PHUKET // The wife of a Thai man who hanged their 11-month-old daughter on Facebook Live said on Wednesday her husband is the only person to blame and she bears no anger toward the social media site or the users who shared the horrific video.
The video showed 20-year-old Wuttisan Wongtalay killing his daughter, Natalie, by hanging her at an abandoned hotel before taking his own life.
The video was livestreamed on Monday evening and made inaccessible by Facebook late Tuesday afternoon. It was apparently available for viewing online for almost 24 hours until Facebook pulled it down.
“I am not angry at Facebook or blaming them on this,” Chiranut Trairat, 21, said. “I understand that people shared the video because they were outraged and saddened by what happened.”
She said her husband had been abusive in the past and spent two years in prison before they started dating.
Thai media came under fire on Wednesday for publishing images of the killing. At least one major Thai daily printed an image of the murder-suicide on its front page on Tuesday, while several TV channels also aired segments of the video.
A Thai media body also slammed news outlets that showed graphic images of the crime.
“The News Broadcasting Council of Thailand received complaints about reporting on a man who killed his child and himself via Facebook Live,” the organisation said.
“Those reports were inappropriate,” it added, warning channels and newspapers against giving graphic coverage to similar crimes because they “may lead to copycats with the understanding that those actions will draw attention.”
Facebook has been seeking ways to block videos as quickly as possible after a series of gruesome images, including murder and sexual assault, were livestreamed or posted.
“This is an appalling incident and our hearts go out to the family of the victim. There is absolutely no place for content of this kind on Facebook and it has now been removed,” Facebook said, responding to the incident.
Its founder Mark Zuckerberg said last week that his company has “a lot of work” to do on the problem.
The murder in Phuket came less than two weeks after a man in Cleveland, Ohio, posted on Facebook a video of himself shooting a man to death.
In Thailand, the potential for problems with Facebook Live became an issue last May when local media used the platform to broadcast live video of a university lecturer who was locked in a six-hour standoff with police who were seeking him in the shooting deaths of two colleagues.
After negotiations for his surrender failed, he fatally shot himself, a moment that was shown live.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
