MUSLIM HATE OF BUDDHISTS!
3 get life imprisonment in 2018 Bodh Gaya blasts case
The
blast took place on January 19, 2018, outside the Mahabodhi temple at
Bodhgaya minutes after Buddhist monk the Dalai Lama ended his religious
sermon at 'Kal Chakra Maidan'.
17th December 2021
Indian Express
PATNA:
A special NIA court in Patna on Friday sentenced life term to three
accused and imprisonment for 10 years to five others in connection with
a serial bomb explosion case of 2018 at Bodhgaya in south Bihar.
The
blast took place on January 19, 2018, outside the Mahabodhi temple at
Bodhgaya minutes after Buddhist monk the Dalai Lama ended his religious
sermon at 'Kal Chakra Maidan'. Two monks had suffered splinter injuries
in the explosion.
On December 10, the NIA court headed by Guruminder Singh Malhotra had
pronounced all the eight accused having their links with
Bangladesh-based terrorist outfit guilty for the serial bomb blast. A
number of foreign tourists, mostly monks, were present at the explosion
site.
While
three accused --- Paigamber Sheikh, Noor Alam Momin and Ahmad Ali --
were awarded life imprisonment, Arif Hussain, Adil Sheikh, Mustafa
Rahman, Dilawar Hussain and Abdul were given a 10-year jail term.
However,
another accused, Zahidul Islam, didn't confess his involvement in the
incident. The accused were booked on the charges of waging a war
against the State, section 16, 18 and 20 of UAPA Act, section 4/5 of
Explosive Substance Act besides different sections of IPC.
The convicts were later taken to the central jail at Beur under tight security arrangements.
From a
1700-Year-Old Buddha Statue to a 75-Year-Old Buddhist: A Brief Account of
Islamic Aggression
MAR 20,
2021 3:00 PM
Jihad Watch
While we have
extensively discussed the atrocities unleashed by Islamic jihadis upon
Christians and Hindus, jihadis often perpetrate the same atrocities against
Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists. Together these groups form micro-minorities on the
Indian subcontinent.
Though
Buddhists have a strong presence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, they are still a
minority in the subcontinent’s vast populations. So, what are the odds of those
who have tormented the region’s largest religious population, the Hindus, in
their land, leaving the micro-minorities alone?
“You can be
full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” said the
52-year-old Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu of Myanmar.
He was referring to Muslims. We wonder, what could compel a peaceful monk to
come up with such a cruel comment?
In March 2001,
the Islamic jihad group the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan in
Afghanistan. Standing tall at 38 meters and 55 meters, the twin statues were
monumental wonders of ancient artistry from the sixth century. But they were
destroyed, as they in all their grandeur were dismissed as “idols of the
infidels” by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Seven years
later, when the Tehreek-e-Taliban overran the Swat Valley in Pakistan, the
meditating statue of Buddha dating back to the seventh century became one of
its first casualties.
In July 2020,
a 1700-year-old Buddhist idol,
discovered in Pakistan and believed to be a product of the Gandhara
civilization, was destroyed. At the behest of an Islamic cleric, four
construction workers took sledgehammers to the “un-Islamic” ancient relic and
smashed it into pieces.
In 2013,
Haider Ali, Mujibullah, Imtiyaz,
and Tarique Ansari were taken in custody for planting
thirteen bombs in the Bodh Gaya temple complex. This is a major Buddhist
pilgrimage site in Bihar, India, and is frequented by large groups of Buddhists
from all corners of the world. Though the explosives were recovered before they
exploded, two monks were severely injured in the mayhem. Taking the Myanmar
situation as a backstory to justify their long-contemplated violence against
the Buddhists, jihadis have often targeted them in countries in which the
Muslim population is dominant.
However, to
think that they depend on an excuse to resort to violence would be naive. The
Nalanda University of India was a revered monastery and the epicentre
of learning from the fifth century to the twelfth century CE. Supported by the
Buddhist emperor, it was, in its era, what Cambridge or Oxford is today. In
1193, the Turkish invader Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji and his army of marauders
descended on the treasury of knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and
philosophy, and razed it to the ground. The residential university housed 2000
teachers and 10,000 students, thousands of whom were beheaded or burned alive.
