BANGKOK, 7 March 2005 — Unidentified gunmen attacked a railway station, killing two policemen, and wounded a schoolteacher in two separate incidents yesterday in Thailand’s troubled, largely Muslim south, police said.
Two policemen and one militant were killed when an unidentified number of gunmen opened fire at a railway station in Narathiwat province, a police officer told Reuters.
In a separate incident in nearby Yala province, gunmen shot and severely injured a 44-year old headmaster, another police officer said.
They were the latest incidents of separatist violence in the three southernmost, mainly Muslim provinces of Thailand where nearly 600 people have been killed since unrest started in January last year.
Meanwhile, three Thai soldiers who were investigated by the military after a probe implicated them in the deaths of Muslim protesters in custody last year are unlikely to be sacked, the defense minister said yesterday.
The military launched its own probe into the three after a government-appointed independent commission released a report in December on the Oct. 25 incident, when security forces broke up a riot in Narathiwat.
Eighty-seven protesters were killed, including 78 in custody, most of them suffocating after 1,300 of them were bound and piled into the backs of army trucks.
“I have received the investigation’s report about their conduct but the punishment decision is up to me and I haven’t decided yet,” Defense Minister Sumpan Boonyanun told reporters.
“I looked at the report briefly and see that their punishment should not be dismissal but transferal from theirs positions.
However, I will look at the details again,” he said. The top-ranking soldier among the three is Fourth Army Region commander Lt. Gen. Pisarn Wattanawongkeeree, who was transferred from his position overseeing the kingdom’s restive south in November in the wake of the incident, which triggered an international outcry.
“The three of them have worked for the nation. If they have done something wrong, they will be punished but we have to consider whether the punishment will demoralize them,” Sumpan said.
“If we punish them too hard, no one will dare to do anything because they will be afraid of being punished.”
The independent commission laid most of the blame for the deaths on Pisarn as well as assistant national police chief Lt. Gen. Wongkot Maneerin and Interior Ministry Deputy Permanent Secretary Siva Saengmanee.
It found that the deaths were due to officials mishandling the situation and not to deliberate acts to kill or harm protesters.
Thailand has been battling unrest in the southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala since January 2004, with Buddhists, officials and security forces being targeted by what the government says are militants.
