Suffering silently
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Rokiyoh Mahno sought comfort by reciting the shahada, the Muslim profession of faith, as she held her dying husband in her arms.
Abdulrahmae’s body was riddled with bullets sprayed from an AK47 by a gunman who unloaded an entire magazine on him and five others from the back of a motorbike before riding away in the dark.
He was still breathing when the ambulance took him away. But a phone call from the hospital came moments later. Abdulrahmae had passed away, leaving behind his 40-year-old wife and four children aged between nine months and 13 years old.
Two people were killed and four injured at a teashop in Pattani’s Khok Pho district. Authorities quickly blamed Malay-Muslim insurgents, but locals are not convinced and did not rule out the role of a pro-government death squad.
The fact that the police did not show up at the crime scene until almost three hours after the shooting does not help the government’s efforts to win the people over. The military, which has two companies stationed within two kilometres of the village, also did not show up until afternoon the next day.
For his part, the secretary-general of the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC), Thawee Sodsong, arrived the following morning and told the victims’ family that his people would be in contact with them for a possible rehabilitation package. Rokiyoh said she doesn’t really know what the SBPAC programme entails. Rokiyoh’s faith tells her that her husband is moving on to a new and better place. But the redness in her eyes, which she wipes occasionally, suggested that coming to terms with this loss will be a painful experience. The husband and wife tapped rubber for a living and provided half of their earnings to the plantation’s owner.
