The travel agency was not Purple Dragon or Utopia. After Purple Dragon moved a different agency moved in. Don't think they were gay directed but a couple of their guides were nice!
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The travel agency was not Purple Dragon or Utopia. After Purple Dragon moved a different agency moved in. Don't think they were gay directed but a couple of their guides were nice!
I wonder if anyone recalls the details of the closure of that gay tour travel agency based in Tarntawan. I thought it was Utopia Tours, but it have been Spice Trade Travel. Whatever the name, I took a trip to Phnom Penh with them and then booked a night tour of Luang Prabang in the early 2000s, both of which were excellent.
There was a big scandal in 2004 which forced the closure of that company. Two of the directors were arrested for distributing pornography and employing an under-age worker in the Tarntawan office. The pornography count was merely based on the brochures they had in their office which had nothing to do with pornography! It was just unfortunate that the Thaksin social order campaigns were under way and some in the government were trying to crack down on gay tourism in general.
The BIB then found stacks of files of young boys in sex acts with one of the directors, an Australian, during a search of his home and the charges were upgraded to include child sex tourism. My recollection is that the Australian was deported, the agency was closed and a legal fund was established to help in its defence of distributing pornography. The outcome was that the agency eventually got its licence back but changed the name to Purple Dragon.
This incident wasn't part of a general crack down on gay tourism, but rather a case of Thais not being able to say "no" when faced with a strong request.
The story was covered by Yawning Bread:
http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2005/yax-435.htm
http://www.yawningbread.org/guest_2005/guw-098.htm
From the first link:
And further on:Quote:
At 11.30 a.m. on 19 March 2004, immigration police and assorted officials burst into a small travel company (...)
No evidence would ever be found, an outcome that would be quite apparent by the following day. Yet, nine months later, two men would be convicted of a substitute offence, which is why it was so sordid (...)
But when you look closely at the details, the Thais didn't seem to have wanted to pursue the case. The Australians were pressuring them all the way.
Quote:
The Australians wanted Scoble convicted. When the Thais couldn't find anything incriminating in his apartment, the Australians leaned on them to proceed with charges related to Spice Trade Travel. To make it look as if the business was somehow involved, the other director, John Goss, was also charged. And when the prosecution's case looked ridiculously weak, the judge still found a way to rule that a non-pornographic magazine was pornographic, and even when given away free, there was trading in obscene material.
Don't know the details, but to be fair it's common sense that "trading" is "trading" - whether the product is free or paid for.
It's rather like being required in the UK to hold a Consumer Credit licence to offer interest-free credit.
Well, the Thai Guys magazine was a gay magazine that was freely distributed at all gay establishments and wasn't pornographic at all.
And the "under-age worker" wasn't under-age, but Italian! He was charged with not having a work permit, but actually his work permit was already in progress, and he received it the following Monday.
Thanks for posting those comments from yawningbread. I have learned ages ago not to trust much that appears in the Bangkok media. But this comment in yawningbread, a Singapore-based site, is not accurate in relation to evidence allegedly found in the apartment as it is referred to several times subsequently in the same yamningbread report as well as elsewhere, including the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.Quote:
The Australians wanted Scoble convicted. When the Thais couldn't find anything incriminating in his apartment, the Australians leaned on them to proceed with charges related to Spice Trade Travel.
There were clearly two cases here. The one which hit most of the Bangkok headlines concerned the travel agency in Tarntawan in which the charges about pornographic material had no basis in law, despite the arrests and subsequent jailing of the directors. Indeed, I was one of many who contributed to its defense fund and was delighted when the case virtually collapsed and the company was eventually able to trade again.
Yet one of its directors was the Australian Scobie, a former deputy Ambassador in Hanoi who had been recalled in the 1980s after allegations of sexual abuse there. According to a 1996 Australian government enquiry, he had used the diplomatic bag to courier photos of young naked boys, some simulating sex, to an Australian mission friend who was at that time acting as a High Commissioner somewhere. He claimed this was just a joke, but it was the reason for his recall. Six months later, Interpol found his name and embassy address on an Amsterdam database of a man believed to be distributing child pornography. However, no charges were ever filed against Scobie.
