Ten people have been killed by suspected separatist militants in the far south of Thailand over the past two days.
Four of the 10 victims were members of a Muslim family whose home in Yala province was attacked by heavily armed gunmen on Monday night, army colonel Prinya Chaidilok said.
Another two Muslims were shot dead while they were preparing to enter a mosque for prayers about 100 yards from the family's home, he said.
Their deaths came around the fifth anniversary of a bloody government raid on a Muslim mosque.
Muslim separatists have been intensely targeting girls schools for burning. About half of those killed in Thailand's insurgency by the separatists have been other Muslims.
Suspected separatist militants have shot dead five Muslim civilians in Thailand's restive south, police said Saturday. Gunmen entered the home of a 51-year-old man and shot him dead late Friday in Yala province, one of three troubled provinces in the far south. Police said the man had been working as a government informant. Two other men, aged 18 and 34, were also shot and killed in neighbouring Pattani province, while a 61-year-old man was killed in a drive-by shooting as he travelled to Friday prayers at a local mosque. A 31-year-old farmer was also shot dead in an ambush in Narathiwat province as he returned home from work.
More than 3,600 people have been killed and thousands more injured in five years of separatist violence in the Muslim-majority provinces near the Malaysian border. Buddhist-majority Thailand annexed the ethnic Malay area in 1902, sparking decades of tension and mistrust.
Laila and her family had received numerous threats from insurgent groups operating in Thailand's deep South. Alleged insurgents killed her eldest son in 2004 and her husband and second son in 2006.
Bangkok - New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday condemned this month's slaying by an alleged insurgent of Laila Paaitae Doah, a prominent peace advocate and Muslim women's rights activist in Thailand's violence-torn deep South. Laila was shot by a suspected Muslim militant in broad daylight on March 12 in Krongpenang district, Yala province, 750 kilometres south of Bangkok. She died of her wounds in hospital on March 13.
"Laila's brutal murder is part of ongoing efforts by insurgents to intimidate and attack Muslims who oppose insurgency or have supported Thai authorities," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Her death is a serious loss for those trying to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in the South."
Human Rights Watch has in the past been highly critical of the Thai government's abuses in the majority Muslim deep South, comprising Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, but has been less outspoken about abuses committed by separatist insurgents.
Laila and her family had received numerous threats from insurgent groups operating in Thailand's deep South. Alleged insurgents killed her eldest son in 2004 and her husband and second son in 2006.
"The killings of Paaitae Daoh family members were undoubtedly meant as punishment and as a warning to other Muslims," Adams said. "In this way, the insurgents spread fear throughout the southern Muslim community."
Laila had been an outspoken proponent of coexistence between ethnic Malay Muslims and Buddhist Thais in the troubled region.
She and her family actively advocated that the local Muslim population seek justice peacefully through human rights and judicial mechanisms instead of armed struggle.
Laila was also instrumental in activities of the Women and Peace Group and Luk Riang, a prominent child-rights group, in the southern border provinces.
The three-province region bordering Malaysia has lost 3,700 people to separatist-related violence over the last five years.
Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who used to live in the deep South, about 70,000 have left since separatists raided an Army depot in January 2004, killing four soldiers and making off with 300 weapons, leading to an escalation of the region's long-simmering separatist struggle.
The incident sparked a series of brutal government crackdowns on the separatist movement, which turned much of the 2 million population, 80 per cent of whom are Muslim, against the central government.
Although the region, which centuries ago was the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency, urged Thailand on Thursday to welcome Muslim refugees fleeing Myanmar.
Thailand's treatment of the Rohingyas, an oppressed Muslim minority from mainly Buddhist Myanmar, has been widely condemned as evidence emerges that hundreds were rounded up by the Thai military and towed out to sea.
Jolie issued the plea during a visit to camps in northern Thailand which house 111,000 mostly Christian ethnic Karen refugees from Myanmar.
"Visiting Ban Mai Nai Soi and seeing how hospitable Thailand has been to 111,000 mostly Karen and Karenni refugees over the years, makes me hope that Thailand will be just as generous to the Rohingya refugees who are now arriving on their shores," the Oscar-winning actress said in a statement issued by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Rahmat bin Mohammad Daud Yullha, 37, one of a batch of 198 Rohingya found near Aceh on Tuesday, told Reuters in broken Malay he had been jailed for praying in a mosque in his native Myanmar before fleeing to Thailand looking for work.
