BANGKOK, Thailand, 17 November 2004 — Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is facing the toughest challenge of his four years in office as violence by militants escalates in the south and security forces employ heavy-handed tactics to suppress the rebellion.
At least 500 people have been killed in violence this year in the predominantly Muslim region of Thailand, including 78 protesters who died in police custody Oct. 25. Most of those demonstrators were suffocated in a crush of bodies after they were arrested in the town of Tak Bai and crammed into trucks for transport to jail.
Since then, more than three dozen people, most of them Buddhists, have been slain in retaliatory attacks in the southern region, which borders predominantly Muslim Malaysia.
Last week, a Buddhist plantation worker was beheaded by attackers who left notes warning there would be further killings to avenge the protesters’ deaths.
“This is not enough,’’ said one note. “More will be killed in revenge for the innocents that were killed in the Tak Bai massacre.’’
On Sunday, a former police officer and a laborer from Myanmar were gunned down at a rubber plantation in Yala province, police said.
The clashes mark the revival of a historic conflict between Muslims of Malay heritage, who make up the majority in the border region, and the central government of Thailand, a mainly Buddhist nation.
Thaksin, a onetime policeman who became the country’s richest businessman before winning election as prime minister, has presided over a government increasingly known for its ruthless police tactics.
His war on drug dealers last year led to the killing of at least 2,300 suspected dealers and drug users, many of them gunned down on the streets in broad daylight. Critics charge that the security forces are responsible for the kidnapping of rights activists, including the March disappearance of prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelahphajit.
“The prime minister has supported a culture of impunity among the police and government officials,’’ said Somchai Homlaor, secretary-general of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based human rights group.
Thaksin and his Thais Love Thais party face re-election early next year. His popularity remains high among the Buddhist majority, and he is unlikely to suffer at the polls from the conflict in the south.
But the escalating violence and brutality by government forces could diminish Thailand’s standing abroad and ultimately threaten its tourist industry, an important source of foreign revenue.
In Southeast Asia, the violence places Thailand among countries facing persistent separatist rebellions — the Philippines in the Muslim-dominated south, and Indonesia in the Sumatran province of Aceh.
Human rights advocates say excessive violence by government forces in southern Thailand is fueling the uprising and helping the rebels attract support among the Muslim population.
“Your government’s inadequate responses to previous human rights abuses have created an environment in which security forces trample the rule of law and violate human rights without fear of accountability,’’ New York-based Human Rights Watch said in open letter to Thaksin last month.
Thai officials and mainstream Muslim leaders say they are uncertain who is leading the uprising in southern Thailand and whether the militants are receiving assistance or training from Islamic groups outside the country.
The United States is among those calling for an investigation of the protesters’ suffocation deaths in October.
Thaksin initially said the death toll was so high because many of the prisoners were weak from fasting. He also charged that some of the protesters were under the influence of drugs.
Later, the prime minister asserted that the authorities used “gentle measures’’ to control the crowd but acknowledged that mistakes occurred during the transfer of the prisoners.
Last week, 144 university professors called on Thaksin to apologize for the protesters’ suffocation deaths.
The prime minister declined, asking reporters, “What will (the nation) get from an apology?’’
