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| Southeast Asia |
| Seven dead in Thai attacks |
| 2005-11-08 |
| ISN SECURITY WATCH (08/11/05) â Thailandâs Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Tuesday said his government would go on the offensive against Muslim militants who carried out a series of deadly attacks overnight in the countryâs southern provinces. âMany were arrested. We have to continue our work,â Shinawatra told reporters. âNext time itâs our turn to be more offensive.â Five people, including two militants, were killed in several coordinated attacks in the southern province of Yala, and one person was killed in the neighboring province of Pattani, late on Monday and early on Tuesday. The managing director of the Thongtin Thai newspaper was shot dead in neighboring Narathiwat province, a senior police source told ISN Security Watch. Abduloh Mama, 37, was killed by gunmen in the border town of Sungai Ko-lok, in Narathiwat, according to the police source. The attacks took place after the prime minister had attended a Buddhist religious ceremony he chaired at Khao Kong temple in Narathiwatâs Muang district. During the visit to Khao Kong, Shinawatra announced that all temples in the three southern provinces hit by violence would have warning sirens installed and monks would be allowed to carry walkie-talkies. âNew security measures to prevent attacks on Buddhist monks in those provinces would include installing warning sirens in all of the 197 temples in Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani,â the prime minister said. According to a report carried by the Associated Press, Shinawatra on Tuesday claimed that Islamic insurgents from southern Thailand had held anti-government meetings in Malaysia - an assertion that could further raise tensions between the neighbors. Shinawatra told reporters he had received reports from people who had attended such a meeting in northern Malaysiaâs Kelantan state, and that âduring the meeting, they [Muslim insurgents] lashed out at me.â Relations between the two countries were strained recently by Malaysiaâs reluctance to repatriate 131 Thai Muslims who had fled into its territory. Last month, Malaysiaâs Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told reporters that the Malaysian authorities would not forcibly repatriate the 131 displaced Thai Muslims. âWe cannot force and pack the 131 people, as there are certain international norms that we have to abide [by] when people ask for refuge in our country,â Syed Hamid said. âThe migrants will have to decide on their own if they want to return home,â he added. The 131 Thai Muslims say they fled to Malaysia because they feared for their lives in Thailand's restive south. However, Thailand suspected that some of those refugees were insurgents responsible for violent attacks in the country. On Monday, Thailandâs Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon rejected an appeal for self-rule made last week by the separatist Muslim group Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO). The PULO issued the statement from its office in Sweden last week. The group called for self-government in Thailandâs Muslim-majority south and warned that the conflict could degenerate into a war between religions. âWeâre not a federal system. Autonomy in that sense is something that is not part of our system,â Kantathi said in an interview with Agence France Presse. âItâs a unified system that we have. We donât have the concept of autonomy within our constitution,â Kantathi added. Kantathi was also asked if any foreign extremists from Indonesia, Malaysia or elsewhere with links to Osama bin Ladenâs al-Qaida network were involved in the unrest. The minister said: âWe have no indication so far.â âOf course, people know one another sometimes. But there is no indication of any foreign terrorism involvement in the situation,â he said, adding that the trouble in the south was âan internal problem in Thailandâ. Francesca Lawe-Davies, a Southeast Asia Analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Jakarta, Indonesia, told ISN Security Watch Tuesday she did not think there was anything particularly new about the Thai governmentâs response to the PULOâs appeal for autonomy. âThe Thai government has always vehemently rejected any suggestion of autonomy for the majority Malay southern provinces. Beyond the fear of âBalkanizationâ, the word âautonomyâ, for which there is no equivalent in Thai, is often misunderstood as meaning independence, so there are semantic complications as well,â Lawe-Davies said. When asked about Shinawatra's visits to the restive southern region, Lawe-Davies said while it was important for the prime minister to demonstrate that he was engaged with the problem and prioritizing it, the visits could cause frustration for locals, âbecause he [Shinawatra] comes under heavy military escort, with mobile phone signals jammed in the areas he visits to thwart mobile phone-detonated bombs, whereas locals remain vulnerable to militant attacksâ. âThere are no easy fixes, and this problem is likely to be with us for a long time, but focusing on improving intelligence collection, improving relations with Malay Muslim villagers, and trying to understand and respond to the political grievances from which perpetrators of violence are drawing strength, is likely to have a greater impact over time,â Lawe-Davies added. Over 1,100 people have died in the Muslim-majority southern provinces of Thailand in 21 months of shootings, bombings, and arson attacks. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 About bloody time. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-11-08 16:34 |
| #2 I have Thai friends who live in Ao Nang in Krabi with the nicest places/people on the map. It is not a million miles from Yala and Pattani so I hope Thaksin stops the militants, before they start trouble in the other Southern provinces. |
| Posted by: Wayne Rooney 2005-11-08 11:46 |
| #1 Don't take turns Thaksin, start kicking ass and don't stop until you reach KL. Ignore the super-lib ankle-biters. And screw making deal with Malaysia, fool, they've set you up and will grind you down. Your people are dying, you PR whore. Help them or resign. |
| Posted by: Regnad Kcin 2005-11-08 10:50 |