Friday, May 18, 2012

Rope!


I was horrified to read this news report from Thailand.

A British citizen in Bangkok has been arrested after Thai police found six roasted human foetuses packed in his luggage.

. . .

Reports says the six foetuses had been covered in gold leaf after being roasted as part of a black magic ritual.

It is not clear where the bodies came from, but Chow Hok Kuen is believed to have been attempting to smuggle them into Taiwan.

. . .

For being in possession of the foetuses Chow Hok Kuen could now face a 2,000 baht fine and a year in prison.

It is thought the corpses were bought from a Taiwanese national for 200,000 baht [about US $6,400] but could have been sold for six times that amount in Taiwan.

There's more at the link.

Run that by me again?  He could be sentenced to a fine of only about sixty-four US dollars, and spend only one year in prison, for trying to smuggle roasted, gilded human foetuses?  In Heaven's name, what sort of legal standards does Thailand have?

In my book, anyone who's capable of doing something like that has lost all claim to be considered a human being.  I wouldn't even put him in the same category as a rabid animal, because that would be an unpardonable insult to both animals and the rabies virus.  I'm astonished that he lived long enough to be brought to the police station and charged.  I'd have thought most parents worthy of the name would have taken instant action upon discovering what was in his suitcases, without waiting for the sanction of a court of law to do so.  (I'd be sorely tempted to do so myself, given the opportunity.)

There's no hell hot enough, or deep enough, or endlessly eternal enough, for this man.

Peter

13 comments:

Mikael said...

He's lucky he wasn't smuggling drugs. They'd have locked him up for 20+ years.

Lance R. Peak said...

Peter, it says six thousand four hundred US dollars, not sixty-four US dollars.

Not that the higher amount makes the crime any more palatable..

Toejam said...

Just goes to prove some cultures have never evolved past the Neanderthal stage.

Anonymous said...

The very definition of evil.

Tim D said...

He's lucky he didn't insult the king, lese majesty is a 3-15 year sentence in Thailand.

-Tim D

Peter said...

@Lance R. Peak: I looked up the numbers and did a conversion to check. The US dollar figures I cite in my article are correct, as far as Google's concerned. The source article appears to have got them wrong.

DaddyBear said...

Peter, I couldn't agree with you more

Mad Jack said...

He may not survive prison. I can't quite imagine anyone who is entirely human being able to do something like this. How does someone go from being a rational human being into whatever it is that could do this thing? I don't know.

I know that the war crimes committed by Japan and Nazi Germany are equally inconceivable.

perlhaqr said...

Lance, Peter: Y'all are reading different lines of the story.

He bought the fetuses for $6,400, or 200,000 baht. His potential fine is only $64, or 2,000 baht.

And I suspect we may be seeing the end result of a significant discrepancy in attitude towards the end result of miscarriage between us and Thailand. And maybe not really even that. I mean, what do you guys think happens with the results of miscarriages and abortions here? I would suspect that in most cases, they are incinerated with other medical waste.

They may not have anything other than "mishandling of medical waste" to charge him with, if he didn't cause the miscarriages from which the fetuses resulted.

Please note, I am not saying that it's not foul and disgusting.

Lance R. Peak said...

Aw heck, I did transpose what the two amounts were for.

I do apologize.

Anonymous said...

Do you belive they came from planned parent hood mills?
planned parent hood in a up rage in about, never.

trailbee said...

We do worse to our babies at Planned Parenthood. At least those babies were sacred!

Tamara Kelly said...

Umm...Perlhaqr & Trailbee are right. We incinerate miscarried & aborted babies as "waste". Or if we miscarry at home...well...we just bury them. How can roasting and covering a foetus in gold be worse?

I'm also wondering if the babies were roasted or were they heat-dried? Not a lot of difference but the nuance is different.

Try these two phrases;
I keep my burned baby on the shelf.
I keep my cremated son in an urn.
Same - but different.

And if you want to see what people REALLY do with dead people (not just foetuses) ask a doctor what they used to do with cadavers in medical school.

I'm not saying what this guy did was right - I'm just saying perhaps we need to take off our culturally-tinted glasses.