Talk:Erawan Shrine

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[edit] Hate crime?

I am bothered by the hate crime angle being played up in this article. I've looked for some news sources and most only mention that he was a Muslim in passing. Wisekwai 15:27, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I haven't seen that mentioned in the news either. They cited mental illness as the cause. So I took the questionable sentence out. -- Lerdsuwa 16:51, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

All the news sources have the identical information. Carrying a hammer in the middle of the night, specifically for destroying the statue completely means cold blooded intent. This blog http://ktemoc.blogspot.com/2006/03/dbkl-smashed-statues-of-hindu-gods.html records some other hate crimes against by Muslims in Malaysia. Of course, desecrating a Koran would be a hate crime but desecrating a deity's statue is kosher.

[edit] More controversy

In the early hours of news reporting about this incident, I came across only one source, Reuters, that was reporting the man was a Muslim. This was subsequently picked up by a few other agencies. AP reported that some Arabic tattoos were found on the man, prompting police to investigate ties to Muslim extremists, but nothing more appears to be forthcoming on that. So I've removed that he was a Muslim. The report of the police investigation could be added, though. Now, however, there are the wild accusations by Sondhi Limthongkul that Thaksin plotted to destroy the statue because of black magic. There are sources for this (that simply say Sondhi made the accusations), but I wonder if adding these details will be seen as an improvement to this article? Wisekwai 12:28, 24 March 2006 (UTC)