109 partygoers who attended a celebration at cliff-top bar on Koh Pha Ngan, including 89 foreigners and 22 Thais, have received suspended jail terms and fines for breaking Thailand’s emergency decree and Covid-19 restrictions. A choose sentenced every of the attendees to 1 month in jail, suspended if they’ve a good behaviour report for a year. He also fined them 4,000 baht every.
Under wraps arrested most of the attendees in a raid Tuesday evening on the ThreeSixtyBar. Among the foreigners arrested were 20 French citizens, 10 Americans and 6 British residents. Others were from Russia and Switzerland. Everyone was given a Covid-19 test by local health officials. So far all outcomes have come back negative.
Koh Pha Ngan has been a well-liked destination prior to now for backpackers, ‘wellness’ seekers, the hippie crowd and was famous for its month-to-month full moon celebration. But the Had Rin Beach month-to-month invasion has been cancelled since March 2020 though a core of international expats and tourists, some caught in Thailand or ready out the pandemic, have moved to the island for its relaxed tropical life-style. Thailand barred virtually all vacationers from entering the nation in April 2020 due to the coronavirus.
Koh Pha Ngan is a brief boat ride from Koh Samui, positioned off the coast of Surat Thani province in the Gulf of Thailand.
Police stated the raid was easy because the organisers did lots of publicity (below) on social media for the Celebration 5 Bang get together, the place the bar promoted the event to rejoice its fifth yr in enterprise.
The court docket conducted the trial of the 109 individuals over a video convention call.
As for the Thai organiser and the two bartenders, they were given fines of 10,000 baht and a 2 year suspended jail sentence. The party’s organiser claimed he had made an “honest mistake”.
“I thought Surat Thani province was in the Covid-19 green zone…. I thought we have been allowed to organise an exercise.”
Thailand is currently graded in four zones – red, orange, yellow and green – relying on the number of circumstances in the current outbreak that has now spread across the country prior to now 5 weeks, tripling the number of cases earlier than December 20. Thailand has now registered 17,023 infections since January 2020, 802 new instances today and a total of 76 deaths.
SOURCE: AP