Spoons, Brains and Surgery on the Dead

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) turns 50 this year, and is outdoing itself in hosting dynamic, effective people from all around the world, and tonight 180 discerning correspondents listened and grilled (Kunying [roughly, Lady]) Porntip
Rojanasunan, Thailand's first all-star practitioner of responsible forensic pathology.

She spoke in highly-educated English, and tread a careful path between telling the truth and telling the WHOLE truth, which could 'get me in big trouble tomorrow.'

With a well-prepared slide show, and a warning as she began that the material she would cover included graphic, real-life pictures of dead and abused adults and children, she moved quickly through her well- presented program, emphasising the following:

+ Thailand's urgent and chronic need for good forensics practitioners; and
+ Thailand's similar need for forensics to be codified and set into Thai criminal law;
+ but there is ongoing active and passive obstruction, obfuscation, foot-dragging, dawdling and smoke-screening by high-level (but unnamed) Thai police.

!+ There are problems with transparency, in Thailand. Deaths are investigated with police and the legally-mandated, usually local village, doctor. This leads to problems of misdiagnosis, shoddy investigation (when there IS an investigation), and huge frustration among survivors, family and friends. Oh, and widespread police anger at Porntip's team, and its successful (and publicized) investigations.

!+ Un-Identified Remains Problems: Thailand currently has between 2 and 5,000 UI human remains cases pending; and widespread police anger at Porntip's team, and its successful (and publicized) investigations of some of these. There are conflicting laws that pertain to these, and none of them approach or approximate similar Australian, American or British laws and forensics practices.

!+ Although there are some highly competent practitioners of Forensic Medicine, there are only 5 practitioners of Forensic Pathology in Thailand, with its current population of 63 million souls.

Lady Porntip ( often called Doctor Death or 'Spikey' because of her bold hairdo) is tireless in taking her message of the Need to Improve Thai law, forensics and public awareness, but there is widespread police anger at Porntip's team, and its successful (and publicized) investigations.

The message came through: when she investigates as an authorized member of the Justice Department of Thailand, (persons unnamed) demand that she work under the local auspices of the military; which then gets orders within 48-to-36 hours, to leave the crime-scene and return to Bangkok. This leaves only the police to investigate controversial deaths, which fills them with anger at Porntip's team, and its successful (and publicized) investigations.

At the end of her prepared program, Lady Porntip fielded questions about the TWIX-Poisonings at TESCO-Lotus; about conditions at migrant camps, from 'Save the Children'; and questions from several independent journalists about police anger and police capability regarding crime scene investigations; and a question from someone representing Pajamas Media.

Whatever that is.
Whoever that could be.

Karridine