The mammoth collection of nine million manuscripts continued to burn for three
months.
Instances of
pillage and plunder are recorded throughout history, dating back to 712-13 CE,
when the city of Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan, was ravaged by the Arabs.
Mosques replaced Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist shrines were ground down
across Central Asian territories that were attacked by the Arab general of
Khorasan, Qutaybah ibn Muslim.
In recent
history, the Borobudur Buddhist temple in Magelang,
Central Java, Indonesia suffered major damage in 1985, after nine bombs planted
by Mohammad Jawad, Abdulkadir Ali Alhabsyi, and a
blind Muslim preacher, Husein Ali Al Habsyi, detonated at the site.
Another South
Asian country, Bangladesh, receives huge grants from international bodies for
the development of its infrastructure and living conditions. This aid has done
little to educate Bangladesh’s jihadis, who are armed to attack its minorities
round the clock. When it’s not the Hindus, they come for the Buddhists.
In 2012,
twelve Buddhist temples and monasteries and 50 houses were ransacked by a
25,000-strong local mob. An alleged Facebook post by a Buddhist criticizing the
Quran had fueled the fury. It was later found that no Buddhist had made any
such Facebook post.
In 2016, a
75-year-old Buddhist monk was hacked to death and his body was recovered from a
Buddhist temple in the district of Bandarban,
Bangladesh. He was just one of many from the minority community who have been
murdered by suspected jihadis during this time.
Buddhist monks
have organized peaceful rallies demanding UN intervention because of the
incessant Islamic jihad attacks on the Buddhists of Bangladesh. We are awaiting
the UN’s action on the humble appeal.
We keep
hearing so much about Uyghur Muslims being abused by the Chinese government.
That abuse is not justified. But what we are not being told is that the Uyghurs
were originally Buddhists of the Kingdom of Qocho and
Turfan. They were invaded and converted at sword point during a “holy war”
waged against the Buddhist kingdom by Chagatai Khizr Khwaja.
Many of the converted descendants retain no memory of their Buddhist legacy and
harbour the same attitude toward the “infidel” as any
regular jihadi would. But again, isn’t it how any population that has been
converted to this ideology is relentlessly exhorted to think, behave and
function?
Buddhist
woman imprisoned for complaining about mosque's speaker
Apriadi Gunawan
The
Jakarta Post
Jakarta
| Tue, August 21, 2018
A Chinese-Indonesian woman of the Buddhist faith has been sentenced to 1.5
years in prison for complaining about the volume of the azan (Islamic call to
prayer) that was blasted from a speaker of a mosque near her house.
Meiliana, 44, a resident of Tanjung
Balai, North Sumatra, was found guilty of blasphemy
as stipulated under articles 156 and 156A of the Criminal Code on blasphemy,
the Medan District Court said on Tuesday.
“[We] declare that the defendant is legally and compellingly proven guilty of
[…] committing blasphemy against a certain religion that is professed in
Indonesia,” presiding judge Wahyu Prasetyo Wibowo
said.
“[We] sentenced the defendant to one and a half years in prison.”
Meiliana is one of the first people to have been
sentenced to prison for complaining about the volume of a mosque's speakers,
despite a plea from the Indonesian Mosque Council, now led by Vice President
Jusuf Kalla, for mosque staff to use loudspeakers
wisely.
Meiliana reportedly said the azan was “too loud” and
“hurt” her ears, and asked a neighbor to lower the speaker’s volume.
Her remark, made in 2016, is believed to have triggered the worst anti-Chinese
riot in the country since 1998, with Muslims who claimed to have been offended
by her words burning several Buddhist temples.
During the riot, the angry mob destroyed prayer equipment, Buddha statues,
tables, chairs, lamps and several cars and motorbikes, the police said.
The police arrested 19 people for their role in the riot. Eight were charged
with looting, nine with malicious destruction of property and two with inciting
violence. All were given one to four month jail
sentences.
Meiliana's lawyer, Ranto Sibarani, said they would appeal the verdict.
"We will appeal the verdict because the judges could not prove that our
client has committed blasphemy," he told The Jakarta Post over the phone.
Human rights activists have criticized the law enforcers for prosecuting Meiliana, saying that the case should have been settled out
of court.
