Thailand: At least 78 Thai Muslims die in Police Trucks after demonstration by Channel News Asia /Agence France Presse/ The Age 11:13am 27th Oct, 2004   November 2, 2004 (AFP)    The Thai army commander in charge of the southern Muslim region, Lieutenant General Pisarn Wattanawongkeeree, has been sacked from his post after scores of Muslim protesters died in custody, a senior military source said.    "The army commander has already signed the order and there was no one appointed to replace him," the source in Bangkok told AFP. He said the army commander, General Prawit Wongsuwan, had endorsed the transfer of General Pisarn to army headquarters. "The Fourth Army commander said he has asked the army chief for his transfer to Bangkok so the independent commission can fully investigate the death of 87 Muslims," a separate army source in Pattani province told AFP.    General Pisarn, assigned to head the southern forces in March, becomes the third Fourth Army commander sacked this year for failing to solve the unrest in the mainly Muslim south which flared up again in January.    Troops piled about 1,300 Muslim protesters into trucks after breaking up a demonstration at Tak Bai in Narathiwat province on October 25. Officials said 78 dead mostly from suffocation during their lengthy journey to detention.    At least six others were shot dead at the protest and three men were found drowned in a river nearby.    General Pisarn was quoted by the Bangkok Post on Sunday as denying rumours that he would resign but saying he would accept disciplinary action if a Government-appointed panel found the army at fault. "I am ready to take responsibility for what I did and ordered because I was assigned to oversee all the Fourth Army Region's activities," the Post quoted him as saying. On Monday the Post quoted him as defending his actions. "If the same thing happened again we would again mount a crackdown to disperse the protesters. But next time we would be more careful and take a softer approach," he said.    29 October 2004    "At least seven police injured in second bomb in Thai south". (Channel News Asia)    BANGKOK : Seven policemen were wounded on Friday by a bomb that went off in tense southern Thailand less than 90 minutes after a previous blast at the same site injured seven other people, police and hospital workers said. "As of now seven policemen have been admitted to emergency room," a hospital worker told AFP.    The police had been conducting forensic research at the site of a bomb blast in the provincial capital of Yala when the second blast went off at about 9:45 am (0245 GMT), local police said. The first bomb exploded on a roadside near a tea shop and kindergarten during morning rush hour in the city, according to Colonel Parinya Kwanyuen, commander of Yala police. A Yala hospital worker said seven people from the original blast had been admitted to the emergency room for shrapnel wounds but none of the injuries appeared to be critical.    Tension has risen in the Muslim-dominated south as rage grew this week over the deaths of 87 Muslim protesters. Six were shot dead at a chaotic Monday demonstration and 78 were crushed to death or suffocated after they were arrested and crammed onto military transport trucks. The foreign ministry said three other people were found drowned in the river adjacent to the site of the protest.    In the border town of Sungai Kolok on Thursday night, a bomb at a beer bar killed one and injured more than 20, officials said. - AF    October 28, 2004    "Thai PM admits army errors led to deaths", by Connie Levett. (The Age)    Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday admitted the army made mistakes that led to the death of 78 Muslims in its custody as distraught relatives retrieved bodies from a military base in the south of the country.    More than 1200 men, rounded up after a protest at a police station in Narathiwat province on Monday, are being held at the army base in Pattani, 1100 kilometres south of Bangkok together with the bodies of the 78 who died of suffocation in army trucks.    "I can say that the Government resorted to gentle measures and did not use force in suppressing the protesters. But mistakes happened during the transport of the arrested people to trucks," Mr Thaksin told Parliament. "I regret the loss of lives in a way that should not have happened, due to suffocation."    As international criticism mounted yesterday, the Thai Government said there would be a thorough investigation into the tragedy. As more details emerged , the Australian Government was urgently seeking further information through the embassy in Bangkok.    Witness accounts said the prisoners, 1311 men and boys, were stacked like logs into six army trucks. They were placed face down with their hands tied behind their backs, one on top of another for the drive to the army base.    When the trucks arrived at the Fourth Army command's Camp Ingkayhutthaboriharn more than six hours later, 78 of them were dead, of suffocation or convulsions. Most of those who died were close to the front of the trucks, and were already weak from fasting for Ramadan.    Outside the camp gates yesterday, family groups waited in angry silence. Fatimah Yaman waited with her toddler daughter. Her husband, brother and cousin were arrested and driven to the camp on Monday.    "I saw the protest on TV, I saw my brother, I recognised his red cap. They stomped on him," she said. Earlier in the day, she had entered the army morgue to identify her brother's body. Without the cap, she would not have been able to recognise him as his face was swollen almost beyond recognition. "Now I hate the army," she said.    A few hundred metres up the road, the army has set up boards with lists of detainees, some as young as 15. One elderly man, Aziz Ismail, was searching the lists for his brother and two cousins. He said it was "not OK" to stack them up in the trucks. "It is very sad for us, some things never stop, they have happened, and will happen," he said close to tears.    Justice Ministry spokesman Manit Suthaporn, said the protesters had been loaded into the trucks "in an orderly fashion" and were not thrown into the vehicles. Monday's protest had been sparked by the detention of six Muslims accused of supplying guns to rebels in Muslim-majority southern Thailand. The latest deaths take the toll in this year's insurgency to at least 414.    Mr Shinawatra was kept informed of the demonstration and flew to Narathiwat late on Monday, saying "the Government will not allow officials to harass people but nobody will be allowed to violate the law". Earlier, he had congratulated the army on its handling of the protest, dismissing protesters as troublemakers and drug addicts.    "There is a disturbing pattern of Thai security forces using excessive force against Muslims in the region, resulting in large number of deaths," T. Kumar, Amnesty International's advocacy director for Asia and Pacific, said. Initial army reports of the demonstration put the death toll at six.    October 27, 2004    Protest deaths signal latest crisis. (Agence France Presse)    The death of 84 Thai Muslims opens a new grim chapter in a long-running saga of conflict and violence in Thailand's Muslim-majority south.    Muslims, a minority in this Buddhist nation, have long complained of discrimination and unequal opportunities and the resentment has sporadically sparked armed uprisings against the Bangkok government.    Muslims make up five per cent of the national population and mostly live in the three provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala.    Five of Thailand's southernmost provinces were originally part of an ancient Hindu-Malay empire that adopted Islam in the mid-13th century.    After years of fighting, Thailand annexed the ethnic Malay kingdom in 1902 but visitors to the region can clearly see the Muslims have more in common with their mainly Muslim Malaysian neighbours.    Most people in the south speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay, shop fronts bear Arabic writing and women wear headscarves and modest garments while many men sport Muslim skullcaps.    The relative poverty of the region compared to prosperous central Thailand fuelled a deadly Muslim insurgency which flared in the 1970s in a major challenge to the government.    A campaign to channel large amounts of development funds into the area helped turn the tide, and the election of Thailand's first Muslim politicians led to its effective demise in the early 1990s.    But armed separatism resurfaced in January with a brazen raid on an army base in which masked gunmen killed four soldiers and made off with 400 weapons.The violence rose to a peak in April when 108 militants and five security forces were killed during a day-long uprising.    The massive influx of troops and police from outside the region has nurtured resentment among the population, who say they have been harassed and subjected to insulting behaviour.A profound mistrust of authority festered in the south, fuelled by government policies including a rule that the Thai language is used for instruction in schools instead of Yawi.    The government has blamed everyone, ranging from corrupt politicians to gangsters using the banner of Islam to protect their illicit activities, for the unrest.Some analysts say remnants of the quashed separatist movement have been revived under the influence of terrorist groups like Jemaah Islamiah and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
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