Deaths almost daily in the South
by Daniel Pedersen on Mar.26, 2009, under Battles, Southern Thailand, Thailand reportage
The Courier Mail
March 5, 2005
Bangkok
THERE are deaths almost daily in the dirt-poor Muslim-dominated south of the country that borders Malaysia.
The Government blames Muslim separatists and terrorists for the conflict gripping the region, as the body count grinds its way towards 1000 in little more than a year.
The one-party Government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra considers the kingdom’s three southernmost provinces, far and away Thailand’s poorest, as hotbeds of separatism and has announced his determination to quash any uprising.
This is a spectacular turnaround from July 23, 2002, when Mr Thaksin downplayed any suggestion of ideological conflict in the south, claiming bandits, not separatists, were behind the violence.
This was shortly after two heads were found in a bag in Yala province with a note promising more to come.
On February 17 this year, in the wake of a car bomb explosion that killed five people and injured 40 others, Mr Thaksin declared that not an inch of Thailand would be ceded to separatists even if blood covered the land.
His emotional statement was made hours after an explosives-laden pickup truck was remotely detonated outside a restaurant strip a few minutes after 7pm on a Thursday.
Mr Thaksin has just won another four years in office with the country’s largest election victory. But only one of his candidates managed victory in the south. Political commentators have suggested the country is divided as never before.
Bolstered by his landslide, Mr Thaksin has vowed to get tough.
He proposed cutting development funding to 350 villages considered hostile to the Government.
But he backtracked after howls of protest and the proposal has been shelved.
Mr Thaksin’s recent dispatch of another 12,000 troops to the south does not inspire confidence among any observers that hostilities will cease soon.
A squad trained in psychological warfare is included in the fresh contingent.
On Tuesday, the US State Department, in its annual human rights report, drew attention to the southern violence.
The report referred to what has become known as the Tak Bai massacre.
On October 25 last year, at least 85 unarmed Muslims died in custody. Seven were shot dead and another 78 died of suffocation after 1300 people were piled in the back of military trucks, face-down with their hands tied behind their backs.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Asia division executive director Brad Adams said the Thaksin administration was turning the clock back on human rights.
He cited the case of a human rights lawyer, Somchai Neelaphaijit, who disappeared almost a year ago and is presumed dead.
ENDS
Leave a Reply
"Secret Genocide is a scholarly book on the plight of the Karen of Burma. Author Daniel Pedersen writes about the secret genocide of the Karen people at the hands of the Burmese junta, who use murder, rape, forced labour and torture to quell their enemies. Decades after the Karen took up arms against Rangoon; there is no telling when - or if - their struggle for a secure homeland will finally be accomplished"
Read and add comments at the book's blog
Secret Genocide by publisher Maverick House. >>> Read prologue.