“This is an old case that was brought up again,” M. Isnur
from the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) told the Post recently, adding
that public pressure was likely the main driver of her prosecution.
“In a blasphemy case like this, [law enforcement officials] often listen to the
MUI’s fatwas.”
Meiliana is the latest individual prosecuted under
the nation’s controversial blasphemy laws, under which dozens of people have
been sent to prison, including former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama.
Terror strikes Bodh Gaya, serial blasts rock
Mahabodhi Temple
Law Kumar Mishra & Abdul Qadir,
Jul 7, 2013
The Times of India
GAYA: Terror struck the temple town of Bodh Gaya in Bihar, as nine serial
explosions rocked the Mahabodhi Temple complex on Sunday morning.
Two tourists, including a monk from Myanmar,
have been injured in the blasts. The injured are being treated at the Anugrah Narain Magadh Medical
College hospital.
Union home secretary Anil Goswami confirmed
that the Bodh Gaya blasts were a terror attack.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar strongly condemned the serial blasts in and
around the temple and demanded deployment of the Central Industrial Security
Force (CISF) to protect the world famous Buddhist
shrine.
Bihar Police suspect the involvement of Indian
Mujahideen in the temple blasts.
"The serial blasts deserve strongest
condemnation in strongest possible words as the perpetrators targeted the place
of religious faith of crores of people with an aim to create fear among
them," he told reporters after inspecting the blast sites at the Mahabodhi
temple and surrounding areas in Gaya district with senior civil and police
officials.
The chief minister said that the NIA and local
police will probe the incident and expose the conspiracy and designs of those
behind the attack.
Kumar, however, dismissed suggestions that
there was any security lapse and said adequate precautionary measures were
taken to beef up security measures at the Mahabodhi temple and surrounding
areas in the wake of intelligence inputs.
Nitish arrived at Bodh Gaya by a helicopter
from Patna with chief secretary AK Sinha and director general of police (DGP) Abhayanand.
He visited the Mahabodhi temple and took a
first-hand stock of situation at the blast sites.
BJP activists led by former minister Prem Kumar
greeted Nitish Kumar with 'go back' slogans outside the temple main gate.
JD(U) workers present there raised pro-Nitish
slogans and countered the protesting BJP workers.
According to Gaya Police, the blasts took place
in quick succession between 5.30am and 6am in the temple complex and near the
Mahabodhi tree.
One of the blasts took place just under the
enlightenment tree causing partial damage to the Buddha footprints in the
shrine premises.
Four blasts took place inside the shrine
premises, while another three blasts took place in the Tregar
monastery premises. The Tregar monastery belongs to
the Karmapa, the second most important spiritual leader.
One blast each took place at the great Buddha
statue and a bus parked on the Sujata bypass.
Arvind Singh, a member of Mahabodhi Temple
Management Commitee said two other bombs, one near
the 80 feet statue and one at bus stand have been defused.
Cops have sealed the entry routes to the
shrine. A NIA team is expected to arrive shortly for the probe.
"A team of NIA officers is coming to Bodh
Gaya from Kolkata," DIG special branch Parasnath said.
The DIG said, "The sanctum sanctorum of
the Mahabodhi Temple is intact. The temple premises have been sanitised."
The secretary of the Bodh Gaya committee Dorji said, "There were four blasts inside the temple
premises. Fortunately, there was no damage to the Bodhi Tree or the main temple
structure."
"In the first blast which took place near
the Bodhi tree, a table was blown up because of which two persons were injured.
The second blast, I think, was inside the enclosure where books were kept. The
furniture was damaged but there was no damage to the monuments or
statues," he said.
Asked about the nature of explosives used, S K
Bharadwaj, ADG (Law and Order) said they were low intensity time bombs.
He said, "We got information about
six-seven months back that there may be a terror attack on the Mahabodhi
temple. After that we had beefed up security and deployed extra forces".
Bodh Gaya Buddhist temple, around 10 km from
Gaya and 100 km from capital Patna, is world famous. Lord Buddha had attained
enlightenment here under the Mahabodhi tree in the temple premises.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama makes
frequent trips to Bodh Gaya and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had
visited it six months back. A total of 52 countries have established their
monasteries here.
