Phousith Sibounloeang, Laotian Refugee

 

According to available records in Belgium, Phousith ("Ed") Sibounloeang was born in Saphanethong District of Vientiane, capital of Laos, on 3 March 1967. His nickname, Ed, is pronounced "At", with a short vowel a.

 

Some Thais in Antwerp know Phousith by the name of Ae (pronounced as a single syllable long vowel a).

 

Records of births in Vientiane for the period are limited and do not mention Phousith or indicate anyone fitting his description. The surname Sibounloeang appears to be a mispronunciation and misspelling of a common Thai surname Sibounroeung, which is often mispronounced in Thailand with the "r" like an "l". The same surname is Laos is written and pronounced Sibounheuang, with an "h" instead of an "r". A search for the birth of a child with the name of Ae was not conducted.

 

Phousith appears to be of the majority lowland Lao-Thai (Lao Loum) population of Laos and northeastern Thailand. (He appears to have some Mon-Khmer blood.) He speaks Lao with a Vientiane accent.

 

Phousith was brought to Belgium from a Laotian refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand at the age of 13, in 1980, by a Belgian, Bridget Pauwels, who worked for Doctors Without Borders (Medicins Sans Frontieres [MSF]). Phousith arrived in Belgium "without family". Thais in Antwerp recall, however, that he tried to contact relatives in Laos eventually.

 

The Red Cross of Ghent placed Phousith in the home of a Belgian family, Thierry and Ghislaine Cols, in Brasschaat, Antwerp.

 

Braaschatt is a middle and upper class suburb of Antwerp with many large houses with medium-size front lawns. The Cols lived in a good neighborhood, on a street with large and old suburban homes with medium-size front lawns. The two-story house at their address, however, was the smallest on the street and had barely a front lawn. The Cols, a family of three, did not actually live in the house but behind it, in a small narrow one-story rectangular pre-fab the size of a camper or trailor in the tiny back yard. This was an odd and unusual situation in a middle class neighborhood. Thus, the fitness of the Cols to host a refugee must be questioned and the placement of a refugee in their care must be carefully investigated.

 

The Cols sent Phousith to the local Mater Dei school for a year.

 

In the following year, 1981, Phousith, age 14, left the Cols home on his own ("ran away"). He was befriended by an eccentric Thai woman, Jintana __________, who owned a restaurant in Ekeren, north of Antwerp. (More recently, Jintana owned the Banteay Laos Restaurant and Sawadee Bar and Karaoke in Antwerp.) According to Mr. Cols, the juvenile division of the Antwerp city police thus placed Phousith in a boarding school in Brussels.

 

After secondary school, Phousith studied at a culinary academy in Malines (Mechelen) for two years of its three-year programme. He did not graduate from the school.

 

Phousith worked as a cook in Thai restaurants in Antwerp, like the fashionable River Kwai.

 

Phousith lived for several years in Utrecht in the Netherlands, during his early and mid-twenties, reportedly making a small fortune by procuring Thai women for prostitution.

 

Returning to Antwerp, Phousith was legally married to a Korean woman from Antwerp, Ine Mi-Nang, in 1994. They had one child and separated after one year of marriage. They were never divorced. They remain officially (legally) married. (Ine had a child by a previous marriage or relationship.)

Phousith returned to work as a cook in a Thai restaurant in Antwerp.

 

Following his separation from Ine Mi-Nang, Phousith lived in Antwerp with Thanomjit ("Dao") Chokjanphen, a Thai woman of lowland Lao stock from northeastern Thailand, from late 1995 to January 1999.

 

Thanomjit ("Dao") Chokjanphen, Thai Wife

 

Thanomjit Chokjanphen was born in Phu Kradung District of Loei Province on 15 December 1970, the daughter of Pong Chokjanphen (changed from the surname Tamnolan) of Chaiyaphum and Boonchan Veelaipan of Chumphae District of Khon Kaen Province. Thanomjit was born in that section of Phu Kradung District that became the sub-district of Pha Khao in the 1980s and eventually a district in the 1990s.)

 

Thanomjit ran away from home at the age of 16 to escape a marriage to an older local farmer that was arranged by her parents.

 

At age 18, Thanomjit had a child by a Thai boyfriend - a boy, Oliver Albert Chanyut, born in Sri Bun Rung District of Udon Thani Province in February 1989.

