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Man smashes Erawan statue, beaten to death


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Bangkok (dpa) - A mentally disturbed Muslim man was killed early Tuesday after he destroyed a much revered Brahman statue at the Erawan Shrine - one of Bangkok's most popular places of worship, police and eyewitnesses said.

Thanakorn Pakdeepol, 27, was found dead in a pool of blood outside the shrine shortly after he attacked the sacred image at 1 a.m., police said.

"I saw him climb over the fence and use a hammer to hit the statute," said Wandee Vichai, 42, a vendor who was one of the few eyewitnesses to the incident.

"I started to scream and some trash collectors came out and chased after the man. When I caught up with them he was lying dead on the pavement," Wandee told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa.

Lumpinee Police Colonel Supisarn PakdeeNarunart said two suspects had been charted with murder in Thanakorn's slaying.

The victim's father Saiyan Pakdeepol said his son had suffered from mental illness for several years and was nervous and depressed on Monday. He had a breakdown and ran out of the house at midnight.

The government ordered a swift restoration. Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said work should take about a month.

Caretaker Prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra assigned the Culture and Interior ministries to coordinate work with the Thao Maha Brahma Foundation and the Erawan Hotel

The Erawan Shine stands next to the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel in central Bangkok. The shrine was built in 1956, one year after the original government-owned Erawan Hotel was opened as one of the capital's first international class establishments.

Rear Admiral Luang Suwichanphaet, a specialist in astrology, advised the hotel management to construct the shrine with the Thao Maha Brahma statue, also known as Phra Pom, on the corner of its property to ensure good fortune.

The Erawan Hotel was bought by the Hyatt hotel group about 14 years ago.

The shrine is a popular place for Buddhists and Hindus to ask favours, and is a tourist highlight, particularly visitors from Hong Kong and Singapore.

"We're worried the destruction of Phra Pom will affect our business," said vendor Wandee. "There are more than 50 families that make their living off selling items of worship to people who come here."

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What a shame! The Erawan Shrine is an important Bangkok landmark and serves both worshippers and tourists and an excellent venue to witness traditional Thai dancing absolutely free. I hope the statue can be successfully reconstructed. And to take a man's life for his thoughtless actions is equally wrong and that man's life can never be restored or reconstructed.

Very troubling news.

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What a shame! The Erawan Shrine is an important Bangkok landmark and serves both worshippers and tourists and an excellent venue to witness traditional Thai dancing absolutely free. I hope the statue can be successfully reconstructed. And to take a man's life for his thoughtless actions is equally wrong and that man's life can never be restored or reconstructed.

Very troubling news.

agree except for the part about 'equally wrong'...

maybe i'm just an irreligious insensitive bastard (ok, yoou can kill the maybe) but i think the killing thing is a bit more wrong...

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What he done is bad ....but has been beaten to death .....oooooow...it's too much

Good to see there are very sensible Thais around (like the poster above).

The statue has nothing at all to do with Buddhism, and I don't know what's more insane, destroying it, or killing the man who destroyed it. Screw it, a statue is just a heap of stones.

I truly believe religion, or whatever people take for religion, is the bane of this planet. To hell with all of it.

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Screw it, a statue is just a heap of stones.

if i'm not mistaken it is / was a heap of plaster.

Yeah, right probably ...

Anyhow, I can't help it, I consider worshipping objects of any kind extraordinarily primitive. Makes me wanna sing that old Trini Lopez song 'If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening ...'.

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What he done is bad ....but has been beaten to death .....oooooow...it's too much

Well, if it was a reversed situation and he was a Buddhist who went to a revered Muslim site and destroyed it, he would be beaten or stoned to death for sure.

Not an eye-for-an-eye or ***-for-tat approval of what happened, but surely we need a balanced view.

Some utterly f*cked up people in this country. Question is, if he is mentally disturbed why isn't he in some kind of institution? Only a few months ago another 'depressed' person - a woman - stabbed kids in school. Also had a history of extreme mental problems.

Maybe Thailand needs to review how it deals with the mentally sick!??!?!?!

