Buddhist woman burned alive in Muslim south Thailand
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Buddhist woman burned alive in Muslim south Thailand*
11 Apr 2007 10:50:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Surapan Boonthanom
YALA, Thailand, April 11 (Reuters) - A Buddhist woman was shot and
burned alive in Thailand's violence-torn Muslim-majority south on
Wednesday, prompting angry protests in front of visiting army chief
Sonthi Boonyaratglin.
Watcharaporn Boonmak, 26, was ambushed by gunmen as she rode her
motorcycle through a Muslim village in Yala, one of the three southern
provinces roiled by three years of separatist insurgency in which more
than 2,000 people have been killed.
"She might have been shot in the stomach before they set fire to her and
her motorcycle," a Yala police officer, who asked to remain anonymous,
told Reuters by telephone.
One of her relatives told Reuters that witnesses at the scene heard
Watcharaporn, a garage clerk, screaming and crawling along the road for
help but nobody dared respond for fear of reprisals.
Even by the standards of a conflict that has seen well over a dozen
civilians beheaded, it was a shocking incident.
"It is the most cruel and brutal thing I've seen in my life," Jaran
Kongchuay said as he joined hundreds of Buddhists bearing Watcharaporn's
charred body on a hospital stretcher to the provincial hall, demanding
action from Sonthi.
"Beheading or burning alive, no one is arrested!" one of their placards
read. "Will the government please pay closer attention to the three
southern border provinces?" another said.
Sonthi promised help for Watcharaporn's family and vowed to hunt down
her killers -- even though arrests and successful prosecutions in the
region, where 80 percent of people ethnic Malay Muslims, are extremely rare.
In the same village in December, two male Buddhist teachers were shot
dead when their pickup truck only 300 metres (yards) from the village
school. Their bodies were also torched.
INCREASINGLY BRUTAL
Army spokesman Colonel Acra Tiproch said the insurgents, who have never
made their aims public, had become increasingly brutal towards civilians
in response to a police and military campaign to root out militant cells.
One of the main problems for the mainly Buddhist security forces is that
they receive little or no assistance from the Muslim population.
Watcharaporn's murder is likely to inflame tensions between Muslims and
Buddhists in the region, an independent sultanate until annexed by
Bangkok a century ago.
On Monday, Buddhist defence volunteers shot and killed four Muslims --
including two teenage boys -- after an altercation with mourners leaving
the funeral of a Muslim village chief who had been blown up in a
booby-trapped vehicle earlier in the day.
While regretting the incident, details of which remain murky, army
spokesman Acra said the volunteers' actions were justified.
"They were acting in self-defence as the Muslim mourners were hurling
stones at the Buddhist villagers," he said.
On Tuesday, security forces arrested 11 Muslim men in a raid on two
villages in Yala, seizing five firearms, hundreds of rounds of
ammunition and 200 kg (440 lb) of fertiliser thought to be for making
bombs, Acra said.