 

Thanomjit met a Belgian national from Deurne District of Antwerp, Peter Francine Francois Vermeulen, in the popular Thai resort town of Pattaya in June or July 1990.

 

Thanomjit went to Belgium in May 1991 through a legal marriage to Vermeulen in Bangkok in the previous month, April 1991. They resided in Deurne District. They lived together for four and one-half years.

 

Thanomjit worked as a bar-maid at the Gambrinus Pub in Deurne District, which was owned by a Thai woman from Chonburi (and her Flemish boyfriend). Thanomjit also worked as a cleaning woman with a local Filipina in Antwerp.

 

Vermeulen and Thanomjit did not have children. Apparently, they did not want any. They separated in October or November 1995 and officially divorced in Antwerp in August 1998.

 

Phousith and Thanomjit had two children, born out of wedlock: a boy, Ed, born in Deurne District of Antwerp in April 1997, and a girl, Anna, born in Pha Khao District of Loei Province of Thailand in July 1999.

 

Phousith and Thanomjit separated following Thanomjit's arrest for theft of baggage during a trip to Thailand in January 1999. Phousith returned to Belgium alone. Thanomjit remained in Thailand with their two children, Ed and Anna.

 

Thanomjit lived with a local Lao, Jarat _________, who was four to five years younger, from 2002 to 2004, in the village in a common-law marriage.

 

Thanomjit had a child, a boy, ______________, born in Pha Khao District, in June 2004.

 

After 2004, Thanomjit lived in a common-law marriage with another local Lao, Saman ________, who is six years her senior.

 

Ed Sibounloeang (also known as Ed Chokjanphen)

 

Ed was born at Middelaeres Hospital in Deurne District of Antwerp on 23 April 1997. Phousith and Thanomjit were listed as the child's parents in the hospital's registration of birth.

 

By law in Belgium, parents must register the birth of a child with the local district registrar's office (etat civile/burgerlijkestand) within 15 days of birth. Thailand has the same law.

 

Phousith and Thanomjit failed to register Ed's birth at the registrar's office in Deurne District. (Thanomjit neglected also to register the birth of her first child, Chanyut, born in Thailand in 1989, and had to be reminded of the requirement by the chief of the district and summoned to his office.)

In reply to private inquiries (by Thanomjit's mother, through a third party with power of attorney), about the registration shortly afterward, A. Van Acker, director of the registrar's office in Deurne District, replied that the failure of parents to register a child's birth in Deurne District was rare. He said that once or twice every year parents failed to register the birth of a child. He said that in his experience the negligent parents had always been Africans, or, more specifically, Moroccans. Ed's case was the first involving Orientals. Until then local Orientals had dutifully reported the births of their children.

 

Van Acker said that because the parents did not register the birth as required, the registrar's office summoned the delivering doctor from the hospital and the Antwerp city councilman for Deurne District on the sixteenth day after the child's birth to attest to the birth. This is an established procedure.

 

Van Acker said that his office, also following routine procedure, informed the Antwerp prosecuting attorney's office of the parents' failure to declare the child's birth. Van Acker said that the prosecuting attorney’s office, again following routine procedure, would investigate the matter to find out why the parents failed to register the birth of their child.

 

Van Acker said that the law required the registrar's office to register Ed as the son of Thanomjit's estranged Belgian husband, Peter Vermeulen, instead of his actual (biological) father, Phousith, because Thanomjit was still legally married to Vermeulen.

 

Van Acker explained that by law, a child born within 300 days of his mother’s divorce had to be registered as the child of the mother’s former husband even if the latter was not the child’s biological father.

 

There is evidence, however, that this regulation is not always followed in Antwerp.

 

Van Acker said that his office required an order from the civil court of Antwerp to correct the child's birth record.

 

Van Acker said that the child's parents, or the child when he reached majority at age 18, could petition the civil court to order the registrar’s office to correct the birth record. Van Acker added that the child or his parents would have to be represented by a lawyer.

 

Van Acker said that the court would order a DNA (blood) test to settle the question of paternity.

 

Thanomjit's mother, Mrs. Boonchan Chokjanphen, of Thailand, alerted Thanomjit to Ed's legal predicament. Thanomjit then asked Vermeulen for a divorce. The couple filed for divorce in Antwerp in July 1997. The divorce was official 13 months later, on 7 August 1998.

