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Scores of Thai Muslims Killed in Police Custody
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Thai
authorities insist they handled the Muslim protest peacefully, but
images and the high death toll give another version. (AFP)
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BANGKOK,
October 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Some 78 Muslim
protestors were confirmed killed Tuesday, October 26, while in police
detention, bringing the death toll from clashes that erupted in
southern Thailand a day earlier to at least 84.
“After
we brought people who were arrested into detention, we found that
another 78 people were dead,” said Manit Suthaporn, deputy permanent
secretary from the Thai justice ministry, Agence France Presse (AFP)
reported.
“According
to the investigation of the dead bodies, they died because of
suffocation.”
The
official noted the 78 persons were found dead in addition to the six
demonstrators killed after the Thai security forces broke up a protest
outside a police station with tear gas and water cannon.
“We
found no wound from guns or bullets on their bodies. We found only the
wounds from the clash. We can confirm that they all died from
suffocation,” the official said.
Some
1,000 people were detained, according to Thai authorities, and up to
44 injured, including up to 14 Thai army or police.
On
April 28, security forces clashed with Muslims in southern Thailand
and opened fire killing at least
107 Muslim youth in the bloodiest day in the history of this
troubled region.
The
Monday clashes erupted after a crowd had gathered at the district
police station in Takbai, Narathiwat, to protest against the detention
of six men accused by the police of providing weapons to “Islamic
militants”.
Police
said they fired water cannon and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Some
reports also said police used live ammunition.
Weak
From Fasting
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Muslim women waiting to learn about their husbands, brothers or fathers in police custody. (AFP) |
Thai
officials claimed the Muslim protestors, who lost their lives while in
police custody, died because their bodies were too weak from fasting.
“The
bodies of people who were arrested were weak because of fasting. It
caused them to be fatigued and when they came into crowded cars there
was no air to breathe,” the official said.
“They
came in and the situation was quite tense and very combative so the
bodies couldn't take it and they passed away at the hospital
mostly.”
He
denied that the slain Muslims were killed by the Thai security forces.
“I
vehemently deny the possibility that the government people had done
something directly that caused the deaths of these people. It will not
be true.”
Admitting
police custody conditions could be blamed for the high death toll,
Thai Army deputy commander Maj-Gen Sinchai Nujsathit told the BBC News
Online that “we had more than 1,300 people packed into the six-wheel
trucks” for a journey to Pattani province that took five hours.
Muslims
Furious
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Over 13,000 were arrested, some 78 suffocated to death, as per Thai officials. (AFP) |
Thai
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra flew into the troubled south late
Monday after the protest was swiftly controlled by police and army
forces. He praised the security forces for their swift action, but
that was before the scary death toll emerged.
“They
have done a great job,” he said, referring to security forces.
“They (the protesters) really set out to cause trouble so we had to
take drastic action against them,” he said.
The
action was taken, only later it was revealed how drastic it was
though.
It
is not clear, however, whether the 84 Muslims killed so far would be
the end chapter of this episode or just the start.
“I
cannot say what [is] going to happen, but I believe that hell will
break out,” a local Muslim leader was quoted by The Associated Press
as saying.
Muslim
leaders, on their part, accused Thai security forces of again using
excessive reactions to the protest by Muslims, last of which was
Monday police station protest in Narathiwat province. They further
warned it could trigger a spiraling upsurge in violence.
“I
am in shock,” Abdulraman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council
of Narathiwat, told The Associated Press.
“I
cannot say what is going to happen, but I believe that hell will break
out."
Thailand
's 5 million Muslims resent the state's refusal to recognize their
language, culture and Malay ethnicity, and the region is poorer than
much of the rest of the country.
Thai
authorities have been accused of heavy-handed tactics to quell
violence in the deprived south including unwarranted detentions and
excessive interrogations.
Most
of Thai Muslims live in the five southern provinces bordering
Malaysia.
Pattani,
Yala and Narathiwat are the only Muslim majority provinces in
Thailand.
Muslims
in these provinces have long complained
of discrimination in jobs and education and business
opportunities.
The
South was a rich Malay kingdom until it was overrun by the Buddhist
kingdom of Siam in the late 16th century when it declared its full
independence from its earlier status of semi-independence under the
rule of the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya.
In
1909, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Siam as part of a treaty
negotiated with the British Empire.
Both
Yala and Narathiwat were originally part of Pattani, but were split
off and became provinces of their own.
There
still exists a separatist movement in Pattani that at times erupts in
violence like in the late 1980’s when the Pattani United Liberation
Front (PULO) fought against the Thai forces for a separate Muslim
South.
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