Myanmar’s
army takes control of central city, imposing tense calm after violence kills
dozens
By Associated Press, Published:
March 22, 2013
MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — Myanmar’s army took control of a ruined central city on
Saturday, imposing a tense calm after clashes between Buddhists and Muslims
left piles of corpses in the streets and buildings ablaze in the worst
sectarian bloodshed to hit the Southeast Asian nation this year.
Truckloads of soldiers patrolled Meikhtila, taking up
positions at intersections and banks as authorities delivered food and water to
some 6,000 displaced Muslims who fled to makeshift camps at a local stadium and
a police station. The government put the death toll at 32, according to state
television, which reported that bodies had been found as authorities began
cleaning up the area on Saturday.
President Thein Sein, a former general who vowed to bring democracy to Myanmar
after half a century of military rule, imposed a state of emergency in the
region Friday in a bid to end clashes that began two days earlier.
The unrest was the first of its kind in the country since two similar episodes
shook western Rakhine state last year, and the spread of sectarian conflict has
underscored both the challenges of reform and the government’s failure to rein
in anti-Muslim sentiment in a predominantly Buddhist nation. Even monks have
armed themselves and taken advantage of newfound freedoms to stage anti-Muslim
rallies.
It was not immediately clear which side bore the brunt of the latest unrest,
but at least five mosques were torched, and terrified Muslims, who make up
about 30 percent of Meikhtila’s 100,000 inhabitants,
have stayed off the streets as their shops and homes burned and Buddhist mobs
carrying machetes and hammers tried to stop firefighters from dousing the
flames.
Residents complained that police had stood by and done little to stop the
mayhem. But “calm has been restored since troops took charge of security,” said
Win Htein, an opposition lawmaker from Meikhtila.
Some residents, who had cowered indoors since the mayhem began Wednesday, emerged
from their homes to inspect the destruction.
Little appeared to be left of some palm tree-lined neighborhoods, though, where
the legs of victims could be seen poking out from smoldering masses of twisted
debris and ash. Broken glass, charred cars and motorcycles and overturned
tables littered roads beside rows of burned-out homes and shops, evidence of
the widespread chaos that swept the town.
Local businessman San Hlaing said he counted 28 bodies this week, all men,
piled in groups around the town, including beside a highway.
The struggle to contain the violence has proven another major challenge to
Thein Sein’s reformist administration, which has also faced an upsurge in
fighting with ethnic Kachin rebels in the north and major protests at a northern
copper mine where angry residents — emboldened by promises of freedom of
expression — have come out to denounce land grabbing.
The devastation was reminiscent of last year’s clashes between ethnic Rakhine
Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya that left hundreds of people dead and more than
100,000 displaced — almost all of them Muslim. The Rohingya are widely
perceived as illegal migrants and foreigners from Bangladesh; the Muslim
population of Meikhtila is believed to be mostly of
Indian origin.
This week’s chaos began Wednesday after an argument broke out between a Muslim
gold shop owner and his Buddhist customers. Once news spread that a Muslim man
had killed a Buddhist monk, Buddhist mobs rampaged through a Muslim
neighborhood and the situation quickly spiraled out of control.
Residents and activists said the police did little to stop the rioters or
reacted too slowly, allowing the violence to escalate. “They were like
scarecrows in a paddy field,” San Hlaing said.
Khin Maung Swe, a 72-year-old Muslim lawyer who said he lost all his
savings, also complained authorities did nothing to disperse the mobs.
“If the military and police had showed up in force, those troublemakers would
have run away,” he said, inspecting the remains of his damaged home. “There would
have been no violence if the security forces had just fired shots into the air
to scare them away.”
San Htwe, a 39-year-old housewife, said she could see
police and soldiers “everywhere” in Meikhtila on
Saturday but did not feel at ease. “I’m afraid that the situation will be like
in Rakhine” — where sectarian tensions have split an entire state and Buddhist
and Muslim communities live in near-total segregation, constantly fearing more
violence.
San Htwe said her 8-year-old son was already
traumatized by the riots and could barely eat. “Whenever he hears shouting, he
says, in panic, ‘Mom, let’s run! The kalar are
coming.” Kalar is a derogatory word for Muslims.
