Masked gunmen shot and wounded German ex-pat Flederer Ralf last week as the KohPhanGanNews.org editor slept in his home on the notorious party island. The long-term island resident was hit by three bullets in his hip before escaping. And he told reporters he’d been attacked after he complained about corrupt party promoters to federal authorities in Bangkok. “Two masked men, about 20 years of age, entered my house at around 2am on Sunday night,” he told the Nation newspaper. “They woke me up and charged at me. I grabbed a baseball bat to defend myself. Then all of a sudden, one of them pulled out a gun and opened fire.”

His prescience in keeping a baseball bat close at hand followed a series of threats he detailed on his site after he began campaigning against unscrupulous party promoters staging more and more all disruptive events across the troubled island. Writing about ‘dark evil forces finally destroying this nice little paradise island’, Ralf (aka Beckmann aka Becki) also vilified corrupt local cops and politicians despite, receiving ‘strange anonymous phone calls’ he wrote about on his site. “’Hey Beckmann, you better shut the fuck up! You’re mafia and we think it is better for you to leave the island! If you don’t stop now you better watch your head as something might start happening to you and then you will know who we are!’ the anonymous phone caller said,” he recounted, writing in the third person.

The Nation said Becki is being treated in the Bangkok Hospital on neighbouring island Koh Samui. Skrufff man-on-Koh Phangan Graham Gold (a relative newcomer) said he doesn’t know Becki personally, though speaking to islanders ‘learned that he has been very outspoken about certain issues here’. “Thai law across the Kingdom states that clubs should close at 2am though here on the island various parties continue til 6am and some beyond that,” Graham noted.