MUSLIM insurgents shot dead seven Buddhists in southern Thailand yesterday in apparent further revenge for the deaths of 85 Muslim demonstrators at a protest last month.
Two policemen and a Buddhist monk were among those murdered in five gun attacks across four of the country’s provinces.
The killings come after the beheading this week of Jaran Du-lae, a deputy village chief in Sukiran village, Narathiwat province. His head was left in a fertiliser bag on a road just outside his village.
The escalating violence comes after a pledge by Muslim separatists that they would exact revenge for the death of the protesters. The Pattani United Liberation Organisa- tion has promised to kill one Buddhist for every Muslim who died. The group has also threatened to bring its campaign to the streets of the Thai capital, Bangkok , almost 1,000km (621 miles) to the north.
The separatist group is not thought to have been directly involved in this year’s escalating violence, however.
Surakiart Sathirathai, the Thai Foreign Minister, said that a United Nations e-mail, in which its local employees were given warning of a possible attack in the city, was merely a precautionary measure.
Fears that Muslim insurgents may try to abduct Buddhist teachers and students have forced the temporary closure of most schools in the three southernmost provinces of the country, in the volatile area bordering Malaysia. Pairat Wihakarat, the President of the Teachers Association of Southern Thailand, said:
“Buddhists are living in a state of fear. We find that the insurgents are now targeting us.”
More than 400 people have died in the violence so far this year. It started in January when a group of separatists killed four soldiers guarding an army arsenal in Naratiwat province and made away with hundreds of M-16 rifles and machineguns.
Since then, there have been almost daily murders of government officials, soldiers, policemen and monks, but there have also been vicious counter-attacks by security forces.
The worst incident took place on October 25, when seven Muslims were shot dead at a protest in Tak Bai district, Naratiwat. More than 1,000 demonstrators were rounded-up, tied together with rope and piled on top of each other into army trucks.
In such a cramped space, 78 detainees died from suffocation and heat stroke on the five-hour journey to an army camp.
