Pro-Government Militias

Pro-Government Militia Website

Documentation for Pro-Government death squad

Nov. 18, 2009
The Nation

And then came June 8, 2008, when a reportedly pro-government death squad massacred 11 people inside a Narathiwat village mosque, and wounded 12 others.

Jan. 19, 2010
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

According to military and civilian officials monitoring the situation from the region, the June 8 massacre was a result of an intense tit-for-tat exchange of bombings and shootings between the insurgents and security units, with the help of pro-government death squads. (…)
Essentially, the ball was in the government's court: Arrest the six and bring the peace process back on track. But to get officials to make the arrests wasn't going to be easy, especially when the gunmen were, according to various sources, including Human Rights Watch, members of a pro-government death squad.

June 16, 2010
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

The nature of Mae's relations with the insurgents, locally known as juwae, was not revealed. But according to the source, he was a big enough fish to be targeted by a pro-government death squad -and big enough for the juwae to get all worked up about.

Sept. 8, 2010
The Nation

Naturally the authorities - even those with pro-government death squad written all over them - tend to blame the juwae for just about every violent incident in the South.
At a recent function organised by Deep South Watch, a research unit at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, participants, who were all Muslim clerics, expressed grave concern about the use of the insurgents' so-called "blacklist". Many people in the three southernmost provinces believe that they are on such a list, and many who are said to be on it have either disappeared or been shot dead, assassination style.
It is not clear how an individual gets to be on the list, but sources say that information comes from the mouths of arrested, suspected insurgents, many of whom are said to have been coerced into giving names in order to avoid torture.

April 6, 2011
The Nation

A source in the BRN-Coordinate – one of long-standing separatist groups with the strongest working relationship with the militants on the ground – said the juwae are extremely sceptical about any peace or dialogue process because they think it's part of a ploy to get them to surface so they can be killed.
Indeed, target killings carried out by pro-government death squads have been extensively documented in the deep South. There is no indiction that such a tactic has improved the situation or created the kind of atmosphere that could lead to peaceful dialogue.

May 7, 2011
The Nation

Sombat was killed along with his dog while reportedly on a hunting trip. A village elder living near where the killing took place said the victim was out to hunt for pangolin, an endangered ant-eater that is trafficked for illegal meat and medicine markets.
Sombat had been warned repeatedly that there were insurgents in the area but insisted on carrying on with his hunting trip, the elder said.
Local and international human rights organisations said pro-government death squads had been employed in the past to settle scores, but officials insisted that target killings of suspects were not government policy.

Aug. 5, 2012
The Nation

Rokiyoh Mahno sought comfort by reciting the shahada, the Muslim profession of faith, as she held her dying husband in her arms.
Abdulrahmae's body was riddled with bullets sprayed from an AK47 by a gunman who unloaded an entire magazine on him and five others from the back of a motorbike before riding away in the dark.
He was still breathing when the ambulance took him away. But a phone call from the hospital came moments later. Abdulrahmae had passed away, leaving behind his 40-year-old wife and four children aged between nine months and 13 years old.
Two people were killed and four injured at a teashop in Pattani's Khok Pho district. Authorities quickly blamed Malay-Muslim insurgents, but locals are not convinced and did not rule out the role of a pro-government death squad.
The fact that the police did not show up at the crime scene until almost three hours after the shooting does not help the government's efforts to win the people over. The military, which has two companies stationed within two kilometres of the village, also did not show up until afternoon the next day.

Dec. 19, 2012
The Nation

Over the years, one issue consistently on the table at these talks is the killing of Islamic religious leaders by pro-government death squads, and the murder of teachers by insurgents. A sort of ground rule appeared to have taken shape in 2012, since only two teachers “one of whom was a former border police officer“ were killed between January and October. All that changed on November 14 when gunmen killed a respected imam, Abdullateh Todir, in Yala's Yaha district. Exiled leaders blamed a pro-government death squad for the killing. Insurgents retaliated forcefully and, just like that, schoolteachers are back on the militants' hit list.

July 13, 2013
The Nation

While the authorities were tightlipped about these shootings, they could not deny the political underpinning for the Wednesday roadside bomb attack against a Paramilitary Ranger unit patrolling Banang Sata.
The same morning also saw insurgents attack soldiers in Narathiwat's Joh I Rong subdistrict, with a roadside bomb followed by a 15-minute firefight that left two soldiers with serious injuries. These were signs of things to come.
Sources in the BRN-C blamed pro-government death squads for the shootings in Banang Sata but declined to confirm or deny if the targets were cell members. "Babor Li was a religious man and he should have been left alone," one BRN-C source said.

Feb. 19, 2014
The Nation

Ten days later in Narathiwat's Bacho district, gunmen killed three brothers aged three, five and nine, in an attempt to liquidate an entire family who had just returned from evening prayers at the village mosque. The father took a bullet to his leg but kept running, and the mother, who was four-months pregnant, was also hit. The parents survived.
At first, Thai authorities moved quickly to dismiss any suggestion that the assailants were officials or a pro-government death squad. Two weeks after the deadly shooting of the three boys, officials are still repeating the same mantra “that insurgents killed the three boys as part of an escalating campaign of violence now targeting innocent civilians, like the policeman's wife, 28, who was shot dead then set on fire in front of a terrified crowd at an open market in Pattani's Tambon Ratapanyang on February 9. (…)
Since February 28 last year, when the Thai government entered into peace talks with the BRN, at least 10 ex-detainees, all of whom are accused of committing treason and are fighting the charges in court, have been shot and killed, presumably by pro-government death squads. (…)
A cleric like Abdullateh was an ideal person to act as a go-between as he was respected by both warring sides. Both the BRN and senior Thai officials working on the peace process said he was a man of integrity and would have served the peace talks well.
But when a pro-government death squad took him out in November 14, 2012, other clerics immediately dropped the idea of playing interlocutor for any government agencies. Thailand's lack of unity was costly, as the six weeks of intense violence showed. (…)
Groups like Human Rights Watch have pointed to the use of target killings by pro-government death squads as an obstacle to peace initiatives in the South.

May 24, 2014
The Nation

A similar spike in violence came later that year in November following the shooting death of a young and influential imam, Abdullateh Todir, in Yala's Yaha district, reportedly assassinated by a pro-government death squad. The "spike" not so much in terms of the number of attacks but more their brutal nature and the fact that the targets were supposed to be off-limits“ lasted for six weeks. Three Buddhist teachers were shot dead and three public schools torched during that period. A pro-government death squad hit back with a gangland-style shooting at a teashop full of Muslims on December 11, 2012 in Narathiwat's Rangae district, killing four, including an 11-month-old baby girl.