A Thai soldier stands next to a pile of clothes taken off detained protesters after more than 1,000 people were arrested in clashes with police in Narathiwat province, in Muslim-majority southern Thailand.(AFP/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)
Thai soldiers apprehend hundreds of men after demonstrators clashed with police outside the Tak Bai police station in Thailand's Narathiwat Province, nearly 1,150 km (715 miles) south of Bangkok in this picture taken October 25, 2004. Almost 80 people died of suffocation in southern Thailand while being taken to detention at a military barracks after a violent demonstration, a justice ministry official said on Tuesday. 'We found no wounds on their bodies,' an official, told a news conference in Pattani, a Provincial Capital south of Bangkok. He said the victims were among hundreds arrested after 1,500-strong rally was dispersed from outside a police station in Narathiwat province. Picture taken October 25, 2004. REUTERS/Stringer
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By ALISA TANG, Associated Press Writer
PATTANI, Thailand - At least 78 Muslim detainees suffocated or were crushed to death after police rounded up 1,300 people and packed them into trucks following a riot in southern Thailand. Islamic leaders accused troops Tuesday of overreacting and warned the deaths could worsen sectarian violence.
The arrests followed a melee outside a police station, where protesters had demanded the release of six Muslim men accused of giving weapons to Islamic separatists. Six people were shot to death during the riot Monday, apparently by security forces.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, speaking to reporters as rumors of the suffocations circulated but before the 78 deaths were officially announced, tried to blame the casualties on dawn-to-dusk fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"There are some who died because they were fasting, and they were crammed in tight," Thaksin said. "It's a matter of their bodies becoming weak. Nobody did anything to them."
But the death toll shocked moderate Muslim leaders who accused security forces of overreacting — a charge they have repeatedly made as the government has failed to halt the violence that has claimed more than 400 lives this year in the Muslim-dominated south.
"I am in shock," Abdulraman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, the province where the unrest occurred, told The Associated Press. "I cannot say what is going to happen, but I believe that hell will break out."
Violence has troubled overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand's three Muslim-majority southern provinces for decades, but it has worsened this year. Residents claim they are discriminated against by the central government.
As news of the tragedy spread, six people were shot and seriously wounded in separate attacks Tuesday. The victims included an assistant village chief and her husband.
The army earlier declared a curfew in Narathiwat, with Thaksin calling the situation "volatile."
The dead were among 1,300 people arrested after six hours of skirmishing with authorities. Witnesses saw the prisoners stripped to the waist with their hands tied behind their backs and herded onto trucks to be driven to army camps.
Military and Justice Ministry officials said Tuesday that 78 of those transported on the trucks died en route, most suffocated by the crush of people piled atop one another. Some were kept in the trucks for as long as six hours.
Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan, a Justice Ministry forensics expert, said most perished from suffocation and some from dehydration. Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nujsathit, deputy commander of the 4th Army region, said suffocations occurred "because we had more than 1,300 people packed into the six-wheel trucks."
Lt. Gen. Pisarn Wattanawongkhiri, Sinchai's commander, said 25 army trucks and others hired from private contractors were used to transport the detainees.
Manit Suthaporn, a Justice Ministry official, blamed fasting for contributing to the deaths. "This, combined with the heat — they were in the trucks for five to six hours, and it was crowded," Manit said.
The death toll was the highest since April 28, when police and soldiers killed 107 suspected militants armed with machetes who attacked police posts in a failed attempt to seize firearms, then holed up in a mosque.
Visiting the scene of the riot, Thaksin praised the tough police response and said authorities "have no choice but to use force to suppress them."
Authorities have blamed the southern violence on a renewed Islamic separatist insurgency. Most of those killed have been victims of drive-by shootings or small bomb attacks directed at police and government officials.
The trouble began Monday with a crowd of about 2,000 people who hurled rocks, overturned vehicles and made several attempts to storm the police station and a nearby government office during a six-hour riot. Police and soldiers fired water cannon and tear gas, then shot into the air to try to scatter the crowd.
After finally subduing the rioters, police and soldiers kicked, pummeled and in some cases smashed rifle butts into young men as they were forced to slither bare-chested across a road on their bellies to the trucks which took them away.
At the military camp where many of the prisoners were being held, people came all day to report missing relatives who might be among the detainees, leaving their names and phone numbers.
Investigators searched for weapons at the riot scene and in a nearby river, where divers also looked for bodies. Thaksin said 20 pistols, seven assault rifles and three hand grenades were recovered.
Neighboring Malaysia — a predominantly Muslim country with close ethnic and cultural links to Thailand's southern Muslims — expressed concern over the crackdown.
"We hope the government of Thailand will be able to manage this crisis so that it will not spread and inflame further violence," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.
Foreign human rights groups urged the Thai government to investigate the deaths and criticized the way Thaksin's government has handled the violence.
"The Thai government has handled unrest so far in a way that almost ensures that it is going to increase," said Brad Adams, executive director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
Amnesty International urged Thailand to grant the detainees lawyers and medical care.