One of the Rohingya boat people, rescued off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province, shows open wounds on his back while receiving medical treatment at a local hospital in Idi Rayeuk February 4, 2009. Indonesian authorities rescued more boat people from Myanmar on Tuesday after finding them floating in a wooden boat off the coast of Aceh after 21 days at sea. Some of them were in critical condition, officials said. The all-male group of 198, who had not eaten for a week and who included a 13-year-old, was found by local fishermen, vice head of East Aceh district Nasrudin Abubakar said by telephone. (Tarmizy Harva/Reuters)
IDI RAYEUK, Indonesia (Reuters) - Two Rohingya boat people found off Indonesia this week made more allegations of abuse by the Thai army, saying on Wednesday they were rounded up and beaten before being cast adrift in rickety, engineless boats.
Rahmat bin Mohammad Daud Yullha, 37, one of a batch of 198 Rohingya found near Aceh on Tuesday, told Reuters in broken Malay he had been jailed for praying in a mosque in his native Myanmar before fleeing to Thailand looking for work.
"I was caught and detained for three months. They beat me every day. Every day (I) only drunk a gulp of water," said Yullha, who said he was a baker with a wife and three children at home in the former Burma's northwest, near the Bangladesh border.
"I beg to stay in Indonesia. I want to bring my kids and wife. Instead of going back to Burma, I'd rather be shot in Indonesia. I want to die in the hands of the Muslims," he said.
He said he was held and detained on a boat on an island in Mae Sok in the southern Thai province of Ranong, from where the army dragged 1,000 Rohingya out to sea in December. Of the 1,000, 550 are feared to have drowned.
"Every day they added 10 people until our boat was full and we were towed to the open sea and set adrift," Yullha said.
Thailand's treatment of the Rohingya, an oppressed Muslim minority from mainly Buddhist, army-ruled Myanmar, has been widely condemned as more and more evidence emerges of abuse on the part of the military.
The Thai military has admitted towing hundreds out to sea and cutting them adrift but has insisted they had adequate food and water and denied reports the boats' engines were sabotaged.
Some of the all-male group of 198 were in critical condition after what they said was three weeks at sea.
During that time, 22 died, their bodies thrown overboard into the Andaman Sea, other survivors said.
Last month, another boat carrying a similarly destitute bunch of 193 also washed up off Indonesia's Aceh province.
Chris Lewa of Rohingya rights group The Arakan Project told Reuters the latest group to arrive included some men known by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representatives to have been in Thailand in mid-January.
The UNHCR asked Bangkok for access to the men on January 20 but was told three days later they were no longer in the country.
Deportation orders There was no immediate Thai response to the latest abuse allegations, although earlier in the day Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said Bangkok would continue to regard the boat people as illegal economic migrants and deport them.
"Thailand has no intention of opening any refugee camp," Suthep said, adding any Rohingya caught in Thai waters would be humanely treated.
But 20-year-old Nurullah, another of the 198 found on Tuesday, said he was detained two weeks after arriving in Thailand, where he had found a job as a fisherman.
Nurullah, who also said he was from a village in Myanmar, used hand signals and a few words of English to tell his story to reporters. At times he was on the brink of tears.
He said he was a biology teacher and that he left Myanmar because there were no jobs. Pointing to scars on his back and hand, he said he was beaten, put in an engineless boat with about 200 other people, and set adrift by the Thai authorities.
"It's hard," he said. "I (am) afraid (for) my mother and sisters. I don't know about them," he said.
He and about 70 others were being treated in hospital for dehydration and exhaustion.
Rohingya children at school with visitors in Malaysia.
A look at the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority group from Myanmar who are at the center of a controversy over Thailand's treatment of migrant workers:
HISTORY: The Rohingya are believed to descend from seventh century Arab settlers whose state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. The group has inhabited what is now western Myanmar for centuries.
CHARACTERISTICS: The Rohingya come from the Myanmar state of Rakhine, but their physical appearance and language are more similar to the Bengalis of neighboring Bangladesh.
CITIZENSHIP: Nearly 800,000 Rohingya live in Myanmar, but have not been granted citizenship.
STATELESS MIGRANTS: Faced with persecution because they are Muslims living in a Buddhist country, the Rohingya have fled abroad for decades. As many as 2 million have set up communities from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia where most work illegally.
About a half-million Rohingya escaped during military crackdowns in 1978 and 1991, the majority of them moved to Bangladesh. Many remain exiled in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Malaysia.
