Thai Islamists Continuing Violence Despite Government Appeasers

The Thai Islamists - who have made restive a household term here - have refused to entertain still more appeasement talks from the Thai PM. Go figure. Considering that the Islamists have made quite a bit of headway - especially in beheadings - there's no point for them to talk.

"As of now, there has been no progress on starting negotiations, because that would require the agreement of both sides. So there are no talks for now," he told reporters.

"My government is still adhering to a policy of non-violence, but cooperation from the people is crucial," he said.

Since Surayud took office following a military coup last year, he has made a series of peace gestures to the militants fighting along the southern border with Malaysia.

But the violence has only escalated since the coup, and the government has deployed thousands more troops and paramilitary forces to the southern region.

Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday that despite the peace gestures, Thailand still has no concrete strategy to end state-sanctioned abuses.

The report warned that the conflict was degenerating into a brutal armed conflict in which 89 per cent of the fatalities have been civilians.

(HT: Rantburg) And nearly all of those casualties were inflicted by the Islamists, not the Thai government. HRW actually does get this one right in their report, despite the article above giving a different impression.

“After decades of low-intensity insurgency, Thailand’s southern region is becoming the scene of a brutal armed conflict,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Separatist militants are intentionally targeting both Buddhist and Muslim civilians in shootings, bombings and machete attacks.”

Village-based militants called Pejuang Kemerdekaan Patani (Patani Freedom Fighters) in the loose network of BRN-Coordinate (National Revolution Front-Coordinate) have now emerged as the backbone of the new generation of separatist militants. Increasingly, they claim that the southern border provinces are not the land of Buddhist Thais, but a religious “conflict zone” which must be divided between ethnic Malay Muslims and “infidels.” The separatists seek to forcibly liberate Patani Darulsalam (Islamic Land of Patani), from what they call a Buddhist Thai occupation.

Human Rights Watch found that separatist militants carried out more than 3,000 attacks on civilians from January 2004 to July 2007. At the same time, there were some 500 attacks targeting various military units and their personnel, and a similar number of attacks targeting police units and their personnel.

Of the 2,463 people killed in attacks during the past three-and-a-half half years, 2,196 (or 89 percent) were civilians. Buddhist Thais and ethnic Malay Muslims were killed in bomb attacks, shootings, assassinations, ambushes, and machete hackings. At least 29 victims have been beheaded and mutilated. There have been hundreds of militant attacks on teachers, schools, public health workers, hospital staff, and community health centers. For the first time in the region’s history of separatist insurgencies, Buddhist monks and novices are now among those killed and injured by separatist militants.

“Violence against civilians is being used by separatist militants to scare Buddhist Thais away from these provinces, keep ethnic Malay Muslims under control, and discredit the Thai authorities,” said Adams. “But it is illegal and morally indefensible to deliberately target civilians in any circumstances.”

More than 2,500 people have been slaughtered in the ongoing violence which has become more intense since the Thai military staged a coup last year to bring an end to the violence. Their appeasement has actually resulted in an increase in the violence, not less. The Islamists aren't stupid - they see that the Thai government is weak and unable to stop them, so there is no reason for them to cease their violent actions.

Eight more people have been killed over the past two days - two teachers were shot, and six other Buddhists were killed.

"The insurgents have shifted their tactics from beheading villagers to targetting public school teachers," said Pattani Governor Panu Uthairat. Altogether 69 teachers have been killed in Thailand's southern conflict over the past three years and eight months.

Female teacher Kesine Timthep, 42, was shot dead Monday in front of her pupils by two gunmen as she was about to enter the Sasanasuksa School in Sai Buri, Pattani. A male teacher was also gunned down Monday in Yalang, also in Pattani province.

Arsonists set fire to at least five state schools in the province Monday night, forcing ten schools to shut their doors to pupils on Tuesday.

Prapaijit Noonlaksert, 44, a female rubber tapper, was killed in an ambush early Tuesday as she entered a plantation with four other Thai-Buddhist workers, police said.

"The recent wave of attacks may be in revenge for all the suspects authorities have arrested in recent weeks," said Panu. Thai authorities have rounded up hundreds of suspected insurgents in the past three months, keeping many of them in detention under powers allowed by an emergency decree enacted in the region.