A policeman was shot dead in Thailand's restive south on Friday where Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra toured Muslim schools under scrutiny as breeding grounds for militants killed in clashes last week. The policeman was gunned down on patrol in Narathiwat province in the Muslim-dominated south where Thaksin is trying to soothe anger over his tough military response to recent violence. Many Muslims were outraged at the killing of 108 militants, among them young students, by security forces on April 28, the bloodiest day since violence erupted in January. Thaksin said students had "acted as a tool" of extremists, and authorities are investigating whether religious schools, particularly privately run pondoks, are being used to recruit and indoctrinate young militants. "We suspect some schools might have played a significant role in these shootouts," said a police investigator in the southern province of Pattani. Police confirmed a Bangkok newspaper report that handbooks written in Malay and urging Muslims to fight for an independent state had been found on the bodies of some militants.
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The unrest has fueled fears of a resurgent separatist movement in the south, where rebels fought a low-key insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s, and where most of the population are Muslim ethnic Malays. |