 

Also at Thanomjit's request, Vermeulen hired a lawyer from Deurne District, Luc Hertoghs, to correct Ed's official records.

 

The case of Chanyut Chokjanphen

 

In October 1995, Vermeulen made a false declaration of parentage of Chanyut Chokjanphen, Thanomjit's first child, who was the issue of a previous relationship Thanomjit had with a Thai in Thailand, to the same registrar's office in Deurne District.

 

Belgian and Thai pedophiles, especially in the schools, police, city administration, courts and embassies used the fraud to obstruct the family's efforts to find, contact and recover Chanyut, which the family launched shortly after Thanomjit evaded, with the help of an international pedophile ring, an official Thai government protective order in Thailand to keep Chanyut in the country, in September 1995.

 

Mrs. Boonchan tried to hire private attornies in Antwerp to represent her in Chanyut's case (with the help of a third party with power of attorney) but she was repeatedly cheated.

 

Thus, in May 1997, the Antwerp Bar Association appointed a lawyer, Christine De Block, from Boom District of Antwerp, to represent Mrs. Boonchan pro deo in the case of Chanyut.

 

De Block and Hertoghs agreed to present the cases of both children, Chanyut and Ed, to the civil court together. De Block delayed Chanyut's case for many months in order to present it together with Ed's case.

 

The civil court appointed guardians ad hoc to both children on the same day, 27 October 1997. A lawyer from Antwerp, Ann Masson, was appointed Ed's ad hoc guardian. A lawyer from Antwerp, Ann Heremans, was appointed Chanyut's ad hoc guardian.

 

According to Masson, DNA testing in late 1997 proved that Vermeulen was not related to Ed and that Phousith was the child's father.

 

Vermeulen refused to comply with Boonchan's request to cooperate in Chanyut's case and disclaim paternity of him too.

 

Masson said that Mrs. Boonchan's lawyer could subpoena Vermeulen's DNA results.

 

De Block abandoned Chanyut's case in October 1997 without giving notification or explanation, before the court could order DNA testing.

 

De Block dropped the case after speaking to J. Jacques, an assistant prosecuting attorney in Antwerp who was assigned to the investigation of marriages of convenience in Antwerp. Boonchan's representatative in Antwerp, a friend of the family, referred Chanyut's case directly to Jacques in early 1997 because the prosecuting attorney's office failed to give the matter due and proper consideration.

 

De Block appears to have had conflicts of interests and perverse preferences in this case. She was a neighbor of Eric Lannie, a corrupt assistant prosecuting attorney assigned to the juvenile court of Antwerp. Lannie deliberately opposed due process in Oliver Chanyut's case, apparently because of personal conflicts of interests stemming from his complicity with local officials in the traffic in women and children and related fraud. In mid-1998, Jacques said that he had referred Chanyut's case to Lannie.

 

In her last communication with the family in Thailand, De Block expressed sympathy with Peter Vermeulen. She said she "felt sorry" for Vermeulen.

 

In 1998, the Antwerp Bar Association (Orde van advocaten te Antwerpen) appointed a string of lawyers to replace De Block. All refused to pursue the case. Complaints by Boonchan's representative to the bar association's president were ignored. Two of the attornies appointed to Boonchan were from the same law firm as the president of the bar association. A third lawyer was a life-long friend and neighbor of Eric Lannie and tried to defend Lannie with personal attacks against Boonchan's representative.

 

Another lawyer, Sidney Berneman, was appointed to the case. Earlier, in November 1993, Berneman secured from the juvenile court in Antwerp a temporary guardianship for a couple from France and the United States who wished to take Chanyut to the U. S. The guardianship was required to qualify Chanyut for an American pre-adoption visa to the U. S. The couple abandoned their plans in April 1994. The police placed Chanyut is his mother's care on a temporary basis and subject to their supervison. Shortly afterward, Berneman agreed to 

resume the case. He would obtain a review of the case by social workers. He cautioned, however, that it would take time. Berneman declined the bar's appointment to the case in 1998. He maintained that he represented the couple from France and the U. S. In fact, however, Berneman did not want to take a case pro deo. 

