rath”, the country’s biggest Thai-language daily, and the independent television station Channel 3, was killed on 11 February by a man who followed him into a grocery shop near the famous Patong beach and shot him twice in the head before fleeing.
“If this crime remains unpunished, all journalists will feel threatened,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Interior Minister Wanmuhamadnoor Matha. Ménard called for a “thorough and serious” investigation into the crime.
According to the daily paper “The Nation”, Colonel Chalit Thinthani, the local police chief, said the journalist knew of several business scandals in the area and had written about illegal activities in the local entertainment and gambling industry. He had recently reported on sex shows in a Patong Beach go-go bar, which the police had subsequently shut down. However, Thinthani said police did not rule out a personal quarrel as a motive for the crime.
