Thaksin Heads South

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Thai violence rages on as PM visits restive south

SUNGAI KOLOK (Thailand) May 7 - Violence gripped southern Thailand again Friday with the killings of a policeman and a village deputy chief as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the region in the wake of last week's deadly clashes.

The killings marked a resurgence in attacks on security forces and government officials that have rocked the south this year and left at least 170 people dead, including 108 Muslim militants killed on April 28.

``Sergeant Major Khachorn Chailim was shot dead at 8.45 this morning'' in Narathiwat province, southern regional police commander Lieutenant General Prung Boonpradun told AFP.

Some 35 minutes later, deputy village chief Romali Salae was shot dead as he rode his motorbike home in Pattani province.

The shootings came as a heavily guarded Thaksin visited neighbouring Yala province in a bid to soothe simmering tensions between the Muslim community and Thai authorities following last week's clashes, the bloodiest uprising Thailand has witnessed in decades.

As he began the second day of his trip, Thaksin said the Muslim militants who attacked checkpoints and police outposts armed mainly with just machetes had been manipulated by extremists.

``Many widows did not know what their husbands were doing, but learned only after they had died that they were made to take an oath, drink special water and keep secrets,'' Thaksin said in Krong Pinang sub-district of Yala, one of three adjoining provinces where rebels mounted their disastrous attacks.

Army commander Chaisit Shinawatra said it was imperative that extremists be stopped from fooling recruits into ``thinking that bathing in sacred water makes them immortal''.

Captured suspected militants also reportedly said their leaders told them they would be invincible and invisible to authorities.

Chaisit also criticised ``brainwashing'' in Thailand's Islamic boarding schools.

``Children in these schools do not know the Thai language at all, as they have been taught that learning other languages is a sin. The process is equivalent to brainwashing,'' Chaisit said.

Thaksin visited an Islamic boarding school in Yala, and said the government would reorganise religious schools to incorporate more of a non-Islamic curriculum so graduates would be better prepared to enter the workforce.

The premier, facing the worst crisis of his three years in office, was to spend the night in the border town of Sungai Kolok, Narathiwat province, before traveling Saturday to Pattani to visit a mosque where dozens of rebels were killed.

The killing of 32 poorly armed Muslims in the historic Krue Se mosque has raised international concern that Thai authorities used excessive force.

Strengthening claims that Islamic militancy and separatism were at the root of the violence, police said they had found handbooks outlining the fight for autonomy in the south on bodies of some of the rebels.

``The booklets, written in the Yawi (Malay) dialect, were found in belongings of some of the dead ... and outlined how to achieve an independent Pattani state,'' deputy southern police commander Thani Thawitsri told AFP.

Thaksin Thursday met with families of some of the rebels who were killed and expressed his regret over the incidents, which he said stemmed from ``poverty and misunderstanding''.

Earlier Friday Thaksin spent considerable time speaking with ordinary people in what largely amounted to a public relations offensive.

He vowed to tackle poverty and sought to reassure communities that safety was returning to the region.

Thaksin was on his fourth visit to the south since January, when a raid on an army weapons depot heralded a spate of violence that has seen almost daily attacks on government officials, police, soldiers and Buddhist monks.

The trouble is the worst seen in decades in the southern provinces bordering Malaysia, the scene of a sporadic Muslim separatist movement which until recently was thought not to have significant public support. - AFP