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PHUKET: A champion disabled surfer has told for the first time of being tormented by a gang in his wheelchair on the holiday island of Phuket before being beaten, kicked and left laying on the ground.

Frederik Aakerlund, 48, from Denmark, has no legs. They were surgically amputated after being seriously wounded on active military service in 2007.



Fred left Patong Hospital today after two months of treatment following a Phuket bashing that veteran Phuket police volunteer Wal Brown described as ''savage and shocking.''

It was random violence, a horror scene from 'A Clockwork Orange.'

''I wake up thinking, 'Did this really happen?'' Fred said today. ''But yes, it did happen.''

Local police say that although many security cameras probably recorded the gang's brutal deed, it's probably too late to trace them - even though Fred remembers at least three of the men's faces.

''This wasn't at nighttime,'' Fred told Phuketwan from his hospital bed. ''This is in pure daylight.

''It was in the beach road in Patong, about 7am one morning. I was going to see if there were some waves that I could surf

''I'm the only professional disabled surfer in the world, travelling for standup paddle surfing, and I'm an ambassador for the International Surfing Association. I teach disabled people that they can get into the water rather than staying in their wheelchairs.

''This day I'm in between some cars, trying to cross from the beach side of the road to the other side.

''Five or six guys come up to me and play this game of pushing me from one to the other.

''I asked them to stop because my sports wheelchair is unstable and can easily flip over. This is dangerous stuff. 'Can you please stop this,'' I said.

''One of them got really aggressive and said 'You cannot talk like that to us. Oh you f...ing tourists'. He pushed me really hard and I fell out of the wheelchair.

''When I was on the ground the first man kicked me. Then they all kicked me. I was also afraid they might have knives.

''They crunched some of my ribs and it went on for quite a while. They were in a happy mood.

''Then it was like you'd kicked a can and its not funny any more. They took the money from my bag and walked away.''

Fred said he was afraid to call for help because the kicking could get worse. He does not believe money was the motive. He thinks they were on steroids and possibly other drugs.

Bystanders came to his aid and put Fred back into his wheelchair then helped him to his room.

''For three-and-a-half days I just stared into space,'' he said.

Fred, a sixth-generation soldier who has served in ''hot'' situations all over the world, said he was ''really, really scared. I was so traumatised I could not move.

''In my mind I was maybe thinking they could come back. Eventually someone said: 'You have to go to hospital.'

''They pumped me full of stuff. That was two months ago.

''My reason for coming to Phuket was to take disabled and blind Thai children out on the water. That's now on hold. I was supposed to go to the world surfing championships in May, That will go on hold now too.''

Fred sits on a surfboard and uses a paddle to catch the waves. He competes against able-bodied people to show what's possible.

''I am really hit by this,'' he said. ''Some nasty things happen here, let's not be naive.

''But five or six guys decide for no reason to kick someone who is on the ground and push someone who is disabled out of a wheelchair?

''That's really an eye-opener. This at seven o'clock in the morning!''

Police told him: ''We'll never catch these guys. The amount of work watching all that security camera footage . . . that's never going to happen.

''Maybe if you had been killed, it would have happened.''

Fred has surfed in Australia, South America, South Africa - virtually all over the world - without problems and he knows there are many kind and generous people in Thailand.

Now using his time and his military pension to travel around the world, he was quite recently helping children in places as different as Gaza and Nepal to learn to surf.

That was going to continue on Phuket, and it probably still will. Fred doesn't give up.

He was part of the Danish detachment that came to Thailand after the tsunami in 2004 to help recover and identify bodies.

''It's not everyone who has hope and stamina,'' Fred said. ''If I can just get one or two disabled kids out on the water, before long they will be telling others how they can do it, too. I can see what a difference it makes to peoples' lives.

''There is a deep goodness in Thai people. Many of them help me when they see me on the road.''

His mind drifts back to the bashing, remembering his crushed ribs and ''the bruises all over my body.''

''You remember the football hooligans back in Britain once?'' he said. ''This was the kind of feeling. Not one of them said 'Enough is enough.'

''Because I was taking the beating and not screaming, I was trying to focus on 'Where is the knife going to come from'.

''This was just violence for the sake of it. I will take some weeks now to recover at my hotel then I will take the children surfing. I will not let this stop me.''

He says it's like post traumatic stress disorder. But he will recover.

''I am sure there will be a lot of healing in taking disabled children out on the water. I smile every day.''

»Fred's Facebook page, Wet Wheel Surfer, has more than 71,000 followers. He deserves thousands more.


http://phuketwan....ack-21994/