“I think most children here have experienced trauma,” she said. “I worry that
it will remain in their minds forever.”
Residents said rescue workers and volunteers were arriving from other towns to
help, and that local Buddhists were giving food and water to displaced Muslims.
Some Buddhists sought shelter at local monasteries.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. was
deeply concerned about communal violence, loss of life and property damage in Meikhtila, and that U.S. Ambassador Derek Mitchell had
raised the concerns with senior Myanmar government officials.
“We welcome and encourage the efforts of government authorities, community
leaders, civil society and political party leaders to restore calm, to foster
dialogue and increase tolerance in a manner that respects human rights and due
process of law,” Nuland told a news briefing.
Occasional isolated violence involving Myanmar’s majority Buddhist and minority
Muslim communities has occurred for decades, even under the authoritarian
military governments that ruled the country from 1962 to 2011.
Iran confiscates Buddha statues to stop promotion of Buddhism
By Associated Press, Published: February 17, 2013
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian newspaper is reporting that government authorities
are confiscating Buddha statues from shops in Tehran to stop the promotion of
Buddhism in the country.
Sunday’s report by the independent Arman daily quotes Saeed Jaberi
Ansari, an official for the protection of Iran’s cultural heritage, as saying
that authorities will not permit a specific belief to be promoted through such
statues.
Ansari called the Buddha statues symbols of “cultural invasion.”
He
did not elaborate on how many have been confiscated so far, but said more would
be seized from shops.
Iran has long fought against items, such as Barbie dolls and Simpsons
cartoon characters, to defuse Western influence, but this appears to be the
first time that Iranian authorities are showing an opposition to symbols from
the East.
Thailand’s Buddhists Take Up Arms Against Insurgency
Apr
16, 2012 12:00 AM EDT
A deadly Thai insurgency has Buddhists scrambling for guns.
A few hours’ drive from the white-sand beaches of Phuket—one of the world’s top
tourist destinations—a deadly insurgency is terrorizing Thailand’s south. The
separatist movement, made up of mostly ethnic-Malay Muslims, roils the region
with daily threats of sectarian violence and has prompted many Buddhist
villagers, and even some monks, to take up arms in self-defense. A series of
coordinated bombings across two provinces on March 31 alone left 14 dead and
hundreds injured.
The conflict has been gaining steam over the past eight years, even as the
international community pays little attention. Since 2004, drive-by shootings,
IED bombings, and point-blank assassinations have claimed some 5,000 lives in
the country’s three restive southernmost provinces that border Malaysia, making
the insurgency one of the world’s deadliest.
The insurgent groups rally around the belief that the provinces—where ethnic
Malay Muslims are the majority—should be independent of Thailand, where more
than 90 percent of the rest of the population is Buddhist. The insurgents’
preferred targets are Buddhists, especially those in the security forces or
government, though they also kill fellow Muslims accused of not aligning with
the separatist cause. They claim to have cells in 90 percent of southern
villages; the boast, say security experts, is legitimate.
Even as a force of some 60,000 soldiers and police patrol the area, the
insurgents have succeeded in spreading their network across the disputed
territory, cultivating an atmosphere of perpetual insecurity for Buddhist
communities living there. “First Muslim people came to our village and asked to
buy our land,” says Suphorn Nison,
a soft-spoken Buddhist in his mid-40s. “But they became less diplomatic when
Buddhist people declined to leave.” The following month, Nison
says, two men entered a convenience store operated by Nison’s
father and executed him with two shots to his head. Nison
claims the gunmen were Muslim and intended to send a stern message. Most
Buddhists in his village left, but those who stayed, including Nison, formed a neighborhood-security force.
That was in 2006. Today such community-defense units are ubiquitous in
Thailand’s south. Nison carries a revolver with him
at all times. Many other Buddhists have also armed themselves, including a
demure 38-year-old teacher, an acquaintance of Nison’s,
who prefers a light Glock .22. While village-defense forces, or Chor Ror Bor,
also operate in Muslim communities, they are often given fewer and inferior
weapons than their Buddhist counterparts, and don’t receive the same level of
support from the Thai Army and police, says Rungrawee
Chalermsripinyorat, an analyst at the International
Crisis Group, a nonprofit that studies ways to prevent conflicts.
