A girl's death reveals grim party paradiseJeremy Page in Goa
As the sun sinks over the Arabian Sea, DJ Tristan brings the pounding music at the Shiva Valley beach bar on Anjuna beach, Goa, to another pulsating climax.
At the water's edge, a shaven-headed man practices fire-dancing, pausing only to puff on a passing joint. Nearby a young mother with braids in her hair and a toddler in her lap sits in the sand, swaying gently to the beat. On the dancefloor, a dreadlocked Japanese man, teeth clenched and eyes wide, appears to be doing kung-fu.
This, as one partygoer put it, is “the epicentre of Goan trance”, the stretch of beach where tens of thousands of foreigners, many of them British, come every year to get drunk, get high and dance. Even now, nearing the end of the season, the two dozen bars along the beach are packed.
Except for one. Lui's bar - 500 metres along from Shiva Valley - is almost deserted and most people here know why. At 6.30 am on February 18, the half-naked corpse of a 15-year-old British girl, Scarlett Keeling, was found on the beach only a few yards away from Lui's.
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“It was not in my shack she died,” protests Luis Coutinho, 31, the owner of Lui's, who says that business is down by about 90 per cent.
“People just don't want to sit in a place if something like this happened there or the police are coming around all the time.” That may be so - but there is something else that keeps the customers away: the fear that Scarlett may have been killed by someone who frequented Lui's and was involved in the local drugs trade, and who is now paying off the police.
Proof is hard to find: most local and foreign residents declined to speak on the record for fear of recriminations from the police or the dealers - and many refused even to talk to a reporter.
But those who did described a seedy underworld in which dealers targeted young foreign women and then took advantage of them when they were high, traded sex for drugs or sexually assaulted them. “It happens much more than most people realise,” said one foreign resident who has been visiting for ten years and regularly frequents the beach bars.
“These girls never report things because they know nobody will believe them if they were wasted. And even if they do, the police will cover everything up - like with this girl.” Goan police deny a cover-up and defend their record in the former Portuguese enclave, which attracted 2.5 million visitors last year, including 380,000 foreigners, of whom 160,000 were British.
Although 40 British people died in Goa last year and ten more this year, 60 per cent of them were from natural causes, and many more die in other holiday spots, according British Government statistics.
In the year to March 2006 about 381,000 British citizens visited Thailand and 224 of them died.
Scarlett's death has still shattered the “hippy paradise” image that Goa has enjoyed ever since travellers like Eight-finger Eddy - its oldest foreign resident - began coming here in the 1960s.
Mrs MacKeown was one of many foreigners - often middle class and well educated like her - who have bought into the idea over the years.
Originally from Hertfordshire the single mother of nine now lives on a nine-acre smallholding farm in Bideford in Devon, with no electricity and only a bore-hole for water.
“Nobody could fault her parenting skills,” said a neighbour.
“They all have an alternative lifestyle which is common here. But she is a very good mother.” When her boyfriend suggested a trip to Goa, which he had visited several times, Mrs MacKeown says that she decided it would be educational for her children to take their first holiday overseas.
For Scarlett, who was studying at an alternative secondary school, it opened up an exotic and exciting world.
Within three weeks of arriving, she had met Julio, a 25-year-old local tour guide, in a beach bar called Curly's - which is owned by the head of the village council and is Anjuna's top party venue. When Julio suggested taking her on a dolphin-watching boat trip, she jumped at the chance because her family could not afford the 15,000 rupees (£185) a head.
Scarlett repaid Julio by handing out flyers and serving drinks and food on the boat, according to Dakini Runningbear, a Californian yoga teacher who speaks for the family. But she also started to sleep with Julio, according to her diary.
When the family went on a trip to the neighbouring state of Karnataka in early February, Scarlett begged to be allowed to stay and work with Julio.
After a heated argument, Mrs MacKeown agreed finally and Julio came to pick Scarlett up and drive her back to the house where he lives with his two aged aunts.
How Scarlett spent the next few days is still a mystery, but locals say that they regularly saw her in Anjuna's beach bars, especially Curly's, often apparently high.
“She was caning it pretty hard the week before she died,” said one regular partygoer, who offered her a place to stay after finding her asleep in Curly's one afternoon.
“She looked like she was about to snap from the lack of sleep, the drugs she was doing, not having a home.” Scarlett also had flings with at least one of the “shack boys” who work in the beach bars, but also sell drugs, according to several witnesses.
Several also said that they believed she was taking ketamine as well as marijuana, ecstasy and MDMA.
Mrs MacKeown blames Julio for not looking after her daughter, but he denies being responsible for her and police say that he has a solid alibi. “I'm so scared and confused,” he told The Times, adding that he had been severely beaten by the police.
