Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Thai teachers go for guns amid southern unrest
Reuters Bangkok, June 15
Assailants on motorcycles have killed two villagers, wounded a soldier and set fire to a market in Thailand's troubled Muslim south, police said on Tuesday as teachers and state workers rushed to buy guns for self-defence.
The four separate incidents were the latest in a spate of violence that has claimed more than 200 lives since January, despite a pledge by the government to restore peace to the impoverished region.
Fearing daily attacks, dozens of teachers and other civil servants in the three southernmost provinces have sought permission to own guns. Some have even travelled the 1,200 km (750 miles) to the capital Bangkok to buy them, police said.
"Gun shops are getting great business from teachers as many of them have already received a permit," said Major General Paitoon Pattanasopon, chief of Pattani provincial police.
Most of the victims, including those in the last 24 hours, have been attacked by gun-or machete-wielding men on motorcycles.
In Yala, police said a 40-year-old Muslim fish vendor was shot dead by a motorcycle-riding gunman while on his way home from market on Tuesday.
In Pattani a Buddhist mechanic was gunned down by two men on motorcycles at his shop late on Monday and a few hours later, attackers threw petrol bombs at a row of houses in a market in the same province, setting fire to three shops and seven stalls, police said. In neighbouring Songkhla province, a Muslim army captain was shot while driving to work, although his injuries were not life-threatening, police said.
"The motive is obviously linked to the current unrest in the south," Police Lieutenant Colonel Pravit Chorseng told Reuters. "He had no conflict with anyone."
Authorities have blamed everything from criminals to cough syrup to Muslim militants for the daily explosions and killings that have revived memories of a separatist insurgency which plagued the region in the 1970s and 1980s.
Despite sending in thousands of troops and promising millions of dollars in development aid, there has been no let-up in the unrest across the three southernmost provinces, which have been under martial law since January.
The worst violence came at the end of April when troops and police killed 108 Muslim militants, including 32 in a mosque shootout, prompting accusations of brutality.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.