THAI NAVY RAIDS CABIN OF ‘SEASTEADERS’
US man, Thai partner may face death for setting up floating home off Phuket
THE Thai navy yesterday boarded the floating cabin of a fugitive United States bitcoin trader and his Thai girlfriend, both prominent members of the “seasteading” movement who possibly face the death sentence for setting up their offshore home.
Thai authorities have revoked the visa of American citizen Chad Elwartowski and have charged him and his partner, Supranee
Thepdet, with violating Thai sovereignty by raising a small cabin on top of a weighted spar 14 nautical miles off the west coast of the Thai island of Phuket.
The cabin has been promoted as “the world’s first seastead” by the group Ocean Builders, part of a movement in tech and libertarian circles to build floating communities beyond the bounds of nations as a way to explore alternative societies and governments.
“I was free for a moment. Probably the freest person in the world,” Elwartowski posted on his Facebook on April 13, days before the navy raided his floating home.
Elwartowski, 46, and Supranee, whose Facebook page describes her as a “Bitcoin expert, Trader, Chef, seastead Pioneer”, apparently fled after a surveillance plane flew over the cabin the previous day.
The Royal Thai Navy task force had yesterday planned to seize the structure and tow it back to shore for use as evidence, but by the afternoon, it was still studying how to move it without destroying it, the navy said.
In a video posted last month detailing the raising of the floating home, Elwartowski said 20 more similar houses would be up for sale to form a community.
Elwartowski and Ocean Builders said the spar was in international waters and beyond Thailand’s jurisdiction. Thai authorities said the structure was in its 200-mile exclusive economic zone and thus, a violation of its sovereignty.
A Thai navy task force was yesterday sent to tow in the structure, which would be handed over to Phuket’s police to be kept as an exhibit for the legal action.
The navy said they had evidence that the floating home was built in a private boatyard in Phuket and that the couple wanted to establish a “permanent settlement at sea beyond the sovereignty of nations by using a legal loophole”.
It said the action “reveals the intention of disobeying the laws of Thailand as a littoral state and could lead to a creation of a new state within Thailand’s territorial waters... undermining Thailand’s national security as well as economic and social interests of maritime nations”.