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Nation Junior (August 1-15 1999) written by Phoowadon Duangmee

MEAN Thai Customs officials have refused to pass on gifts sent from Leonardo DiCaprio's mother to Samut Prakan students!

What is more, when the students told the officials to send back the gifts, the stingy Customs men didn't. Now they're going to auction the gifts and make money out of the gifts themselves!

The sad story of the cruel Customs officials and the saddened Samut Prakan kids began earlier this year.

Students at Sriwittayapaknam School in Samut Prakan set up a web page about Leonardo DiCaprio when the American star was in Thailand filming The Beach.

The school claims the website got 274,409 visitors from 120 countries around the world. And one of those regular visitors was Leonardo's mother!

Mrs DiCaprio thought the students did such a good job, she decided to send them gifts of video cassettes. She sent them 120 videotapes of Titanic and documentary films.

When the gifts arrived in Thailand, greedy Customs officials took one look at them and saw money to be made. They slapped a Bt12,000 tax on them!

Richard Barrow, a 32-year-old computer teacher at the school who is in charge of the project, said everybody was shocked at the school.

''The situation was very embarrassing. Leonardo and his family sent the gifts to our students, but we couldn't pick them up,'' he told NJ Magazine. Finally the students told the customs officials to send back the videos, as they couldn't afford to pay the Bt12,000.

That was five months ago -- and the videos never arrived back in America. Instead, Customs officials decided to auction the videos -- and have offered them to the school for Bt10,000! Can you believe it?

NJ Magazine contacted the Customs officials to ask what on earth they were doing. A Customs officer said that the videotapes are declared import products. The receiver needs to pay an import tax for 33 per cent of the total value, plus 7 per cent value added tax (VAT).

''Not even donations can escape tax. Every imported product valued at more than Bt500 is charged import tax. Sriwittayapaknam certainly needs to pay the tax, though those videotapes were sent as gifts,'' said Rattawut Rattanaporn, a Customs officer.

According the Thailand Customs Act 1926, the DiCaprio videotapes must go to auction. Richard said he tried to contact the Customs Department to send the videotapes back to America. Two months later he received a letter from the department. ''They said they could not send the videotapes back to America because they had already opened them,'' said the teacher.

The unlucky students then will have to run to the video shops if they're really want to see the gifts sent from the Hollywood star.

''Everyone feels sad because we're expecting to see and keep the celebrity gifts at the Movie Club at school,'' said Nattawud Daoruang, a 14-year-old web designer at the school. ''It's not fair to demand tax from students. We could never afford that sort of money.''