Other village-defense groups are explicitly restricted to Buddhists—chief among
them, the Or Ror Bor, a
system initiated by Thailand’s queen. During a trip south in 2005, two members
of her security entourage were gunned down by separatists. She urged Buddhists
in the region to remain on their lands and take weapons training. The queen
also initiated land grants to encourage Buddhists from other parts of the
country to move south.
Amid the violence, security measures have also transformed Buddhist temples.
Many government troops in the deep south are based on the sprawling, walled-in
temple grounds. Soldiers protect monks and worshippers from insurgent attacks,
while benefiting from the monasteries’ existing infrastructure. Buddhist
insecurity has even spawned soldier monks—new Army recruits who are pulled
aside by superiors and offered a chance to become ordained monks so that they
can eventually move to monasteries in the contested provinces and serve as
hybrid servants of the state, according to U.S. academic Michael Jerryson. He has dedicated months of field research to the
phenomenon, which he says was conceived by the queen.
Monks interviewed in the region today are uncomfortable discussing the
soldier-monk practice, which they say has been discontinued. But many of the
state’s security measures in the deep south are still channeled through
Buddhists and Buddhist spaces, an approach that many analysts say has
exacerbated sectarian divisions. “We’ve been saying it’s problematic. It’s like
you’re arming people from one religion against another,” says the Crisis
Group’s Chalermsripinyorat. Jerryson
makes a bolder claim: official policies have generated a Buddhist militant
movement in its own right. “International and Thai analysts largely overlook
the Buddhists’ call to arms when they attempt to explain the spikes of violence
in the war-torn region,” Jerryson writes in his book
Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand, published last year.
Groups such as Amnesty International have documented cases of soldiers bringing
suspected insurgents to temple-housed bases to interrogate, torture, and even
execute them. And Chor Ror Bor units have been suspected of engaging in vigilante
justice.
Abdul Khodet Daman, a 46-year-old Malay Muslim rubber
tapper in the southern province of Yala, believes
he’s a victim of the sort of Buddhist militancy identified by Jerryson. He says that he was attacked by a man in an Army
uniform, who shot him in the neck in a rampage last year. Four were killed in
the attack and 16 were injured, including Daman. He believes the suspect—a
25-year-old soldier alleged to have been motivated by the murder of his
brother—was abetted by a Chor Ror
Bor unit in an adjacent village, which includes a
number of new residents who immigrated as part of the queen’s land-grant
program.
For others, such incidents obscure an equally harsh reality: the insurgency has
put the region’s Buddhists on the defensive, with no end to the violence in
sight. HuaHui, a long-bearded villager, exemplifies
the kind of self-appointed power that the militia system offers Buddhists. At
the entrance to his restaurant, he sits behind a makeshift bunker, holding an
M-15 assault rifle. He keeps a cache of weapons on hand, along with special
bullets designed to overcome “the voodoo of insurgents.” He’s been the target
of drive-by shootings and bomb attacks more than a dozen times, he says. In the
latest incident, “a month ago gunfire struck guests.” HuaHui
sometimes patrols his district in a pickup truck, paying visits to friends—both
Muslim and Buddhist—and making his presence felt to those he suspects of being
on the “wrong side.” He visited a group of Chor Ror Bor in a nearby village who
said the hordes of Army and police are not enough to secure the area. Later
that evening, cars passing along the entry road to the village were struck by
IEDs and gunfire.
Srisompob Jitpiromsri, the
head of Deep South Watch, a Pattani-based group that tracks the area’s
sectarian violence, says temple defenses and village militias serve a
legitimate defensive purpose. But, he says, they also create backlash by
helping insurgents convince Malay Muslim communities that Buddhists and the
Thai state are fundamentally aligned against them.
His concern is catching on among some monks in the area. The abbot of one
southern village recently asked soldiers stationed inside his temple to
relocate. “It affected our image. Buddhism is a peaceful religion, and a temple
must remain a peaceful place.” Analysts say the military commander in charge of
operations in the deep south plans to shift troops out of temples and schools
as part of a broader attempt to demilitarize the region’s public spaces. But,
facing shadowy and omnipresent insurgents who are increasingly brazen in their
methods, Buddhist communities may be less likely to move away from firepower.
