Thailand: Two suspected insurgents killed in south

By Max Constant

BANGKOK

Thai security forces said Friday that two suspected insurgents were killed and two powerful bombs defused in the country’s insurgency-plagued south.

The deputy-investigator at the Jakawa police station in majority Muslim Yala province told Anadolu Agency that “a combined team of soldiers and police officers clashed with a group of suspected insurgents” in Rama district.

“Two insurgents were killed. They were suspected in a number of violent attacks and had several arrest warrants issued against them,” police captain Wiradet Sukjarung said.

Earlier in the day, villagers in neighboring Narathiwat province had informed military forces that they found two “suspicious” gas tanks.

After examination, military explosive experts concluded they were 25-kilogram remote-controlled bombs.

The explosives were buried in a large hole in the ground and defused using high-pressure water.

Friday’s incidents occurred after a month of violent attacks.

Earlier this month, a car bomb explosion injured five people in neighboring Pattani province.

On Oct. 24, a bomb exploded near a noodle shop in Pattani, killing a 60-year-old woman and injuring 21 others, while four days later two men riding a motorcycle shot at a car in front of an education office in Mayo district.

A 49-year-old female teacher driving the vehicle died in the attack while a female civil servant was injured.

The two attackers -- both captured on security cameras -- left a note near the car with the words “for you who killed Malayu people” -- a local term that refers to ethnic Malay Muslims.

A joint statement released by the Internal Security Operational Command (ISOC), the main domestic security agency, and the National Human Rights Commission, condemned the attack as a “severe violation of human rights”.

“I ask all sectors of society, especially civic networks, to jointly denounce this act and reject all kinds of violence,” said Col. Pramote Phrom-in, deputy spokesman for ISOC in the southern region.

The National Human Rights Commission chairman also expressed indignation over the killing.

“Taking the lives of education staff is heinous and destroys the future of the nation,” What Tingsami said in a statement.

The southern insurgency -- which has destabilized the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat for decades -- is rooted in a century-old ethno-cultural conflict between Malay Muslims living in the region and the Thai central state where Buddhism is considered the de-facto national religion.

Armed insurgent groups were formed in the 1960s after the then-military dictatorship tried to interfere in Islamic schools, but the insurgency faded in the 1990s.

In 2004, a rejuvenated armed movement -- composed of numerous local cells of fighters loosely grouped around the National Revolutionary Front, or BRN -- emerged.

After the military seized power in May 2014, the junta continued the overthrown elected civilian government’s policy of holding peace talks with insurgent groups.

But a recent report on the Thai south by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, regarded this dialogue as having “foundered” because both sides “prefer hostilities to compromise”.

“The National Council for Peace and Order [NCPO], which seized power in the 2014 coup, professes to support dialogue to end the insurgency but avoids commitment,” the report said, referring to the ruling junta by its official name.