PHUKET — A Facebook page with more than half a million followers threatened to harm “shit tourists” who venture outside on Phuket island during the coronavirus outbreak.
In a series of posts starting Monday, Spotlight Thailand published photos of tourists partying and sightseeing Phuket to shame them, and suggested to its followers that they should shoot at any tourists flouting the social distancing measure with slingshots.
“Get out from my country of you can not stay home,” one post says in broken English, accompanied by the page admins holding slingshots. “Shit tourist.”
In response, many people posted photos of themselves with slingshots in the comments section.
Another post, this time showing a group of foreigners at Patong Beach, goes with the caption, “They’re at Patong almost every day. When will they stop? We’re going to starve to death,” then in English, “When I see you again it become to big problem for you #shit tourist get out of my country.”
Yet another post shows foreigners driving around in an orange jeep. The post berates the farangs for “still having fun on everyone’s misery,” along with the same English caption as the previous post.
The posts have been liked in the thousands and shared from 80 to 225 times each. Spotlight Thailand page has a following of more than 597,000.
Most of the comments condemn Caucasian tourists for coming outside during the outbreak and allegedly putting Thai people at the risk of infection.
“This makes me pity myself and my eight employees. We’ve been indoors since March 18, none of us going outside except to get supplies for the nine of us at Makro. We run a massage shop at Patong,” user Panisara Kingkaew wrote. “Meanwhile the tourists are having fun.”
“You guys have a heart filled with bitterness and envy. It must suck to need something that you hate so much (tourists),” commented user Alec Cela.
The outpouring of hatred and suspicion against Westerners in some parts of Thailand came weeks after the country’s top health official, Anutin Charnvirakul, publicly threatened to kick out “goddamn farangs” for not wearing facemasks.
Anutin, who heads the Ministry of Public Health, also called Western tourists “dirty” and said they “never showered” in a now-deleted tweet.
https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2020/04/07/vigilante-facebook-page-shames-threatens-to-shoot-shit-tourists/