The consequences of their position, worries Jitpiromsri,
might be only that they will be forced to double down on it. “Die-hard is their
mentality.”
Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative
Journalism. Brendan Brady reports from across Asia on diplomacy, human rights,
religion, business, and environmental issues.
Buddhist worker beheaded in Thai Muslim south
06
Jun 2005
Source:
Reuters
BANGKOK, June 6 (Reuters) - A Buddhist has been beheaded in Muslim-majority
southern Thailand, police said on Monday, the fourth decapitation of a Buddhist
since violence erupted in the region 18 months ago.
Police found the body of the 59-year-old rubber plantation employee at his hut
in Yaha district of Yala
province late on Sunday.
"We believe it must have been the work of those militants," a police
officer said by telephone, declining to give further details of the incident in
the largely Malay-speaking region, where more than 700 people have died in the
violence.
No group has claimed responsibility for the violence.
The Muslim-majority region has a century-long history of violent separatism
from Bangkok.
The first Buddhist rubber tapper was decapitated in May last year. His killers
left a note saying they had acted in revenge for the arrest of innocent
Muslims.
In November, two Buddhist men were beheaded in revenge for the deaths of 85
Muslim protesters in army custody, most of them by suffocation a month earlier.
Three policemen and two civilians were wounded on Monday when a 5 kg (11 lbs) bomb hidden in a motorcycle and triggered by a mobile
phone went off in a park in the nearby tourist town of Sungai Kolok as people were exercising.
Late on Sunday, militants blew up a power transmitter, blacking out the city of
Yaha, police said.
The government in the mostly Buddhist country has imposed martial law in parts
of the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat,
which all border Malaysia, at the same time as offering lavish development aid
and regional assistance.
However, neither the iron first or olive branch approach seems to have made any
impact. Shootings, bombings and arson attacks mainly against official, Buddhist
targets have become daily occurrences.
Violence Aimed at Driving out Buddhists, Says Thaksin
By Sutin Wannabovorn
AP Writer/Bangkok, Thailand
June 23, 2005
A series of gruesome beheadings and other
killings in southern Thailand are part of a campaign by Islamic separatists to
scare off the minority Buddhist population and to show that they can still
carry out attacks despite a government crackdown, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra said Thursday.
Suspected insurgents decapitated a man at a
teashop Wednesday in one of the boldest attacks since the Muslim-majority
provinces near Malaysia erupted in violence last year. It was the fifth
beheading in recent weeks and apparently the first to be carried out in broad
daylight.
Thaksin called an emergency meeting with
security forces Thursday to discuss the continuing attacks in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.
More than 880 people have been killed over the
past 17 months in attacks generally blamed on the revival of a long-dormant
secessionist movement.
"They (the insurgents) have been beheading
innocent people to show they are still capable of creating violence,"
Thaksin told reporters. "They try to make (Buddhist) people scared so they
will run away from the region because they want to seize the area."
He added that the insurgents had launched the attacks
"out of desperation because several of their leaders have been
arrested."
Thaksin's administration has been criticized
for taking an overbearing approach to the unrest by posting thousands of troops
and imposing martial law in the region. Muslim clerics have complained of
soldiers showing disrespect for Islamic traditions in their drive to root out
suspects.
But Thaksin has conceded failures in his
government's handling of the south and pledged to try conciliatory means to
resolve the conflict.
Maj-Gen Thani Thawitsri,
the deputy regional police commander for the southern provinces, said the
beheadings had become a pattern and that they were intended "to create
chaos and scare people away from the region."
He said it remained unclear whether the Thai
separatists were trying to imitate Iraqi insurgents, who have beheaded several
foreign hostages since the US invasion of their country two years ago, because
there is a history of such killings in Thailand.
In 1969, two female Western missionaries were
decapitated on a mountain in Narathiwat province that was a stronghold for
Muslim separatists at the time, he noted.
Muslim separatists waged a low-level campaign
in the southern provinces for decades before largely dispersing after a
government amnesty in the 1980s.
Southern Thai Muslims have long complained of
discrimination, particularly in jobs and education.
Abdulraman Abdulsamad,
chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, said the beheadings had sparked
fear among local people and threatened to turn the region into a "ghost
town."
