EDITORIAL | Requiem for Mahachai: EU's Green zealot bullies turn thriving Thai fishing port into ghost town

We saw only one working fishing boat during our three hours in Mahachai. Once there were hundreds of vessels there including large trawlers and reefer ships that roamed the high seas, returning with valuable catches from all over the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Siam.

As our host, my old friend Wicharn Sirichai, the boss of the once large and profitable Sirichai Fisheries company, and former Thai senator, explained, “This has all happened as a result of the deceptive and dishonest lobbying of European environmental NGOs that have persuaded their national governments, and through them, the EU, to threaten the Thai Government with trade sanctions forcing it to almost completely close its domestic and international fishing industry”.

The town and its port have been hit very hard. Of course, while the fishing industry and its employees have been effectively wiped out, the bureaucratic “fat cats” who administered their destruction are still sitting in their large and comfortably air-conditioned offices in the centre of the town. Presumably, having liquidated the industry they were once employed to manage, they have little left to do.

Presumably, too, the Thai Government will be satisfied that its motor vehicle, electronics and cut flower industries, that are also active around Mahachai, will continue to be able to sell their products in Europe.