BANGKOK, 8 March 2005 — Three Thai generals have been removed from their jobs following the deaths of 78 Muslims in army custody last year but will face no further disciplinary action, army chief Gen. Pravit Wongsuwan said yesterday.
Lt. Gen. Pisan Wattanawongkiri, commander of the army in the south, his deputy Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nutsathit and Infantry Division Commander Maj. -Gen. Chalermchai Wirunpeth would be moved to advisory positions, Pravit told reporters.
“There is no disciplinary penalty for the ranks of general and no disciplinary punishment is being meted out,” Pravit said.
“Punishment through dismissal is already regarded as the most severe. All the three have carried out their jobs faithfully, but they still need to be held accountable.”
A government appointed panel blamed the three generals for mismanaging the break up of a Muslim protest last October in the southern town of Tak Bai district against the arrest of village militiamen accused of handing over weapons to Muslim separatists.
Seven people were killed when soldiers and police opened fire on the protest, which they said had threatened to become a riot.
The security forces detained hundreds of demonstrators and 78 died of suffocation or were crushed to death in army trucks during a long journey to an army base.
It was one of the bloodiest incidents in separatist violence which erupted in the three southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat near the Malaysian border in January last year.
The government has refused to apologize for the deaths and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinwatra drew heavy criticism at the time for suggesting those who died had been weakened by fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in the violence, which began with a raid on an army base in the south, where a low key separatist war was fought in the 1970s and 1980s, in which 400 assault rifles were stolen.
An official said yesterday Thai forces will send out more patrols and set up more checkpoints in the far south in an effort to tackle rising separatist violence in the region.
“The plan will start tomorrow,” Gen. Sirichai Tunyasiri, head of the Southern Border Provinces Peace-building Command (SBPPC), a multi-agency task force trying to end violence in the southern region.
“We will add more checkpoints and patrols to put pressure on them,” he told reporters following a militant attack on a railway station in Narathiwat province in which two policemen were killed.
One of the militants was also killed in a shootout with policemen at the railway station, one died of his wounds and a third was shot dead by village militiamen.
Police said yesterday that two more had escaped, taking with them two police rifles and two revolvers, and that all five were armed with M-16 assault rifles.
Militants, who started the violence in January last year with a raid on an army camp in which they took 400 assault rifles, many of them M-16s, have stepped up their attacks since Thaksin won an election landslide last month.
Police said militants shot dead a man yesterday morning as he rode his motorcycle to work at a hospital in nearby Pattani province.
