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Thai PM assumes emergency powers over Muslim south
EFL:BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra assumed emergency powers on Friday after about 60 militants launched a dramatic attack on a town in the largely Muslim far south.
Guess that "emergency meeting" had some results
The powers, assumed after two policemen were killed and 23 people wounded in Thursday night's attack on Yala, allow him to order phone taps, censor newspapers and detain suspects without charge. The "Emergency Powers Law", which replaces localised martial law in the three southernmost provinces where more than 800 people have been killed in 19 months of violence, was approved by an emergency cabinet meeting called in response to the attack.
Southern police chief Adul Saengsingkaew told reporters that interrogations of arrested suspects suggested there were about 60 people involved in the orchestrated attacks. Police were still checking closed circuit television in the hunt for the people who set off six bombs during a raid in which the militants caused an hour-long blackout.
In the darkness, gunmen on motorcycles fired at random and tossed Molotov cocktails into shops and houses. They also scattered metal spikes across three main roads to hinder the movement of security forces, police said. Bombs hit a newly opened cinema complex, a hotel cafe, a karaoke restaurant and a convenience store almost simultaneously.
"In the past seven days there have been signs that the situation will escalate," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters after the cabinet meeting. "The last straw that prompted us to impose this law is what happened at seven pm in Yala," or 1200 GMT, he said of the decree which brings responsibility for security directly into the PM's office. The new law allows Thaksin to stop the sales of newspapers and magazines deemed "threatening to national security or causing public anxiety", according to a draft seen by Reuters.
As the cabinet meeting ended, a bomb exploded at a Yala restaurant, wounding four people and damaging two motorcycles, police said. Two teachers were shot dead as they drove to work in neighbouring Narathiwat province, they said. Five policemen and three "bandits" were seriously wounded in the Yala clashes, Public Health Minister Suchai Charoenrattanakul told Channel 9 television. Only six people were still in hospital on Friday morning, he said.
Police said seven suspects were captured after a coordinated attack caught security forces by surprise in a region where most Muslims speak a Malay dialect and many cannot communicate in Thai. "Our intelligence is very poor. We must improve it," Deputy Yala Governor Winyu Thongsakul told a Bangkok radio station. There are 30,000 troops dealing with the latest bout of violence against the government of overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand in a region it annexed a century ago.
But analysts say the ease with which militants launch almost daily hit-and-run attacks suggests brute force will never win in the region, once an independent Muslim sultanate where militants fought a low-key separatist war in the 1970s and 1980s. "Battling people like this is never easy, and the fact that it takes them so little time to be successful means it will always work against the government," said Brian Dougherty of Bangkok-based security consultancy Hill and Associates.
Security forces had started to think about stepping up their intelligence operations only recently, he added. "They need to narrow down who is behind this," he said. "They need to make better use of mobile phone interception."
And cap a few mullahs
The government is adamant there is no direct foreign involvement, although top officials say some incidents, such as a spate of beheadings, may have been inspired by the insurgency in Iraq.
Posted by: Steve 2005-07-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=124148