Thai Buddhist Vigilante Squads Suspected

August 7, 2007

Author: RUNGRAWEE C. PINYORAT

Source: Guardian Unlimited

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6833183,00.html

KOLOMUDO VILLAGE, Thailand (AP) - The black-uniformed raiders roared into this Thai Muslim village, firing assault rifles and hurling grenades from a pickup truck at a group of teenagers relaxing near the mosque. When the attack was over, five of the youths lay dead.

As they have done in the past, authorities initially said the killers were Muslim insurgents terrorizing their own people in their separatist war against the Buddhist-dominated central government.

But then the official line on the village raid changed, with senior military commanders shifting suspicion to Buddhist vigilantes and heightening fears that the four-year-old conflict in Thailand's southern Muslim provinces is entering an ominous new phase.

Mohammed Kadir, a local government leader in Kolomudo, told The Associated Press he believed the raiders were not Muslim insurgents disguised in military garb - as has been claimed by authorities in other cases. He instead thought they could have been Buddhist vigilantes in official-looking uniforms or possibly security forces, which have long been accused of torturing and secretly killing suspected insurgents.