Regarding the Utopia Tours incident, the Age story differs markedly from that published by yamningbread. Here is one instance -
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...57.htmlQuote:
While a raid on the Bangkok offices of Spice Trade Travel revealed nothing more incriminating than a clutch of gay magazines . . . a search of Scoble's luxury apartment in one of Bangkok's most exclusive neighbourhoods found enough material for Thai investigators to lay the first of what they forecast will be several charges relating to the abuse of children.
Amid a cache of pornographic videos, computer disks and magazines, police say they found more than 100 albums containing photographs of young teenage and pre-teen boys - many in explicit sexual poses. The photographs, described by one officer as sexual "catalogues", and other evidence have convinced police that Scoble and one of his partners, American John Charles Goss, were using their legitimate travel business as a front to market Thai children to foreign pedophiles.
It was never proved these images really did come from Scobie’s apartment and the Australian reporter for The Age subsequently agreed she only wrote about what the police had shown to her. But it seems certain that Scobie had at least been collecting a wide variety of pornography, some of which may have involved underage youths. Yamningbread actually admits this when it states “ it was noted . . . that investigators had mixed together materials from the offices and Mr. Scobie’s home.” In the same article it quotes John Goss as saying “The early intention was to arrest Scobie on the things they found in his home.” So although planting evidence in Thailand is not unusual, video and print materials – some perhaps indecent and illegal - certainly seem to have been found at Scobie’s home.
So was this just a case of 2+2 equaling 23? This conclusion was certainly true as far as Utopia Tours was concerned. But Scobie was a director of the company and already on a watch list. Whilst it is true Australia was on the lookout for diplomats and others involved overseas in sexual perversions, I can't imagine any reasonable person objecting to this. Although the initial action by the authorities against Utopia Tours was probably never very serious, the Scobie connection made it much more so.
It is, I suggest, also interesting that The Age article goes on to mention a public statement subsequently issued by the PR firm acting for Spice Trade Travel. After announcing that Scobie had resigned from the tour company and claiming that there was no basis for the charges against John Goss, significantly -
A company’s media release makes no attempt to defend the company’s managing director? Surely that is extraordinary if he was indeed innocent?Quote:
it made no attempt to defend Scoble.
And yet, adding further to the confusion, it also seems that Scobie was eventually never charged after he returned to his native Australia.
Finally regarding Tintin’s comment about this not being tied to the Social Order campaigns, I respectfully disagree. The police were first alerted to the gay nature of Utopia Tours when the Tourist Authority of Thailand received an anonymous letter about the promotion of gay tourism. The TAT alerted the police. It was perfectly clear that the company’s magazine had nothing to do with pornography, but it had a lot to do with promoting gay tourism. Under the puritanical Interior Minster Purachai’s Social Order campaigns, the objective was both to tighten laws on nighttime entertainment and clean up the country’s image as a sex tourist destination. Whilst Utopia had never promoted sex tourism, it was attracting gay tourists, not the healthy family tourism that Purachai wanted.
I don't know anything about the case other than has been reported here, but on that basis alone it seems to me that some astonishing conclusions are being jumped to on the basis of "evidence" which it is accepted may have been planted.
Further it concerns me that even though it is admitted that the person being fingered(!) by the SGT Detective Agency has not been convicted of any offence nor charged with any offence in his home country (where one would hope the justice system is rather more reliable), it seems to be a case of just pronouncing him to be guilty anyway.
Cannot help but contrast the innuendo and smearing of this technically innocent Australian with the support for a certain other well-known case whereby planted evidence (in this case drugs) was found in the possession of the individual who subsequently WAS not only actually convicted, but jailed for a lengthy period. Members of this forum and others were falling over themselves to denounce the Thai police and to deny the prima facie evidence.
Is there any basis for treating these two cases differently - apart from the fact that when it comes to accusations of underage sex, it seems otherwise rational people are conspicuously unwilling to be seen to take the side of the accused?