 

Mrs. Boonchan complained to the Antwerp Bar Association (Orde van Avocaaten) and the prosecuting attorney (procureur de roi de Anvers/Procureur des Konings) for Antwerp, Werner Van Walle, that Vermeulen's behaviour was criminal and Hertoghs' conduct irresponsible and unethical. She asked Van Walle to prosecute Vermeulen and Hertoghs for trafficking in children and related offenses. The complaint was ignored.

 

The final court session in Ed's case was scheduled for 23 October 1998.

 

The last lawyer appointed to Chanyut's case was Eric Van Gouthem of Antwerp, in September 1998. Van Gouthem agreed to appear in court for the session of Ed's case but he failed to do so. Shortly afterward, Van Gouthem refused to pursue Chanyut's case, claiming that he had been told by Eric Lannie of the prosecuting attorney's office at the juvenile court to drop it; he also made obnoxious expressions of personal support for Chanyut's traffickers and Vermeulen's fraud. Hertoghs refused to delay Ed’s case.

 

To ensure that Chanyut's case was not ignored or forgotten (and to stop his traffickers), Mrs. Boonchan's son, Somkid Chokjanphen, and Mrs. Boonchan’s younger sister, Koon Seumlao, who survived Mrs. Boonchan, pursued the case as she requested before her death. They asked the president of the Antwerp Court of First Instance, August Kiebooms, to delay the final judgment in Ed's case until Chanyut's case could be presented with it as originally planned.

 

Phousith and Thanomjit were wholly uncooperative.

They ignored all requests by Boonchan and, later, her aunt, Koon, to cooperate in Chanyut's case for his sake.

 

According to Hertoghs in December 1999, there was a final judgment: the court had ruled that Vermeulen was not related to Ed.

 

However, more than one year later, in December 1999, the Antwerp District Office still listed Ed as the son of Vermeulen.

 

In December 1999, district office clerks said that the court, following routine procedure, should have informed the registrar's office of the court ruling. The clerks agreed to send an enquiry to the registrar's office, which would take about two months, and request the necessary correction of the child's records.

 

According to Hertoghs, Phousith had to present a copy of the final judgment to the Deurne District Registrar's Office and request the correction of the child's records himself, in person.

 

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In January 1999, Thanomjit returned to Thailand, with Phousith and Ed, for a four-week vacation.

 

Thanomjit promptly compromised her aunt and her older brother, persuading them to drop their efforts to rescue Chanyut, and then destroyed thousands of pages of official documents concerning Chanyut that were stored in her late mother's home (destroying also hundreds of documents concerning Ed), that were kept by Boonchan's representative.

 

Thanomjit was arrested for the theft shortly afterward, jailed and eventually tried in criminal court in Loei and Bangkok.

 

In early 2000, Thanomjit confessed at a large public meeting in her village arranged by a senior local policeman (who worked also for the Crime Suppression Division) to the theft and destruction of the documents and explained that she had hoped that by destroying them Chanyut would be forgotten.

 

Numerous local policemen, other local officials, and a local translator, who have yet to be arrested and prosecuted, tried to cover up Thanamojit's confession with false reports about the meeting.

 

In a very perverse letter to Thanomjit's aunt, meant to cover for pedophiles and traffickers, the mayor of Antwerp, Leona Detiege, insisted that Thanomjit had been framed for the theft in Thailand. Detiege meant toi cover for the pedophile ring that trafficked Chanyut to Belgium. (Detiege was later arrested in Belgium on Visa card fraud charges and forced to resign as mayor. Detiege had been part of Visa card fraud ring that included the Antwerp city police chief, who also had to resign.)

 

Anna Sibounloeang (also known as Anna Chokjanphen)

 

Thanomjit gave birth to a third child, Anna Sibounloeang, in Pha Khao District of Loei Province in Thailand on 27 July 1999.

 

The birth of Anna, who is the child of Phousith, a Belgian citizen, has not been registered at the Belgian embassy in Bangkok. (Thanomjit shunned Belgian citizenship during her residency of eight and one-half years in Belgium.) When (and if) Anna's birth is ever registered at the Belgian embassy, Phousith must be listed as the child’s father.

 

According to the relevant Belgian civil law, Vermeulen cannot be registered as Anna’s father because his divorce from Thanomjit was official more than 300 days before the child’s birth.

