Raid kills 4 ‘insurgents’ in Thailand’s Muslim south

BANGKOK

Four suspected insurgents have been killed in Thailand’s Muslim majority south in a joint police-military raid on a separatist hideout in Pattani province, police told The Anadolu Agency on Thursday.

“Acting on villagers’ intelligence, a combined force went to investigate a hideout in Tung Yang Daeng district,” Police Colonel Mana Dechavarit said of the operation the night before. 

“A gunfight ensued and four suspected rebels were killed,” he said, adding that the dead were between 23 and 32 years in age.

The combined force also arrested 22 others in the area, collecting automatic rifles and pistols from the hideout. The detained will be interrogated to assess their insurgency connections.

Following the raid, Police General Tanongsak Wansupha ordered his men Thursday to step up security at all checkpoints in the neighboring province of Yala, according to The Nation newspaper.

Since the end of February, there has been a series of bomb explosions that have caused a large number of injuries but no fatalities – indicating the challenge the military, which seized power last year, faces in controlling the area despite oft-repeated claims of success.

Pattani and Yala are among three southern provinces -- where 80 percent of the population is of Malay Muslim origin – that have been facing a rejuvenated separatist insurgency since 2004.

The area was an independent Islamic sultanate with great religious influence in the Southeast Asian Muslim world until its incorporation into Siam after a 1909 Anglo-Siamese agreement. Great Britain was then the colonial power in Malaysia and exerting a degree of control over the region.

The government tried to impose Thai culture on the Malay Muslims, who sought political and cultural autonomy.

In the 1960s, when the Thai military regime tried to wrest control of Islamic schools, several Muslim groups launched a guerrilla war against the state.

The insurgency petered out towards the end of the 1980s but was renewed in January 2004 when a wave of attacks against the military, police and Buddhist monks rocked the region.

Since then, violence has continued unabated, leaving more than 6,000 dead and around 11,000 injured.

Following last May’s coup, the junta announced its willingness to pursue a dialogue with the rebels that had been initiated by the previous elected government. However, there has been no solid progress and the rebels seem reluctant due to the exclusion of the issue of political autonomy from any talks.