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Amnesty decries southern rebels

Muslim insurgents mainly killing their own 'soft targets', government also to blame
Amnesty decries southern rebels
Published: September 28, 2011 04:40 AM GMT
Updated: September 28, 2011 04:40 AM GMT

Insurgents in southern Thailand are deliberately attacking “soft target” civilians in its long-running unrest in the deep south, says rights group Amnesty International (AI). Many of their attacks on farmers, teachers, religious leaders and civil servants constitute war crimes, the London-based said in a report published September 26. Nearly 5,000 people have been killed and thousands more injured in Thailand’s four southern-most provinces since a separatist campaign there was re-ignited eight years ago. “Insurgents are spreading terror among the civilian population by deliberately targeting people with no role in the conflict,” said Donna Guest, AI’s Asia-Pacific deputy director. “No one is immune from attack” She added: “The insurgents must publicly commit to stopping these unlawful killings immediately.” Guest was commenting on the AI report entitled “They took nothing but his life”: Unlawful killings in Thailand’s southern insurgency. The report is based on interviews conducted within the past year with witnesses and survivors, relatives and friends of victims of 66 attacks against civilians. “I have no idea why they killed him, as he was just a boy and a good kid. They took nothing but his life,” it quotes the father of one victim, rubber tapper Zakariya Wilson, 15, as saying. About two-thirds of those killed between 2004 and this year were civilians, the majority of them Muslims whom the main Muslim insurgents believe are government supporters, the report says. “The insurgents seem to be attacking many of the very people on whose behalf they are ostensibly fighting,” said Guest. But she also urged the new Thai government to turn its attention urgently to the conflict, in which the security forces have also been accused of atrocities. The AI report says that after an attack this January on a military base in Narathiwat province, at least nine suspects detained by security forces reported that they were tortured in custody. “Not a single official has been brought to account for these or any other alleged human rights violations, including the October 2004 incident in Tak Bai district, when 78 detainees died of suffocation while being transported by the military in tightly packed trucks,” AI said. “It is ultimately the Thai government’s responsibility to ensure the well-being of all Thai citizens.  Any counter-insurgency strategy must have a strong human rights component”, said Guest.

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