PATTANI, Thailand, 28 October 2004 — Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra expressed regret yesterday over the deaths of 78 Muslim detainees who suffocated or were crushed while crammed into army trucks after a riot, but insisted his security forces acted appropriately to quell the rioting.
Hundreds of grieving relatives flocked to a military camp to claim the bodies, and outraged Islamic leaders warned the deaths could worsen sectarian violence in the Muslim-dominated south of predominantly Buddhist Thailand. More than 400 people have been killed this year in a revival of a long-simmering insurgency.
Human rights groups urged the government to investigate the deaths. Thaksin acknowledged “there were some mistakes,” and that authorities lacked enough trucks to properly transport the nearly 1,300 people arrested in Monday’s riot in southern Narathiwat province because it was a public holiday.
Authorities had to “pile them up on top of each other, and they died,” he said.
Gen. Sirichai Thunyasiri, commander of a task force on security in the region, said the military used only four trucks to transport the detainees, and that they spent more than six hours in the vehicles before arriving at an army camp in a neighboring province.
“We are sorry for that, sorry they met an untimely death,” Thaksin told the Senate, which had demanded an explanation for the deaths. But Thaksin insisted the military had used “the soft approach,” and that soldiers “did not fire a single round into the crowd.”
At least seven people also were killed in the riot, apparently shot by security forces, making the overall death toll 85.
Sen. Kraisak Choonhavan urged Thaksin to apologize publicly, saying the prime minister had “praised the military for doing a good job and making people die.”
“The human rights groups should not sit idle — they should try to get rid of this government,” Kraisak told Parliament.
A Thai Muslim separatist organization, the Pattani United Liberation Organization, warned on its website that the fight will be brought to Thailand’s capital, Bangkok. The group, however, is run by aging Muslim exiles, and is not believed to have much of a following on the ground in Thailand.
“Their capital will be burned to the ground like they did to our Pattani capital,” said the group, which is not believed to have much of a following. “Their blood will be shed into the earth and flood into the rivers, our weapons are fire and oil, fire and oil, fire and oil.”
Thaksin and other officials sought to partly blame the deaths on the detainees’ weakness due to dawn-to-dusk fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, saying they died of dehydration or suffocation.
But a forensic scientist with the Justice Ministry had said two or three of the detainees had broken necks. Relatives wept yesterday as a police spokesman read out names of the dead outside the Inkayuth-Borihan army camp in Pattani province.
Muslim resident Wadamae Hajehding, 62, traveled to the army camp in hopes of finding that his 23-year-old son was not among the dead. He said Thailand’s security forces were “too cruel.” “They treat us worse than animals,” he said.
The detainees were among about 2,000 people who clashed with security forces outside a police station in Narathiwat on Monday while demanding the release of six Muslim suspects. Police and soldiers fired water cannons and tear gas, then shot into the air to try to scatter the crowd.
After subduing the rioters, police and soldiers kicked and in some cases smashed rifle butts into young men as they were forced to slither bare-chested across a road to the trucks that took them away.
Authorities said some rioters were armed. Thaksin said 20 pistols, seven assault rifles and three hand grenades were recovered at the scene.
