(AKI) - A top human rights organisation said on Tuesday in a report that the Thai Army has used torture in the country's Muslim south in order to quell an Islamist rebellion. Burying people to their necks and near suffocation with plastic bags are some of the method of torture used by the Thai Army, rights group Amnesty International said in a report released in the capital Bangkok. "Torture is absolutely illegal and, as the situation in southern Thailand proves, alienates the local population," said Donna Guest, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Programme. What's chopping people's heads off do, Donna? AI appears to regard that with a certain amount of equanimity.
"Many of those who told us about their terrible experiences, and who continue to be traumatised by them, did so to prevent it from happening to others. The government must stop torture and bring the torturers to justice."
In the report, titled 'Thailand: Torture in the southern counter-insurgency,' the watchdog refuted the possibility that rogue soldiers are responsible for the torture and said that the army is systematically torturing to extract information.
Between 3,200 and 3,500 people have been killed in the conflict that began in January 2004 and reflects the long-standing alienation of the area's population, which is predominantly Malay in ethnicity and language and Muslim in religion.
Over 45 percent of Thai military forces - almost exclusively Thai/Laotian in ethnicity and Buddhist in religion - are currently stationed in the south where some districts of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani remain off-limits.
The watchdog acknowledged that rebels have also retaliated to serious human rights abuses - such as bombings of civilian areas, beheadings, and drive-by shootings - but argued that there is no justification for the army's approach.
Based on interviews with torture survivors and relatives of people who have been tortured, the reports documented that people are being brutally beaten, burned with candles, buried up to their necks in the ground, subjected to electric shocks, having needles stuck into various parts of their bodies, sodomised and exposed to intense heat or cold.
At least four people have died as a result of torture, Amnesty International claimed.