Pro-Government Militias

Documentation for Anti-Muslim death squad

Sept. 13, 2005

The International Herald Tribune

More than 900 people have died in the region in the past 20 months. The authorities blame the violence on ethnic Malay separatists exploiting centuries-old resentment among the population of what was once an independent sultanate and on entrenched local and national mafia interests. The casualties, however, include more than 100 people killed in two actions by the military last year. Many southerners believe others have been killed by military or police death squads, stoking local mistrust of the government and its agents.

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Oct. 6, 2005

South China Morning Post

A surge in suspicious killings blamed on death squads run by security forces has added to this sense of paranoia and victimisation. Perhaps the biggest question is whether militants will eventually come forward with political demands and put a face to the separatist movement.

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Nov. 13, 2005

BBC Monitoring

local residents gave a different account of the 19-hour hostage drama. They believed gunmen on a pickup truck who riddled the teashop with bullets from shotguns and automatic rifles, killing two and injuring six others, were members of a government death squad.

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May 31, 2006

Belfast Telegraph

Hundreds of nameless bodies dumped at an ethnic Chinese cemetery in southern Thailand are to be dug up and examined in a grim reminder of the neglected chaos on this country's southern border.
After months of foot-dragging, officials have ordered a government forensics team to exhume 300 unmarked graves in Pattani province. Human-rights activists suspect that these unknown corpses might include suspected Muslim insurgents who were abducted and executed by government death squads.
Nearly 1,300 people have died in the 30 months since violence re-erupted in Thailand's impoverished deep south, home to some three million Muslims. Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, who last week called for an investigation of the graves, has documented alleged abductions and extrajudicial killings near the border. He said: "The families of the victims in the south feel they cannot go to the Government. It is too dangerous. Many people have been forcibly disappeared in the south and these atrocities must be investigated." He added: "It has at least been confirmed that these notorious mass graves were found. Perhaps killings have been perpetrated on immigrant workers, as well."

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Sept. 24, 2006

The Sunday Times

THE Royal Thai Army will adopt new tactics against a militant Islamic uprising, following the coup that sent Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted prime minister, into exile in London last week. According to sources briefed by the army high command, Thaksin's bungled response to the insurgency in southern Thailand, which has claimed 1,700 lives in two years, was a critical factor in the generals' decision to get rid of him.Thaksin's iron-fisted methods went disastrously wrong. A suicidal mass assault on army and police posts by young Muslims, many armed only with machetes, ended with almost 100 "martyrs" dead.
Then 74 unarmed Muslims died at the hands of the security forces at the village of Tak Bae, most of them suffocated in trucks, and a suspected police death squad abducted Somchai Neelaphaijit, a Muslim lawyer, on a Bangkok street. Somchai, who had brought torture cases before the National Human Rights Commission, was never seen again.

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