BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand's failure to stop forced disappearances in the restive south and take action against the perpetrators is fuelling a growing insurgency there, a top rights watchdog said Tuesday.
Human Rights Watch accused Thai security forces of using enforced disappearances as a tool to intimidate the majority Muslim population in the south, where 2,000 people have died in three years of separatist unrest.
"The Thai security forces are using 'disappearances' as a way to weaken the militants and instill fear in the Malay Muslim community," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
"Thailand's government needs to make a clear and public statement of policy against 'disappearances' and take action against those responsible for this crime," he added.
The statement came as the New York-based watchdog released a report detailing 22 unresolved disappearances in the south, where separatist unrest has escalated despite a raft of government-led peace-building measures.
Many of the cases involved suspected separatists having run-ins with the police or army, and then disappearing and never being heard of again.
The lack of investigation into such cases eroded local people's faith in the justice system, the group said.
Human Rights Watch said that the majority of the disappearances detailed in the report took place under the government of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup last September.
The regime that replaced him, led by retired general Surayud Chulanont, vowed to reverse his heavy-handed tactics in the south, but Human Rights Watch said that many of the people involved in the abuses remained on duty.
"General Surayud vowed to introduce a more human rights-friendly and sophisticated approach than the heavy-handed one used by Thaksin," the group said in a statement.
"But General Surayud's government has done little to translate these promises into action... Resentment against human rights abuses by the Thai authorities is among the factors fueling an increasingly brutal insurgency."
The report comes at a time of increasing tension in the region bordering Malaysia, with protests flaring after the massacre of nine Buddhists on a bus last week and the shooting of two Muslim school children on Saturday.
A string of coordinated bomb blasts across the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat last month killed nine and injured 44, while killings have also become more gruesome, with two beheadings in March. _________________ kyranŠ
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