Suspected Islamic militants beheaded a 60-year-old Buddhist laborer in Thailand's south in the second such slaying to avenge the deaths of 87 Muslims at the hands of security forces last month, police said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the insurgents in the Muslim-majority southern provinces are arming themselves by stealing guns that the government originally handed out to local officials to fight the militants.
At least 87 Muslim protesters died on Oct. 25 when security forces cracked down on a violent demonstration outside a police station in Narathiwat's Tak Bai district. Most of the victims suffocated or were crushed after they were arrested and crammed into army trucks.
The crackdown triggered a new round of violence in the south, which is the only Muslim-majority region in mostly Buddhist Thailand and where a deadly separatist insurgency has simmered for years. More than 500 people have been killed this year.
Yesterday, the decapitated body of Kaew, 60, was found in a hut at the rubber plantation where he worked in Changpeuk village in Narathiwat province, said police Lieutenant Boonserm Klaewatee. The victims's surname was not available.
Kaew's head had been slashed repeatedly, apparently by a machete, he said.
Police found four handwritten letters with the body that threatened more attacks.
"This is not enough," one them read. "More will be killed in revenge for the innocents that were killed in the Tak Bai massacre."
Kaew is the third Buddhist man to be beheaded by suspected insurgents this year and the second apparently in retaliation for the Tak Bai incident. The head of a Buddhist village leader in Narathiwat was found Nov. 2.
Earlier Tuesday, a Buddhist couple -- Srinuan Chindai and his wife Korn -- were slain by a motorcycle-riding gunman in the Banangstar district of nearby Yala province, said police Lieutenant Colonel Jakarin Bampensamai.
Hours before, groups of three to four masked men stormed the houses of village security guards and chiefs in Pattani province and stole 10 shotguns, said police Major General Thanachareon Suwanno. Nobody was injured in the raid, he said.
The insurgents, who have previously been thought to be poorly organized and often armed only with machetes and home-made bombs, have launched a series of raids this year on military installations and other places where weapons are stored.
More than 500 guns -- mostly assault rifles -- rocket-propelled grenades and tonnes of dynamite and fertilizer used for bombs have been stolen since January.
"They will use these stolen guns to kill innocent people," Thaksin told reporters yesterday. "At least four or five innocent people have been killed every day. The lives of innocent people are in serious danger."
Separatists are active in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat -- the only predominantly Muslim provinces in largely Buddhist Thailand -- in the early 1970s, but disbanded after a government amnesty in the 1980s.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS