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Another jihadi beheading in southern Thailand
Suspected Muslim insurgents beheaded a Buddhist rice mill owner Thursday in violence-wracked southern Thailand, police said. Assailants shot Juan Khaewthongprakham, the 72-year-old mill owner, before cutting off his head in the Kok Pho district of Pattani province, police Capt. Sutthisit Phetchom said.Police were not able to find the head, and were using trained dogs to search for it, he said. Flyers left at the scene said that the beheading was retaliation for an attack the night before when unidentified assailants threw a grenade into a tea shop and injured three Muslim villagers. Some Muslims believe several attacks against Muslim villagers are carried out covertly by government security forces. It was the second beheading this month in southern Thailand, where about 2,000 people have died in an Islamic separatist insurgency during the past three years. A Buddhist man who worked as an ice cream vendor was shot and beheaded on Feb. 1 by suspected Muslim insurgents in Pattani's Muang district. Drive-by shootings and bombings occur almost daily in the three Muslim-majority provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani. Buddhist civilians have been targeted by the insurgents in what is believed to be a tactic to drive them from the area and cause bad feelings between followers of the two religions. Buddhist monks have been beheaded, Buddhist teachers slain, and leaflets have been distributed around Buddhist villages telling residents to leave the Muslim-dominated region. Leaflets left in mailboxes and motorcycle baskets in Pattani this week said: "We will give Thai Buddhists three days to leave our land. Otherwise, we will kill you and burn your houses...Thai Buddhists will never live peacefully. You will be killed cruelly." But Muslim citizens have also been slain especially those seen as collaborating with the government as have teachers, officials, soldiers and police. Thailand's Queen Sirikit on Wednesday called for Thais especially those living in Bangkok, far from the violence to express their outrage and protest at the killing of innocent people by Muslim insurgents. "We should express our concern views via radio, television or letters to tell the insurgents to stop. Otherwise, people would think that our country is uncivilized as they can kill anyone anytime," she said. Posted by: ryuge 2007-02-09 |
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