Amnesty International accuses Thai insurgents of war crimes
Play
Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Thailand's southern insurgents of deliberately targeting civilians to spread terror in the long-contested, majority-Muslim region.
In its latest report on the southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, the human rights group found that two-thirds of the nearly 5,000 people killed in the conflict since it broke out in 2004 were civilians.
"As the insurgents have never articulated their aims, these attacks seem aimed primarily at spreading terror," said Donna Guest, Amnesty International's deputy director for Asia.
"These attacks constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva Convention," as they target people taking no part in hostilities, she told a press conference.
According to Amnesty's report, They Took Nothing But His Life, between January 2004 and June 2011 there were 10,890 incidents of violence in the South, resulting in 4,766 deaths and 7,808 injuries.
Although a separatist struggle has simmered in the three southernmost provinces - once constituting the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani - for more than 100 years, the conflict took a more violent turn in January 2004, when Muslim militants raided an army base, killing four soldiers and stealing 300 weapons.
Over the past seven and a half years, various Thai governments have responded by imposing harsher legislation in the region, including martial law, an emergency decree and the internal security act.
The Amnesty report noted that insurgent attacks on civilians appeared to escalate after a coup that resulted in a military-appointed government taking power in 2007.//DPA
