Mounting concern among Irish in Thailand after bombing

Irish expatriates in Thailand are worried about what happens next after the deadly bombing that killed 22 people and injured 123 in downtown Bangkok.

About 70,000 Irish tourists visited Thailand last year, many of them coming through Bangkok on their way to the beaches of the south and Chiang Mai to the north.

Ireland last year established an embassy in Bangkok under ambassador Brendan Rogers, which is in the process of opening formally.

While Irish citizens or expatriates were not believed to have been affected by the bombing, the Department of Foreign Affairs is investigating through the embassy.

The department’s advice is: “Any Irish citizens in Thailand should maintain a strong level of security awareness, monitor the local media closely and follow the instructions of the Thai authorities.”

Dubliner Paul Scales owns a condominium across the road from the Ratchaprasong intersection and had just finished handing over the renovated property to a new tenant and was heading out of town when the blast struck.

“When I got back I got a call from my daughter Ellie in San Francisco to see if I was okay,” said Mr Scales, who is head of the Thai-Irish Chamber of Commerce.

“I was down there today and it reminded me of the atmosphere we used to have in Ireland after something bad happened. It doesn’t fit in Thailand, we’ve never had anything like this and there is no obvious perpetrator,” said Mr Scales.

“Thailand always bounces back, and for tourists it’s quite easy to avoid Bangkok and head to the islands or other tourist spots,” he added.

Jerome Kelly from Belfast has been in Thailand for 23 years. “My fear last night was that this was something like Tunisia,” he said. “It came out of the blue and we’re perplexed.”

External forces

Few believe that the bombing was a result of internal politics, as too many Thais were killed for that to happen, although there are questions that if it was carried out by external forces, why has no one claimed responsibility.

The conversations in Bangkok are looking at all kinds of different angles. Many taxis run on propane gas tanks, perhaps it was one of them malfunctioning, say some. Others believe it could have been Uighur separatists from western China, as many Chinese died. Or Islamic fundamentalists. Theories run and run.

“As a parent, you worry about your children. This is the biggest thing that’s happened in a single day in Bangkok, but I still feel more secure than I did in Belfast,” said Mr Kelly.

Fr Joe Maier runs the Mercy Centre in the Bangkok slum of Klong Toey, which has received much help from the Irish expatriate community in Thailand over the past few years.

“We are asking everyone we know in the slums to see if any parents of our slum kids were hurt. We want to show our sympathy and prayers to all those who died and are injured. But our first concern is especially for our own slum kids,” he said in an email.

“The children ask, ‘why did these bad people want to hurt everyone’? And we have no answers. However, we carry on, and to quote that song: a place of violence drenched in Mercy, and we try to be a tiny part of that Mercy,” said Fr Maier.