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I truly believe religion, or whatever people take for religion, is the bane of this planet. To hell with all of it.

tell the muslims, catholics, buddhist, hindus, etc ... roughly 90% of the planet ...

5 billion people can't be wrong ... or can they?

off course they can all be wrong !! and seeing as none of them agree with each other it's a bit stupid to lump them all together

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I think its utterly disgraceful. I can understand people's anger at the destruction of the statue but if we're going to start beating people to death over statues, then I might as well take a club to every jerk that looks at me the wrong way or takes the last packet of creamer at Starbucks.

Disgraceful.

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I truly believe religion, or whatever people take for religion, is the bane of this planet. To hell with all of it.

tell the muslims, catholics, buddhist, hindus, etc ... roughly 90% of the planet ...

5 billion people can't be wrong ... or can they?

?

if popularity is indicative of quality, truth or validity then the macarena is among the best music ever written.

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?

if popularity is indicative of quality, truth or validity then the macarena is among the best music ever written.

... which, as a matter of fact, is ...

if the macarena is great music, i look forward to the extinction of homo 'sapiens,' it'll be a blessing to the rest of the universe...

sadly, our broken toys will stick around for a long time though...

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From the point of view of totality the ?human race? doesn?t matter. Isolated on a planet they can?t do much wrong except killing themselves. But who cares?

?Sapiens? indicates that there is something to know. But 90 % of human kind hasn?t entered that phase yet. They don?t want to know anything. They are not interested in knowledge, not even the most basic one. Their world is ?explained? by bibles and Korans and How-to-manage-your-world books (Penguin edition)? They pray to their Gods, kill whoever worships other Gods, reproduce like rabbits and dance on the Macarena at wedding parties.

And then you try to convince them that the world is not what it seems, that only knowledge and understanding of the real nature of the world brings you out of misery ? and they kill you for that. And why? Because understanding kills everything: your Gods, your silly world theories, your stupid romantic ideas about the world ? hahahaha ? everything.

The evolution towards Homo sapiens is an uphill battle against beliefs and superstitious. For most people, this is just too scary ? let them dance the Macarena.

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From the point of view of totality the ?human race? doesn?t matter. Isolated on a planet they can?t do much wrong except killing themselves. But who cares?

?Sapiens? indicates that there is something to know. But 90 % of human kind hasn?t entered that phase yet. They don?t want to know anything. They are not interested in knowledge, not even the most basic one. Their world is ?explained? by bibles and Korans and How-to-manage-your-world books (Penguin edition)? They pray to their Gods, kill whoever worships other Gods, reproduce like rabbits and dance on the Macarena at wedding parties.

And then you try to convince them that the world is not what it seems, that only knowledge and understanding of the real nature of the world brings you out of misery ? and they kill you for that. And why? Because understanding kills everything: your Gods, your silly world theories, your stupid romantic ideas about the world ? hahahaha ? everything.

The evolution towards Homo sapiens is an uphill battle against beliefs and superstitious. For most people, this is just too scary ? let them dance the Macarena.

um.... nice speech, but "Homo sapiens" is just a name that a particularly vain species of hominid primate gave itself, and does not imply any actual wisdom. nor does it imply that evolution is working towards anything, let alone Homo sapiens.

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Bangkok (dpa) - A mentally disturbed Muslim man was killed early Tuesday after he destroyed a much revered Brahman statue at the Erawan Shrine - one of Bangkok's most popular places of worship, police and eyewitnesses said. .....

."

Something to ponder on:

How much reverence is put into un-living objects. Putting them above the living.

I'm under the believe that one persons' life is much more valuable then any monument in this earth... yet many more people will be killed over objects of reverence.

I can't imagine when some fool bombs Mecca (or any revered monument) for example, what horrid things would happen in this world.

The essence of the ideal can never be smashed yet anger held that an ideal is attacked.

No matter how badly damaged the object is, people hold it's true

intangible (shapeless) form :-)

With reverence i look upon a Buddha statue for ideals rather then the object: It is no object to worship, it is an art of an ideal. If it is smashed i am sad and hope it would be rebuilt but my ideal survives unaffected :-)

The man was smashed with maddness for his madness. ...

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