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Real Story, courtesy of Supatra, who is very very very busy lately.
SONGKHLA, Thailand - More than 80 people have died following a riot outside the Tak Bai police station in Narathiwat Province, southern Thailand. The riot followed the arrest of six Muslim defense volunteers who have been charged with handing the weapons they had been issued over to Islamic separatist terrorists. The violence erupted after about 2,000 Tak Bai residents picketed noisily outside the police station demanding the unconditional release of the six men. At some point during this demonstration there was a concerted effort by the rioters to storm the police station and release the accused men. This appears to have been instigated by a number of professional agitators who had been identified at a number of other civil disturbances in the three southernmost provinces and by some unidentified onlookers who appeared to be from outside the region. The attack was broken up by the use of water cannon and tear gas. the security forces guarding the police post came under fire from elements within the crowd. By this time more than 24 security personnel had been injured although none were hit by the gunfire coming form the riot.
Soldiers assisting the police then returned fire, initially shooting over the head of the crowd, then dropping rioters seen to be carrying weapons. A total of nine people were killed, six bodies being found on the scene and another three were pulled from the Tak Bai river. Weapons recovered from the dead included four M-16 assault rifles, three AK-47 assault rifles, one .38 pistol, 14 machetes and a handful of cartridges. Four hand grenades were retrieved from bodies taken out of the Tak Bai river. The Fourth Army is currently trying to identify the bodies to see if any were foreigners with terrorist connections. A further 16 rioters were wounded by rifle fire and are being treated at Ingkayutthaboriharn Hospital. All are in critical condition.
Following the outbreak of gunfire, the rioting crowd was broken up and more than 1,300 people were detained after attacking security forces. The problem was that the security forces in the area had not planned on having to handle this many detained people and the requisite truck capacity was not available. The military forces had to bring up trucks from an Army base and also hire civilian vehicles to take the detainees to Ingkayutthaboriharn army camp in nearby Pattani for questioning. It was during the grueling six-hour wait before being moved out that 78 of the detainees died from suffocation in the cramped interior of the trucks, according to a team of forensic pathologists led by Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunant, deputy director of the Forensic Science Institute. She said most of the dead were found at the front of the trucks, just behind the cab.
It appears that conditions inside the trucks deteriorated quickly because of the heat. Many protesters were weak and hungry because they were obeying the holy Ramadan fast which took a heavy toll on their health. It appears that the dead were already severely dehydrated since they had been exposed to the full heat of the sun during the riot yet hadn't drunk water since early morning. In addition, it appears that many of the rioters had consumed the same cocktail of drugs, morphine, methamphetamine and marihuana extract, that had been used by Muslim terrorists in the April attacks on Army posts. Confirmation of this is proving hard to get since, although Khunying Doctor Pornthip took fluids from the dead bodies for lab tests, Islamic religious codes barred a proper autopsy of the bodies, which must be brought for burial within 24 hours. Khunying Pornthip insisted she did not distort the findings to vindicate the government, although the sight of so many deaths had taken her aback. "'It's not in my nature to jeopardize a physician's ethics to cover up for anyone. I carried out the forensic process in line with the facts,'' she said.
Authorities had been able to identify 36 bodies so far. They did not have fatal gunshot wounds nor were there any wounds inflicted by sharp objects. Khunying Pornthip said about 80% of the victims had suffocated and others succumbed to severe heat stroke and convulsions. She did not rule out the possibility that the suffocation could have been caused by agitators in the trucks blocking the nostrils and mouths of the protesters to prevent them from breathing. "We can't tell for sure if anyone blocked their nostrils or mouths," she said. Some support for this theory stems from the fact that two of the dead had broken necks. Fourth Army deputy commander General Sinchai Boonsathit said the soldiers had handled the protesters humanely and did not toss them into the trucks or pile them on top of one another as alleged. Protesters detained at Ingkayutthaboriharn camp were allowed to make phone calls to let their families know their whereabouts.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the government had run out of patience and would take drastic action against elements instigating violence. However, security forces must forgo use of weapons in managing protests and follow proper and peaceful crowd-control procedures. Security forces deployed at the Tak Bai standoff had taken the right step firing warning shots into the air and pointing guns away from protesters. ''They did a great job. They have my praise,'' Mr Thaksin said.
The riot outside the police station appears to have been coordinated with a wave of shootings across Narathiwat province that saw five people attacked, one of whom was killed. Kooy sae Ooy, 72, was seriously wounded as he was returning home from tending his orchard in Sungai Padi district. The second casualty was Boonsri Nakmart, 24, who was attacked while driving his motorcycle home in Sukhirin district. Also in Sukhirin district, gunmen opened fire on Kan Takooy who was hit in his chest and hands. In Sungai Kolok, a man identified only as Khiew was wounded and only 10 minutes later Chamlong Charun, 40, was shot dead at his house. All the victims were Buddhists.
