BANGKOK
Tensions remained high in Thailand's Muslim south Thursday after an inquiry into the killing of four young men by the army was suspended and moved to a military camp.
Weerapong Kaewsuwan, the governor of southern Pattani province, told The Nation newspaper on Thursday that the inquiry had been postponed because none of the dead men's family members - who had asked for the inquiry - were present.
Instead “a lot of uninvited people showed up,” he added.
On March 25, authorities launched a raid on a construction site, after informers warned of an impending attack on To Chud village in Pattani.
Four men aged between 23 and 32 years old were killed in the ensuing raid by a joint military and police team.
Authorities detained 22 others in military camps, and interrogated them about possible connections to an insurgency, which has wracked the region for close to 50 years. Of the 22, 18 have since been released.
Police told The Anadolu Agency that automatic rifles and pistols were found near the men’s bodies, while local media reported them as saying that the four were linked to the Rundan Kumpulan Kecil (RKK), one of the most active separatist groups in the south.
The men's parents and local community leaders strongly disagreed, the mother of one - Saddam Wanu - telling media that her son had no links to the insurgency.
On Saturday, after a meeting with local religious and community leaders, Colonel Pramote Prom-in, a spokesman for the military in the south, sent his condolences Saturday to the families of the dead men while 13 of the 18 so far released were allowed to return to their families.
Authorities said they had found the men had no links to insurgency.
On Sunday, local authorities opened an investigation, a fact-finding panel - composed of local religious leaders, community leaders, military and police officers and representatives of the Pattani-based Fatoni Islamic University - to report its results to Thailand's military-run government.
The incident has led to suspicion that the dead men may also have had no links to the insurgency.
In the past, innocent Muslim civilians have been killed by overzealous military, police or paramilitary forces.
Last September, an army ranger shot and killed a 14 year-old teenager who was riding his motorcycle in Narathiwat province. He then placed a gun in the boy’s hand and claimed he was an insurgent.
A police investigation concluded that the military volunteer had tried to cover up the assassination and he was charged with manslaughter.
The three southernmost Thai provinces – Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat - constituted an independent Islamic sultanate with great religious influence in the Southeast Asian Muslim world until it was incorporated into Siam after a 1909 anglo-siamese agreement.
Since 2004, a rejuvenated separatist insurgency has claimed the lives of over 6,000 people in the region, both Buddhists and Muslim.
The area was an independent Islamic sultanate with great religious influence in the Southeast Asian Muslim world until it was incorporated into greater Siam after a 1909 Anglo Siamese agreement.
Great Britain was then the colonial master in Malaysia and exerted a degree of control over the region.
From 1938, a virulently nationalistic campaign organized by the government of Field Marshall Phibulsongkhram government tried to impose Thai cultural norms on Malay Muslims, who reacted by asking for some degree of political and cultural autonomy.
Things, however, turned for the worse in the 1960s, when military dictator Field Marshall Tarit Sanarat attempted to control Islamic boarding schools, locally known as pondoks.
Several Muslim groups took up arms and started a guerrilla war against the Thai state.
The situation quieted down at the end of the 1980s and the “Southern problem” was considered solved. However, in January 2004, a new wave of attacks against Thai military, police and Buddhist monks shook the Thai government.
Since then, the violence has continued unabated. Outside of claiming the lives of more than 6,000 people it has also left around 11,000 injured.