On the night Scarlett died he said, he dropped her at 8.30pm at a café called Bean Me Up to see a Spanish girlfriend called Ruby. Scarlett and Ruby went out and returned at around 1am, both high, according to witnesses.
When Ruby's brother refused to allow her to go out again, Scarlett continued alone, going first to Curly's and then to Lui's at about 4am and leaving Lui's with at least one man soon afterwards, according to witnesses.
They say there were four men behind the bar including Lui, Samson de Souza, a man known as Masala, and another as yet unidentified Goan man. Lui, however, said that he had not been on duty that night and the bar had shut at 10pm.
When The Times went to Mr de Souza's home, his French wife said that she did not know where he was and refused to answer any questions. “Learn Goa and you will understand everything,” she said.
Similar sentiments were voiced in Anjuna's Thursday flea market, where foreign residents sell designer clothes and New Age paraphernalia alongside Indian traders peddling spices, fabrics and handicrafts.
One beach bar owner explained that Goa had experienced several waves of foreigners - and narcotics.
The hippies who came in the 1960s consumed mostly LSD or acid, which they prodiced themselves, and opium and marijuana, which they bought locally.
The second wave began in the early 1990s, when Britain's “summer of love” generation started to hold beach parties fuelled by acid, speed and Ecstasy, mostly imported. Then came the third wave of budget tourists, mainly from Britain, Russia and Israel, and with them an influx of cocaine.
While the marijuana and opium is mostly produced in northern India, the cocaine, MDMA and Ecstasy are brought in by mostly foreign drug mules. All can be bought openly at beach bars with cocaine costing from 2,000 to 4,000 rupees a gram, Ecstasy costing about 2,000 rupees per pill and marijuana costing about 500 rupees for a large bag. Some foreign residents dismiss suggestions that the drugs trade is organised at all, or that the beach bars are involved. Others say that it is controlled by a small handful of local men, but deny that they take advantage of foreign women.
The problem is that most people simply do not want to think about anything that might impinge on their little piece of paradise.
“I hope they get those bastards,” said one foreign woman who has been living in Goa for the last 15 years.
“But I can't stop now - I have to go party.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3508351.ece
As the sun sinks over the Arabian Sea, DJ Tristan brings the pounding music at the Shiva Valley beach bar on Anjuna beach, Goa, to another pulsating climax.
At the water's edge, a shaven-headed man practices fire-dancing, pausing only to puff on a passing joint. Nearby a young mother with braids in her hair and a toddler in her lap sits in the sand, swaying gently to the beat. On the dancefloor, a dreadlocked Japanese man, teeth clenched and eyes wide, appears to be doing kung-fu.
This, as one partygoer put it, is “the epicentre of Goan trance”, the stretch of beach where tens of thousands of foreigners, many of them British, come every year to get drunk, get high and dance. Even now, nearing the end of the season, the two dozen bars along the beach are packed.
Except for one. Lui's bar - 500 metres along from Shiva Valley - is almost deserted and most people here know why. At 6.30 am on February 18, the half-naked corpse of a 15-year-old British girl, Scarlett Keeling, was found on the beach only a few yards away from Lui's.
Related Links
Goa chief rounds on naive female tourists
Mother of Goa victim issues appeal
“It was not in my shack she died,” protests Luis Coutinho, 31, the owner of Lui's, who says that business is down by about 90 per cent.
“People just don't want to sit in a place if something like this happened there or the police are coming around all the time.” That may be so - but there is something else that keeps the customers away: the fear that Scarlett may have been killed by someone who frequented Lui's and was involved in the local drugs trade, and who is now paying off the police.
Proof is hard to find: most local and foreign residents declined to speak on the record for fear of recriminations from the police or the dealers - and many refused even to talk to a reporter.
But those who did described a seedy underworld in which dealers targeted young foreign women and then took advantage of them when they were high, traded sex for drugs or sexually assaulted them. “It happens much more than most people realise,” said one foreign resident who has been visiting for ten years and regularly frequents the beach bars.
“These girls never report things because they know nobody will believe them if they were wasted. And even if they do, the police will cover everything up - like with this girl.” Goan police deny a cover-up and defend their record in the former Portuguese enclave, which attracted 2.5 million visitors last year, including 380,000 foreigners, of whom 160,000 were British.
Although 40 British people died in Goa last year and ten more this year, 60 per cent of them were from natural causes, and many more die in other holiday spots, according British Government statistics.
In the year to March 2006 about 381,000 British citizens visited Thailand and 224 of them died.
