Daniel Pedersen

The Courier Mail

October 9, 2004

By Daniel Pedersen

Chaiyaphum, Thailand

’I want to kill people . . . they have taken my freedom and I cannot defend myself’ Hans-Otto Schieman, Chaiyaphum Provincial Jail, October 8, 2004.

GERMAN national Schiemann Hans-Otto is set to become a mass murderer.

He is suspected of deliberately infecting more than 450 young women in Thailand’s Chaiyaphum province with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

Yet the true number may be much greater.

The naval veteran admits having indulged in sex tours in provinces throughout the country.

Hans-Otto is being held at the provincial jail in the heart of the town of Chaiyaphum, the capital of a province with a population of one million people.

His is a crazed mission of retribution. He believes a Thai woman infected him with HIV and his revenge is to pass it on to as many people as possible.

At an interview inside the jail, Hans-Otto said: "In Chaiyaphum, I want to kill people . . . they have taken my freedom and I cannot defend myself."

Finding victims was not difficult.

He would approach groups of young people after school and offer them the equivalent of their parents’ monthly wages to have unprotected sex.

They usually agreed.

Money was no problem either.

Hans-Otto had been in Thailand for nine years, living off his disability pension, the result of losing a leg while serving in the German navy. Each month about $6600 dropped into his account.

That assured a life of plenty in a developing country.

A health care official in Chaiyaphum said this week the number of people infected by Hans-Otto was somewhere in the vicinity of 400 to 500.

She said once the story came out, panic ensued.

Desperate families, suddenly terrified of what might have happened, took off to neighbouring provinces for tests. The Public Health Ministry issued a request that young women in Chaiyaphum take blood tests.

Two days later, 66 girls had tested positive in a 24-hour period. Despite the scale of suffering he has caused, Hans-Otto is unrepentant.

"They sell their children here," he says.

"The only reason I’m in jail is because I had sex with a policeman’s daughter who was nice, and then became nasty, after she became a singer at a nightclub.

"She stole my passport and bank card . . . all of my money."

That woman was the daughter of a very senior police officer and has tested positive for HIV after having unprotected sex with Hans-Otto.

At present, the German is in jail for exceeding his 30-day tourist visa by three years. That was all they could get him on because deliberately infecting people with HIV is not a crime in Thailand. Kampol Nonuch, deputy head of the provincial police station, shakes his head when asked about the case.

"In Thailand there are no laws that make that a crime, I think its very, very bad, but there is nothing we can do," he said.

One of those most hurt by Hans-Otto is his wife Noi, who believes she is HIV-positive and dying.

She bears a horrible scar on her neck and says she survived violent attacks that could easily have taken her head off. He slashed at her with a scythe.

Such episodes began after Hans-Otto discovered they had both tested positive for HIV.

Noi says her husband keeps has a list of girls whom he has infected and the date of intercourse.

She asks for no sympathy, she just wants to let girls know, as a favour to society, the dangers of being involved with this man.

A Western teacher in the province says the shockwaves from Hans-Otto’s vendetta have struck deep.

He believes about 40 of his students are stricken.

"This is a good school, very prim and proper," he says.

"They (the students) are obviously promiscuous, but money rules here, and there’s no sex education, it’s taboo.

But there’s . . . a lot of sex; you needn’t look hard."

ENDS