Posted on 05/01/2004 12:01:27 AM PDT by ambrose
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Friday, April 30, 2004 · Last updated 7:19 a.m. PT
Adviser: Thai violence from movement
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Surging violence in Thailand's Muslim south is the work of a growing but still shadowy movement that wants to carve a separate Islamic homeland out of the mainly Buddhist nation, officials said Friday.
Gen. Kitti Rattanchaya, the south's top security adviser, said the movement has enlisted hundreds of fighters ready to sacrifice themselves. He said some were trained abroad "at religious schools," but he did not give the location.
"The target of this terrorist organization is separatism and the establishment of a Muslim state," Kitti told The Associated Press.
A total of 108 suspected militants - mostly young men wielding machetes - were killed Wednesday when they tried to steal weapons from police and army posts in pre-dawn raids in three provinces. Three policemen and two soldiers also were killed in the bloodshed, the worst in years in this famously placid, tolerant country.
National police chief Gen. Sunthorn Kraikwan said the militants "had clear intention to stock up firearms for their separatist operations."
Arabic language pamphlets calling for the creation of a Muslim homeland in Thailand were found on several militants killed in the seven-hour shootout, police said.
"This is the evidence that they are fighting for a separate land on religious lines," said police Gen. Kovit Wattana, the chief investigator into the incident.
Decorative knives, kept only by heads of clans among southern Muslims, also were found on some bodies, he said.
The comments and evidence appeared to contradict Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's claim that drug traffickers and corrupt politicians were behind the region's troubles and that the militants have no foreign links. He said Friday a small number of separatists were exploiting unemployed and uneducated youths by brainwashing them and feeding their drug habits.
Kitti disagreed.
"Drugs and illegal businesses are not major factors in the south," he said, adding that the separatists have been boosting their ranks for nearly a decade and have begun an "undeclared war."
Most of Thailand's 63 million people are Buddhist, but the southern provinces near Malaysia have Muslim majorities. A separatist movement flourished there for years, but faded after a government amnesty in the 1980s.
Seventeen militants were arrested in the attacks, including an Islamic cleric who said the militants - many of them barely out of their teens - "sacrificed their lives for Allah."
"We are fighting for a separate Muslim state," the cleric, Mama Matheeyoh, said as police escorted him to the scene of one attack. "We are not drug addicts and we did not get paid by anyone."
The preacher claimed he led a unit in one of the dozen or so simultaneous raids on security posts in Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces. The 17 detained suspects face charges including treason and conspiring to murder state officials.
Government forces tipped off to the raids responded with overwhelming firepower, killing 108 fighters, including 32 inside a mosque in Pattani.
Human rights groups and Muslim preachers accused security personnel of using excessive force, and local residents said civilians also were killed.
The acting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, demanded Friday from Geneva that Thailand investigate.
Under U.N. treaties, security forces are "required to refrain from using force exceeding that strictly required by the exigencies of the situation," Ramcharan said.
The Thai Foreign Ministry said Friday that "strong and decisive" action was necessary "given the scale and intensity and swiftness of the attacks."
"Otherwise, we would have affected the overall security and safety of people," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow said.
In Pattani province, hundreds prayed Friday at the 425-year-old Kreu-Sae Mosque where security forces attacked holed-up militants.
"There shouldn't have been deaths here," businessman Hadi Jindasak said. "Those in charge could have waited and caught them alive instead."
Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said Thursday that lab tests on slain and detained militants detected methamphetamines, morphine and marijuana.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and Mama did not say if the guerrillas had a formal name.
Among the largest separatist groups once active in south Thailand was the now largely disbanded Pattani United Liberation Organization. Another group called "Bersatu" - meaning "United" - later emerged as an umbrella for separatist factions.
A statement posted on a Web site allegedly belonging to PULO and signed by Bersatu warned visitors not to travel to southern provinces, including the tourist island of Phuket.
Australia and New Zealand also warned their citizens against traveling to southern Thailand.
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