 

Peter Francine Francois Vermeulen, Belgian national

Peter Francine Francois Vermeulen was born in Merksem, just north of Antwerp, on 7 February 1965.

His parents were Franciscus Lambertus Vermeulen, a housepainter, and Luiza Thys, a divorcee.

Franciscus ("Frank") Vermeulen was born in 1919. His marriage to Thys appears to have been his only marriage and Peter Vermeulen appears to have been his only child.

Thys had two children - a daughter, Veerle, and a son, Ronald ("Ronnie") - by a previous short marriage, to Pierre Jenssen of Deurne District.

According to clerks in the district office of Deurne District, Franciscus Vermeulen legally adopted both children, Veerle and Ronald, with the required formal authorisation of an Antwerp juvenile court tribunal, one year after his marriage to Thys, in 1961. (The clerks maintained that that Franciscus Vermeulen did not resort to a false recognition as Peter Vermeulen did 24 years later.)

Peter Vermeulen grew up in Ekeren with his mother, father and older half-siblings in rented rooms on the second floor of a private home directly behind the Ekeren train station.

Vermeulen might have completed secondary school (but he can be correctly described as "semi-literate" or "functionally illiterate").

Vermeulen followed friends and co-workers from Antwerp, most of them marginal types and perpetual troublemakers living partly off of prostitution, to the popular Thai resort town of Pattaya, where, during his first trip to Thailand, he met a Lao woman from northeastern Thailand, Thanomjit Chokjanphen, in June or July 1990.

Vermeulen returned to Thailand for trips of four to eight weeks in November 1990, April 1991, November 1992 and June 1995.

Vermeulen impregnated Thanomjit in mid-1990 and she had an illegal abortion in Pattaya four months later, while Vermeulen was in Belgium.

Thanomjit went to Belgium in May 1991 after a legal marriage to Vermeulen in Bangkok in the previous month, April 1991.

They resided in Deurne District, first on Tweemonstraat, at the end of the street, in an apartment above the freeway. In mid-1993, they moved to Lakborslei.

Vermeulen worked in an auto body repair shop; after his marriage to Thanomjit, he depended on the Belgian husbands of local Thai wives for employment. He drove a wrecker for an auto junkyard in Wommelgem, a small town next to Antwerp; he also performed odd jobs, such as running errands, for Thai wives; and he took officially undeclared work like housepainting.

Thanomjit worked as a bar-maid at the Gambrinus Pub in Deurne District and as a cleaning woman with a local Filipina.

Vermeulen and Thanomjit lived together for four and one-half years. They did not want children. Thanomjit's role was merely that of a "Thai wife".

Vermeulen and Thanomjit separated in October or November 1995 and officially divorced in Antwerp in August 1998.

Shortly after the separation, in late 1995, Vermeulen sought out and physically attacked Thanomjit s new mate, a Laotian refugee, Phousith Sibounloeang, in a Thai restaurant in Chinatown in Antwerp.

Vermeulen has a generally hostile disposition and resembles a typical punk hoodlum. His favorite activity is drinking beer in a bar.

There is some question about Vermeulen's sexual orientation. He wears an earring. There is a repugnant odor about him that is obnoxious and causes suspicions. His only friends appear to be Lao prostitutes from Thailand and their Belgian boyfriends.

Nobody sane would trust Vermeulen with children.

In the early mid-1990s, some Antwerp city officials, including Patsy Sorensen of PAYOKE, said they had long suspected that Vermeulen's friends were involved in organised international pedophile, prostitution and pornography rings. Sorensen was particularly interested in the possibility that they were involved in pornography. These officials, however, subsequently appeared to have been compromised and persuaded to conspire with them in the traffic in children. Sorensen left official evidence of her complicity.

Neither Peter Vermeulen nor Veerle Vermeulen had children. Ronald Vermeulen, married to Andrea Rooman, had one child, a daughter, Crystal. They live in the small working class section of Ekeren.

 

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The above information was obtained for Mrs. Boonchan Chokjanphen and her relatives through power of attorney; the above was drafted from notes provided by friends of the family.

 

 

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A Thai Child Kidnapped and Trafficked by Pedophiles and Fraudsters in Government:

 

http://jameschampa.tripod.com/fraudbyantwerpofficials/