Scarlett's death has still shattered the “hippy paradise” image that Goa has enjoyed ever since travellers like Eight-finger Eddy - its oldest foreign resident - began coming here in the 1960s.
Mrs MacKeown was one of many foreigners - often middle class and well educated like her - who have bought into the idea over the years.
Originally from Hertfordshire the single mother of nine now lives on a nine-acre smallholding farm in Bideford in Devon, with no electricity and only a bore-hole for water.
“Nobody could fault her parenting skills,” said a neighbour.
“They all have an alternative lifestyle which is common here. But she is a very good mother.” When her boyfriend suggested a trip to Goa, which he had visited several times, Mrs MacKeown says that she decided it would be educational for her children to take their first holiday overseas.
For Scarlett, who was studying at an alternative secondary school, it opened up an exotic and exciting world.
Within three weeks of arriving, she had met Julio, a 25-year-old local tour guide, in a beach bar called Curly's - which is owned by the head of the village council and is Anjuna's top party venue. When Julio suggested taking her on a dolphin-watching boat trip, she jumped at the chance because her family could not afford the 15,000 rupees (£185) a head.
Scarlett repaid Julio by handing out flyers and serving drinks and food on the boat, according to Dakini Runningbear, a Californian yoga teacher who speaks for the family. But she also started to sleep with Julio, according to her diary.
When the family went on a trip to the neighbouring state of Karnataka in early February, Scarlett begged to be allowed to stay and work with Julio.
After a heated argument, Mrs MacKeown agreed finally and Julio came to pick Scarlett up and drive her back to the house where he lives with his two aged aunts.
How Scarlett spent the next few days is still a mystery, but locals say that they regularly saw her in Anjuna's beach bars, especially Curly's, often apparently high.
“She was caning it pretty hard the week before she died,” said one regular partygoer, who offered her a place to stay after finding her asleep in Curly's one afternoon.
“She looked like she was about to snap from the lack of sleep, the drugs she was doing, not having a home.” Scarlett also had flings with at least one of the “shack boys” who work in the beach bars, but also sell drugs, according to several witnesses.
Several also said that they believed she was taking ketamine as well as marijuana, ecstasy and MDMA.
Mrs MacKeown blames Julio for not looking after her daughter, but he denies being responsible for her and police say that he has a solid alibi. “I'm so scared and confused,” he told The Times, adding that he had been severely beaten by the police.
On the night Scarlett died he said, he dropped her at 8.30pm at a café called Bean Me Up to see a Spanish girlfriend called Ruby. Scarlett and Ruby went out and returned at around 1am, both high, according to witnesses.
When Ruby's brother refused to allow her to go out again, Scarlett continued alone, going first to Curly's and then to Lui's at about 4am and leaving Lui's with at least one man soon afterwards, according to witnesses.
They say there were four men behind the bar including Lui, Samson de Souza, a man known as Masala, and another as yet unidentified Goan man. Lui, however, said that he had not been on duty that night and the bar had shut at 10pm.
When The Times went to Mr de Souza's home, his French wife said that she did not know where he was and refused to answer any questions. “Learn Goa and you will understand everything,” she said.
Similar sentiments were voiced in Anjuna's Thursday flea market, where foreign residents sell designer clothes and New Age paraphernalia alongside Indian traders peddling spices, fabrics and handicrafts.
One beach bar owner explained that Goa had experienced several waves of foreigners - and narcotics.
The hippies who came in the 1960s consumed mostly LSD or acid, which they prodiced themselves, and opium and marijuana, which they bought locally.
The second wave began in the early 1990s, when Britain's “summer of love” generation started to hold beach parties fuelled by acid, speed and Ecstasy, mostly imported. Then came the third wave of budget tourists, mainly from Britain, Russia and Israel, and with them an influx of cocaine.
While the marijuana and opium is mostly produced in northern India, the cocaine, MDMA and Ecstasy are brought in by mostly foreign drug mules. All can be bought openly at beach bars with cocaine costing from 2,000 to 4,000 rupees a gram, Ecstasy costing about 2,000 rupees per pill and marijuana costing about 500 rupees for a large bag. Some foreign residents dismiss suggestions that the drugs trade is organised at all, or that the beach bars are involved. Others say that it is controlled by a small handful of local men, but deny that they take advantage of foreign women.
The problem is that most people simply do not want to think about anything that might impinge on their little piece of paradise.
“I hope they get those bastards,” said one foreign woman who has been living in Goa for the last 15 years.
“But I can't stop now - I have to go party.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3508351.ece
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The guys would make fun of them behind their backs. A lot of them do crazy things without thinking of the consequences - typical holiday behaviour, but for this poor girl it ended in disaster.
