Last month’s bombings in Thai tourist towns were not linked to Muslim separatists, Thailand’s defense minister said yesterday, contradicting the police.
There has been a series of bomb attacks in the central and far south, including coordinated bombings in tourist towns last month that killed four Thais and wounded dozens, including foreigners.
Analysts say separatists in the southern Muslim-majority provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani bordering Malaysia were behind the attacks.
Tourist towns in the central south have for years been spared any spill-over of violence from the deep south and analysts say the government is loath to blame the coordinated bombings on southern Muslim insurgents because of the fear of damaging tourism.
So far, two suspects have been arrested in connection with the attacks.
“Even though the arrested suspects were from the southern provinces, this is not an expansion of the insurgency and not related to southern violence,” Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said at an event outlining the military government’s achievements since a May 2014 coup.
His comments contradicted a police statement last month linking the attacks to separatists in the south.
More than 6,500 people have died — the majority of them civilians — since 2004 in fighting between Malay Muslim rebels and Thai security forces stationed in the area.
Violence in the three provinces had decreased by 60 percent since the junta took power, Prawit said.
In other developments, an inquest has ruled that security forces gunned down four unarmed Muslim men in Pattani Province, a lawyer said on Wednesday, a rare finding that could pave the way for landmark prosecutions of officials.
Two villagers and two students were gunned down on March 25 last year in a raid on Ban To Chut village, when security forces, acting on a tip-off, opened fire on a group of suspected militants.
Initially authorities said the men were armed rebels, but an investigating panel set up after the killings revealed the four to be unarmed civilians.
Wednesday’s inquest at Pattani’s court found “the men died from shooting by military personnel and policemen during a raid,” according to a lawyer from the Muslim Attorney’s Center.
Additional reporting by AFP
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