THAILAND: Almost 80 Muslims died in military custody in southern Thailand, suffocated while being transported in trucks to an army barracks after a violent demonstration, officials said yesterday.
Only six people were previously believed to have been killed when troops and police opened fire to quell a riot outside a police station on Monday in the restive, Muslim-majority region.
The huge leap in the toll, and the manner of the deaths, are expected to add to tensions. One local Muslim scholar accused authorities of gassing the victims and called it a massacre.
Justice ministry official Mr Manit Sutaporn said 78 people died of suffocation, making it the bloodiest day in the Buddhist kingdom since April 28th, when troops and police shot dead 106 machete-wielding militants, also in the south.
"We found no wounds on their bodies," Mr Manit told a news conference in Pattani, a provincial capital 1,100 km south of Bangkok.
He said the victims were among hundreds of Muslim men arrested after a 1,500-strong rally was dispersed outside a police station in Narathiwat province. The deaths appear to have occurred while the detainees, who were stripped semi-naked after their arrest, were being taken by truck to barracks in Pattani, a journey that took five hours, Major-Gen Sinchai Nutsatit said.
"We have never seen this sort of torture in Thai history before. It is just like gassing them," said Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, an Islamic scholar from the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani province.
"It is a deliberate massacre. They rounded protesters up and crammed them into closed trucks. They died from lack of air." Troops and police fired live rounds, as well as water cannon and teargas, to end a six-hour standoff with the crowd, which was demanding the release of six villagers accused of handing over government-issue shotguns to Islamic militants.
Shots were also fired from the crowd, officials said, adding that some of the protesters were under the influence of drugs or were frail because of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Six protesters died at the scene, and 20 people were injured. "This is typical," Prime Minister Mr Thaksin Shinawatra said when asked about reports of scores of dead. "It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them."
Human rights groups said the deaths raised alarming questions in the self-styled "Land of Smiles", where campaigners say basic civil rights are under threat from an administration increasingly known for intolerance. But one of Thailand's 11 National Human Rights Commissioners Pradit Charoenthaitawee appeared less concerned: "These people are rebels, separatists with some help from foreigners." - (Reuters)