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Thailand: Conflict in Muslim south cost $3 billion, says think-tank
Adnkronos International - January 19, 2009
Bangkok – Conflict in the three Muslim-dominated provinces of southern Thailand has cost the government more than 3 billion dollars in the past five years, according to a university think-tank.
Deep South Watch, a think-tank linked to the University of Pattani, said the three provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani have recorded 9,780 violent incidents since January 2004. Last year there were a total of 718 violent incidents and 1,861 others in 2007.
Analysts said that the fall in violence does not signify an improvement in the situation but rather a change in the tactics of the rebels who are now looking for larger but less frequent attacks.
Since January 2004, an estimated 3,287 people have been killed in the conflict – more than half of them Muslims who were considered pro-Bangkok by the rebels.
Over 45 percent of Thai military forces – almost exclusively Thai/Laotian in ethnicity and Buddhist in religion – are currently stationed in the south, where some districts of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani remain off-limits.
Last week the human rights organisation Amnesty International said the Thai Army had used torture in the country's Muslim south in order to quell an Islamist rebellion.
Burying people to their necks and near suffocation with plastic bags were among the methods of torture used by the Thai Army, the rights group said.
In the report, entitled 'Thailand: Torture in the southern counter-insurgency,' the watchdog refuted the possibility that rogue soldiers are responsible for the torture and said that the army is systematically torturing people to extract information.
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