I don't know much more than has been reported in various media outlets and from the appeal sent out by Utopia Tours around the time they were seeking funds for their legal defence.
I think your conclusion is perhaps not entirely correct. The materials in the Utopia Tours office in Tarntawan were certainly far from illegal, had been issued for many months if not years and were quite widely distributed. On the other hand there were clearly vdos and a substantial amount of porn found in Scobie's apartment. Judging from the statements made at the time - especially the lack of any attempt to defend Scobie in the media release issued by lawyers for his own company (is that not so unusual as to be almost unique?) - it does seems perfectly possible that these included illegal underage porn. Is there 100% proof? Not that I know of. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty convincing.
Of course there have been police set-ups in Thailand - as indeed elsewhere. Remember the Guildford Four wrongly jailed in the UK for 15 or so years for a crime they did not commit? The Utopia Tours/Spice Trade Travel case might merely have ended in a fine had Scobie not been in the mix. With his being on a Australian watch list, something I reckon the other director did not know about, it was bound to open up all sorts of doors that made the whole case much more complicated.
Firstly, I accept this is all completely off-topic and we should be talking ad nauseam about a hotel which has (shock, horror) changed hands - so prosecute the person who dragged it here :D
With respect Founty I think both your penultimate post and the one immediately above, illustrate perfectly the point I was making - that astonishing conclusions are being drawn from what is some very dodgy "evidence" indeed:
In your previous post you said
You then draw the same astonishing conclusion in your subsequent post:
For me that line of argument is far from convincing.
The dangerous leap you appear to be making is from someone having been found with perfectly legal porn in their possession to saying that it's a "pretty convincing" argument that they also had underage porn in their possession. Well, helluva sorry, but that simply doesn't hold water - it's like saying because someone has a perfectly legal airgun in their home its "perfectly possible" that they may have an AK47 tucked away under the bed.
I would imagine that by that standard of evidence billions of people who possess legal porn ought to be expecting their doors to be kicked in by the feds at any moment!
Maybe this character did have illegal materials, maybe he didn't. If he did have them, maybe they were planted and maybe they weren't . The only certainty in this matter is that I don't know and you don't know either - and that's my very point.
I don't agree at all that the "circumstantial evidence" (at least that which you have set out on here) is "pretty convincing" and it certainly doesn't convince me. Neither did it convince the Thai justice system who ultimately threw out the case , and it didn't convince the Australian justice system who declined to prosecute as they could easily have done when the accused returned home.
You then go on to say that after the brown stuff hit the air con, a meeting of the Travel Company was held at which Mr Scobie was removed as a Director. Again, neither you nor I was present and we are unaware of what degree of rancour might have been involved in that action. A statement was then issued in which Mr Scobie was not defended by the Company and you interpret this action as further "circumstantial evidence" that he was guilty of the alleged offences. Come on, Founty - is it not equally "perfectly possible" that the Company was embarassed by the allegations and chose to toss Scobie overboard without a lifebelt? Maybe, maybe not - my point being it's unsafe to draw the conclusion you appear to have drawn.
I fully expect to be attacked on here now for even making the point that there does not appear to me to be ANY reliable evidence that this guy had the kind of material that is alleged. Might i gently suggest that's exactly why the Thai prosecution failed and the Australians did nothing?
The reason I expect to be attacked is that I observe that in cases which involve any allegations of sexual offending involving minors, the climate of opinion is now such that people are afraid to ask questions or challenge "evidence" lest they be tarred with the same brush. We are all expected to automatically throw our hands up in the air, get the pitchforks and flaming torches out and denounce the accused person as a "vile pervert". Then, if the person is cleared of the charges we are expected to say "... the bastard got away with it" or "... there's no smoke without fire"
It's surely a basic right that no matter how odious an accused person might be and what other things he may have previously done in his life, when he stands accused of a particular crime he receives the same standard of justice as anybody else.
Justice is (or ought to be) blind for a reason.
he probably thinks elvis is still alive...