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Thai PM vows iron fist against southern rebels
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra headed to a Muslim-dominated part of southern Thailand on Sunday after promising to act aggressively against militants and illegal weapons they have used in deadly attacks there. "I will have to launch a massive crackdown on weapons," Thaksin said on Saturday in his weekly radio address. "We will use both a soft approach and an iron fist to sweep out these people. Innocent people don't have to fear or worry."The cause of Thaksin's visit was a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in the southern town of Tak Bai, where 78 detained Muslims suffocated or were crushed to death after being rounded up and piled onto trucks on Oct. 25. The trip is primarily intended to reassure people in the region, a government spokesman said. "The main point of today is not about security," said the spokesman, Jakrapob Penkair. "It's to boost the morale of the people at Tak Bai." Over the weekend, five Buddhists were shot and killed, the police said. Buddhists are estimated to make up 30 percent of the population in Thailand's three southernmost provinces near the border with Malaysia. Panitan Wattanayagorn, assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, who is a security expert on the south, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that attacks appeared to be increasingly better coordinated and planned. He said the militants included a mixture of groups including separatists, Islamic hard-liners and the disaffected. "People are more randomly selected," he said. "I think the offices and the camps and the high-profile targets are better protected. They have still been attacked, but since September they have switched their targets to softer ones." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-11-08 |
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