Thai tourism industry faces blow due to murder of Swiss tourist

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Thai authorities are struggling to restore confidence in the vital tourism industry after a tentative effort to reopen the country to foreign visitors is facing a setback following the murder of a Swiss tourist.

A 57-year-old Swiss woman visiting the resort island of Phuket in Thailand’s south was found dead under a black sheet in shallow water among rocks at a waterfall in a forested area on Aug. 5. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped and murdered.

Within days local police identified the suspect, a 27-year-old Thai man, who has since confessed to robbing and murdering the woman after he encountered her alone in the forest, according to police.

The suspect, who said he had been unemployed because of the pandemic, had told investigators he wanted to take the foreign tourist’s money to buy narcotics and other goods, police said.

Investigators uncovered CCTV footage that showed the suspect riding a motorcycle to the waterfall shortly before the tourist arrived.

Footage then showed him leaving the location three hours later on his motorbike.

The murder of the Swiss national has received widespread attention in Thailand and reportedly many tourists in Phuket are so concerned about their safety that they prefer not to leave their hotels.

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The case has also received extensive international coverage, which has further dampened hopes in the Southeast Asian nation in the midst of a raging Covid-19 outbreak that tourists could soon begin to return in droves to revive the moribund economy.

Thailand’s borders have been closed to mass tourism from abroad since March last year, but in a pilot project the island of Phuket was reopened on July 1 to fully vaccinated tourists without the need for a two-week quarantine on arrival.

Foreign tourists landing in Phuket, of whom some 14,000 have visited since early last month, are required to stay on the island for 14 days and undergo several Covid-19 tests before they can travel to other provinces around the country.

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