Police arrest German accused for deliberately infecting women
by Daniel Pedersen on Mar.26, 2009, under Northern Thailand, Thailand reportage
The Courier Mail
March 26, 2005
Bangkok
THAI police have arrested German national Hans Otto Schiemann who stands accused of deliberately infecting hundreds of young women with the virus that causes AIDS.
It is not the first time he has been taken into custody.
Last October he was deported from Thailand for overstaying his visa when accusations about his medical condition and his behaviour came to light.
He was blacklisted from Thailand then, but has since returned twice, taking advantage of visa protocols that lack integrity.
Despite pleas from the local medical fraternity, Schiemann, who is HIV-positive, has refused an AIDS test and there is no legal infrastructure to force one upon him. He appeared this week on the streets of the northeastern provincial city of Chaiyaphum, a schooling centre for children from outlying regions.
Locals reacted to Schiemann’s return either with silence, trepidation or indifference: No one wants to talk about him.
City police followed up on threats to lock him up. Senior officers last year said they would have liked to try him for murder.
Boonyam Yorapol, the Health Ministry chief of HIV control at Chaiyaphum Hospital, at the time remarked that the one-legged Schiemann was well known for approaching groups of young people after school and offering them money for sex.
He offered 3000 baht ($99) for sex without a condom, half as much for protected sex.
Greg Rayment, an Australian teacher of English at a Chaiyaphum high school, said teachers had stopped offering HIV tests for students after an initial flurry of more than 500 infections were detected.
"There is no sex education in Chaiyaphum, it is taboo," Mr Rayment said.
"They don’t want to know about it. Educated people, from teachers to solicitors, are in denial."
Schiemann’s common-law wife, Noi, who doctors say has just a few months to live because she is dying of AIDS, checked herself out of hospital at the weekend and is in hiding.
She is afraid her estranged German partner wants the satisfaction of killing her.
Noi carries a scar across her neck, made when a drunken Schiemann bludgeoned her with a sickle.
She insists the German paid police at the time not to make a fuss about her allegations of attempted murder.
She said her husband tried to kill her after she announced she was leaving him.
It was the same night she protested about a teenager being moved in to either replace or join her.
ENDS
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