"I cannot say who is the real culprit of
this brutal killing," he said. "When you talk to local people, they
believe the authorities did it. But when we talk to authorities, they say the
terrorists did it."
Thousands of Buddhists flee
Thailand’s south
Thursday,7 July, 2005
BANGKOK: Thousands
of Buddhist teachers and residents are fleeing Thailand’s Muslim south as 19
months of anti-government violence shows no sign of slackening, officials said
yesterday.
Another 2,000 teachers were
expected to move to safer provinces after at least two dozen of their
colleagues were among nearly 800 people killed by militants since violence
erupted in the largely Malay-speaking region in January last year, they said.
As incentives to stay, the Education Ministry is offering 3,000 free flak
jackets and faster licenses for 1,700 teachers waiting to buy guns in the most
dangerous parts of the three provinces of Pattani, Yala
and Narathiwat.
“Guns are their best friends,”
Deputy Education Minister Rung Kaewdaeng told
reporters in Bangkok after visiting some of the 20,000 teachers in the region.
“The teachers who survived are
those who returned fire on their attackers.”
On Monday, Education Minister Adisak Bodharamik gave teachers
wanting to move out a week to register and vowed to provide more security for
those who wanted to stay.
Education Ministry data showed
about 1,000 teachers have already left the region, where schools have been
frequent militant targets as symbols of the government of predominantly
Buddhist Thailand in faraway Bangkok.
Another 1,000 applications from
teachers who routinely go to and from school with military escorts were
awaiting approval.
Bombings, shootings and arson
attacks directed at state buildings or workers — Buddhist and Muslim — have
become daily occurences despite more than 30,000
troops and police patrolling the region of fewer than 2mn people.
The government has imposed martial
law on parts of the region, where separatists fought low-key insurgencies in
the 1970s and 1980s.
But violence is unabated with nine
people beheaded — in killings some top officials say have been inspired by
Iraqi insurgents — in recent months and officials say thousands of locally-born
people, many of them Buddhists, have moved out.
Government data showed almost
15,000 people left between January 2004 and April 2005. In 2003, 22,000 moved
in.
Rung said teachers leaving the far
south would be replaced by volunteer and temporary teachers and the ministry
would seek loans for teachers to buy guns to protect themselves.
“Creating debt or saving your life,
which one would you choose,” Rung replied when asked if encouraging teachers to
take on more debt was a good idea.
A policeman was beheaded yesterday
in troubled southern Thailand, the first member of the security forces to be
decapitated in a string of such brutal attacks over the past month, police
said.
The body of 44-year-old Sergeant Samphan Onyala, who was on duty
but plainclothed, was found just after 8pm (1300 GMT)
in Yarang district of Pattani province.
“Villagers heard gunshots and
informed police, who went to the scene and found Sergeant Samphan
shot once and with his head cut off,” a police officer in Yarang
said.
The victim’s body was found close
to his motorcycle while authorities were still searching for the head, he
added.
4 Buddhists shot dead in Thailand`s
restive south
A gunman posing as a customer whipped out a gun and shot a 59-yar-old food
vendor in Pattani province in front of dozens of horrified bystanders, police
Lt Wichathon Timkrom said.
In nearby Yala Provine,
gunmen killed a 34-year-old truck driver as he rode his motorcycle with his
wife, Police Lt Prasom Laungphu
said. His wife was not hurt.
Two other Buddhists were shot dead today in Narathiwat province, police said.
Gunmen fired into a grocery store in Rueso district,
killing its owner Wanna Ongananurak,
35, and a second woman who was as yet unidentified, police said.
Thailand's military-installed government has pledged to make peace in the south
a priority, and to reverse the hardline policies of former Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawtra, who was deposed by a coup
September 19.
But with daily killings continuing unabated, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said today the government may have to change
course if the situation does not improve.
"My government is insisting on a peaceful solution to resolve the problem,
but if the situation is not improved in (the) next three months, the government
may have to adjust the strategy," Surayud said, without elaborating.
More than 1,800 people have died from violence in predominantly Buddhist
Thailand's three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces - Yala,
Pattani and Narathiwat - since an Islamic insurgency flared in January 2004.
Bureau Report