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Thailand schools targeted by Islamic extremists

seven_eleven · 2013-02-05 08:44:57

Something you don't hear much about in the news is the constant threat and attacks that Thailand and a large portion of South-East Asia experiences daily. Most would view Thailand as a beautiful paradise where you could spend a few weeks on holidays, but there is a darker side that we don't often hear about.…

05-02-2013 8:44am

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seven_eleven

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Something you don't hear much about in the news is the constant threat and attacks that Thailand and a large portion of South-East Asia experiences daily.
Most would view Thailand as a beautiful paradise where you could spend a few weeks on holidays, but there is a darker side that we don't often hear about.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/01/201312981049122230.html

Some 160 teachers have been killed and many schools set ablaze in continuing ethnic violence.

Ban Ba Ngo could be any other rural primary school in Thailand. Under palm trees off a potholed road, students sit at desks reciting lines. Drawings celebrating the king's recent birthday adorn walls; metal posts and a patch of sandy grassland mark out a football pitch.

But Ban Ba Ngo is unlike many schools around the world: It lies in the country's violence-plagued southern border provinces, known here as the "Deep South".

At lunchtime on December 11, 2012, five armed men arrived at the canteen, separated the only two Buddhist teachers - one of them the female director - from the other staff and executed them with gunshots to the head.

"Even now I feel upset. I can't look at that canteen," said acting headteacher Kasem Jeh Ali, who was made to lay facing the floor as his colleagues were slain. Nurisa, a shy 11-year-old, was the only one of 75 students present at the time of the killings; it was her turn to mop the floor. She fiddled with a pen as she recounted closing her eyes during the incident. "It feels different coming to school now," she said. "We are all frightened."

The killings were just the latest in decades of fighting against Thai rule by elements of the predominantly Malay-Muslim population in the provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and four districts of Songkhla - close to the Malaysian border.

Imagine having to go to school afraid for your life, with the corridors guarded by heavily armed military.

The army has been escorting teachers to and from schools for several years; now six soldiers armed with M16 assault rifles sit around the corridors and courtyard of Ban Ba Ngo

and its not just the schools that are being targeted. Buddhists monks and other groups are being murdered on the streets. Sickening really, and it makes one glad that we live in such a safe society compared to it.

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