Word: narathiwat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lies another land that has far more in common with the barbed-wire disquiet of Iraq or Afghanistan than the sunny image projected in tourist brochures. Nearly every day, violence - motorcycle bombs, shootings, arson attacks, beheadings - claims another life in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which, unlike the rest of the Buddhist-majority country, are 80% Muslim. The region was a Malay sultanate until the early 20th century when Thailand annexed it. While members of both faiths have been killed by Muslim militants, as a proportion of the population more Buddhists have perished. This year...
...question that Thailand's southern tip is increasingly awash in guns. The number of legally registered weapons in the three provinces has jumped 10% each year since 2004, and many more are owned illegally. The state readily distributes firearms to everyone from teachers to government officials. In Narathiwat's Tak Bai district, for instance, none of the 56 village chiefs owned a gun before 2004. Now all do. "Guns can't totally protect us against insurgents," says Yoon Yerntorn, chief of Tak Bai's Buddhist Sai Khao village, where five locals have been killed over the past few years...
...guns proliferate, there are also worrisome signs that some Buddhists are straying from a defensive posture into vigilante justice. In June, 11 Muslims were shot dead by a posse of gunmen while praying at the al-Furqan mosque in Narathiwat province. Official speculation first centered on Muslim radicals turning against their own. Later, though, police issued an arrest warrant for a Buddhist militiaman from the neighboring village, where a rubber tapper had been killed the day before...
...work of Buddhist vigilantes. All in all, it's something that Thai tourist authorities would prefer to gloss over in their posters touting palm-fringed beaches [EM] even though those white-sand idylls aren't located that far away from the three violence-wracked provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat...
...know when they'll pull the trigger," says Prapa, a short-haired woman with a brisk but cheerful manner. "We try to keep a constant lookout, but it's hard because our attention is usually on the children." A year ago, she recalls, a teacher in Narathiwat province was shot in his classroom, in front of his fourth-grade pupils; his killers were two youths in school uniforms. Even Ban Bukoh's annual sports day has been scrapped-such gatherings are simply too risky now, she says. A bomb exploded in a playground in Yala province last month, injuring...