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| Southeast Asia |
| More violence in South Thailand |
| 2005-08-24 |
| When she first heard the twin bangs, Saripah Kakme thought the fuses had blown. But when she and her 5-year-old daughter saw a bloodstained motorbike helmet rolling across the porch, they knew a 20-month insurgency gripping Thailand's Muslim-majority south had just claimed another victim. "I thought there was something wrong with the electricity," Saripah, 36, told Reuters on Wednesday outside her wooden home on the outskirts of Yala, capital of one of Buddhist Thailand's southernmost provinces. "Then I looked up and saw the body. He was lying there in the grass. Blood was pouring from his head. I didn't want to look at his face because I was scared, but I knew he was alive because from the back I saw him breathe twice. Then he was still." Several bystanders saw the hit, carried out by two young men on a motorbike. This sort of attack has become a hallmark of the violence in the region, where Muslim separatists waged a low-level guerrilla war in the 1970s and 1980s. The insurgency has now claimed more than 800 lives since it started in January 2004, making the latest victim, Buddhist schoolteacher Witchiyan Sukwanmani, 51, just another statistic. But the point-blank precision of the killing -- at least one bullet smashed into the helmet's visor -- and its planning -- the army said Witchiyan was almost certainly tailed from his school -- suggest those behind the violence are well practised. Carried out only a mile (1.6 km) from an army outpost, they also seemed to know that the 30,000 troops and police stationed across the three southern provinces, where 80 percent of the population are Muslim not Buddhist, are powerless. "On a motorbike, they are so fast," said army officer Pakasit Kaewpuangngam, with a shake of the head and a gesture towards the dense forest which covers much of the far south, an independent Muslim sultanate before being annexed by Bangkok 100 years ago. One Humvee army jeep and two dozen soldiers and police were on the scene within 15 minutes of the shooting, but there was little to do other than marshal gawping bystanders and have a cursory look along the verge for spent cartridges. Even though the Thai government says it is in control, the unrest has rattled foreign investors and governments who fear the longer it goes on, the more likely it is to suck in international militant organisations such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, or its southeast Asian affiliate Jemaah Islamiah. In the main, the killings target Buddist teachers or government workers, as well as soldiers and police, leading to speculation that they are part of a campaign to rid southern Thailand of outside, non-Muslim influence. But in the climate of fear that has seen many Buddhist and Muslim residents sell up and leave, nobody wants to voice their opinions. "I cannot say why they did this," said Sariphah, clasping her silent daughter to her chest. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |