| Submit your comments on this article |
| Southeast Asia |
| 300 Thai Schools to Close Amid Attacks |
| 2006-11-25 |
| Pay attention folks: One day this or something like it will come to a school near you! Perhaps the perpetrators will shoot out of car trunks or cracked apartment windows then run off and hide at first. What do you think your neighbors' reaction will be? Yours? Your kids, grandkids, or great-grandkids? It will go for a generation or so then they'll get bold. Don't worry, you don't have to do anything to opt in. You'll have to get off your butt and do something if you want to opt out, though. Hundreds of schools in Thailand's restive south will shut their doors in response to increasingly vicious attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents against teachers and schools, a regional education representative said. The closure, which begins Monday, affects all 336 primary and secondary schools in the province of Pattani, where two teachers were shot and killed by suspected insurgents in the past two days. In one of the killings, attackers shot a school principal Friday, and then set his body on fire. "Teachers can't bear what has happened," said Bunsom Thongsriprai, president of Teachers' Association in Pattani. "They are paranoid, worried and afraid." He said the schools will reopen when teachers feel safe. More than 1,800 people have died from violence in Thailand's three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces - Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat - since an Islamic insurgency flared up in January 2004. |
| Posted by:gorb |
| #1 "Let's make peace, let's drop origami , let's kiss ass" - Thai Leader |
| Posted by: Jesing Ebbease3087 2006-11-25 17:21 |