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| Southeast Asia |
| Schools closed in Thailand's troubled deep South |
| 2006-05-22 |
| Bangkok - Thai education officials, intimidated by a recent kidnapping and beating of two teachers that left one in a coma, decided on Sunday to shut down 100 schools in the troubled, majority Muslim province of Narathiwat until security can be assured. Pairuj Saengthong, director of the Narathiwat Office of Education, said 100 of the province's 199 schools would be closed 'for an indefinite period' starting from Monday. Narathiwat is part of Thailand's majority Muslim 'deep South,' comprising the country's three southernmost provinces that border Malaysia that once made up the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani. On Friday, irate villagers in Rangae district of Narathiwat kidnapped two teachers as a reprisal against the government's arrest of suspected Muslim separatists in the area. The two women teachers were severely beaten before security personnel could arrive on the scene, and one of them is in a coma and expected to succumb to her head injuries. Many fellow teachers of the victims blamed Thai security personnel for arriving at the scene too late and for failing to coordinate better with teachers. Pairuj said the Narathiwat schools will reopen if officials apprehend and punish those who had attacked the two teachers, investigate why officials on the scene had let Friday's situation get out of hand, and beef up security for teachers in the area. Thai authorities have arrested two suspects. More than 1,200 people have died in clashes, ambushes, shootings, explosions and beheadings in the deep South since January 2004, when the area's long simmering separatist struggle started to escalate. The area, known in the Muslim world as Pattani, was first conquered by Bangkok in 1786 but only came under direct rule of the Thai bureaucracy in 1902. Pattani's long-lasting separatist struggle has been fuelled by the local population's sense of religious and cultural alienation from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #2 I posted a story here (a least a year ago) from the Thai press showing the Thai gov't groveling to the Islamists. They were boosting funding to the madrassas, and making all kinds of concessions... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-05-22 10:00 |
| #1 More than 1,200 people have died in clashes, ambushes, shootings, explosions and beheadings in the deep South since January 2004, when the area's long simmering separatist struggle started to escalate. And Thai authorities have arrested two. You had better get more than that and reverse this senseless slaughter. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-05-22 07:26 |