One night, near the end of a journey in the south of Thailand, I ran into trouble.
For the previous weeks, my partner and I had been out on a remote island, where there was no tourist infrastructure – and no internet. We were disconnected from the outside world. No social media, no news.
Then at the end of a long boat trip, we found ourselves back on the mainland.
Back in ´civilisation´.
Cruising the electronic world in the privacy of my air conditioned room, I came across a report concerning three Thais political activists who been found murdered on the banks of the Mekong River in Laos. Their bodies had been hideously mutilated.
This was a political crime.
It was a hate crime.
And it wasn’t too difficult to work out who was responsible for it: the Thai military, which ruled Thailand with an iron fist – in collusion with the Thai King. A cosy arrangement which had long defined the political landscape of Thailand.
Thanks to this snippet of news, I found myself dwelling on this brutal reality.