HIGH SEAS JOURNEY: Since 2006, Bangladesh has made it harder to get passports, so the Rohingya began making the dangerous journey by boat to Thailand and then overland to Malaysia for work
The Muslim Rohingya boatpeople are escaping the persecution of the military government of Myanmar. They have undergone two previous periods in recent history of government pogroms in 1977-78 and in 1991-92 during which they suffered widespread forced labour, as well as summary executions, torture, and rape.
Salaam writes: I posted about the Rohingya earlier here. Hundreds are feared dead or missing, lost at sea.
BANGKOK, Jan 25 - Thailand says it has "escorted" an unspecified number of Rohingya boatpeople back out to sea, dashing the hopes of UN officials who had been seeking access to a group of 126 it believed were in Thai custody.
The statement came as Thailand offered yesterday to host a regional conference to stem the mass migration of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority whose homeland is along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh.
The latest expulsion, which was carried out in recent days, means Thailand no longer had any Rohingya in its custody, said Thani Thongpakdi, deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He cited information provided by the army's Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), which has played a lead role in detaining and expelling Rohingya.
"All those who arrived illegally have been escorted out of Thailand," Thani said.
Recent investigations by the South China Morning Post have revealed that nearly 1,000 Rohingya were towed out to sea and abandoned, in boats with no engines or sails, by the Thai army last month. Hundreds died as a result.
The latest expulsions were carried out humanely, said Thani, citing ISOC information. "Their vessels have been repaired with engines, and they were provided with necessary food, water and medicines."
Asked if the refugees had been sent back to Myanmar or Bangladesh, Thani declined to speculate. "We don't know where they came from. We escorted them back into international waters."
Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea in two batches and abandoned with little food or water, according to a tally by a migrant-rights group based on survivors' accounts and media reports.
BANGKOK, THAILAND - Hundreds of Muslim refugees from Burma (Myanmar) are feared missing or dead after Thai troops forced them onto boats without engines and cut them adrift in international waters, according to human rights activists and authorities in India who rescued survivors. The revelations have shone a spotlight on the Thai military's expulsion policy toward Muslims it sees as a security threat.
Nearly 1,000 refugees were detained on a remote island in December before being towed out to sea in two batches and abandoned with little food or water, according to a tally by a migrant-rights group based on survivors' accounts and media reports. The detainees, mostly members of Burma's oppressed Rohingya minority, then drifted for weeks. One group was later rescued by Indonesia's Navy, and two others made landfall in India's Andaman Islands.
Photos of refugees on a Thai island show rows of bedraggled men stripped to the waist as soldiers stand guard. In a separate incident, foreign tourists snapped pictures of detainees trussed on a beach. Thailand's Andaman coastline, where the abuses took place, is a popular vacation spot.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has launched an investigation. Military officials have denied any ill treatment of refugees, while offering conflicting accounts of how they ended up lost at sea. The military has accused the Rohingya, who often travel via Thailand to Malaysia to work or seek asylum, of assisting a Muslim-led insurgency in southern Thailand.
'By relying on repressive measures and restrictions on fundamental human rights, Thai authorities have created a fertile ground for the insurgency to expand.'
Salaam writes: I've passed over stories about Muslim Thai rebel atrocities in the past because I don't want to highlight every violent conflict in the Muslim world, but in this case I do feel as though the government should be held to a higher standard if it's to maintain credibility as an arbiter of justice and keeper of the peace.
BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand's new premier must ensure that troops who tortured and killed a Muslim cleric in the far south face justice, a rights group said Thursday, adding that such abuses fueled unrest in the region.
Imam Yapa Koseng, a 56-year-old religious leader, was arrested in March last year and died days later in military custody in the Muslim-majority deep south, where a deadly separatist insurgency is raging.
"Prosecuting the soldiers who killed an imam in army detention will be a test of the administration of Thailand's new prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva," New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.
Abhisit was elected by parliament on December 15, and has vowed to quell the five-year long rebellion, which has left more than 3,500 people dead.
An inquest in Narathiwat province last month ruled that Yapa died after beatings by soldiers during interrogation, an army spokesman told AFP, adding that they planned to begin the process to prosecute five soldiers.
HRW said the imam's death highlighted broader human rights violations in the south, including illegal and arbitrary detention and torture including beatings, electric shocks and strangulation.
"The new government needs to overhaul the counter-insurgency strategy that encourages abuses, impose effective civilian control over the army, and provide efficient redress for victims of abuses," said HRW Asia Director Brad Adams.
"By relying on repressive measures and restrictions on fundamental human rights, Thai authorities have created a fertile ground for the insurgency to expand."
