Thaksin assumes emergency powers over Muslim south

Thaksin assumes emergency powers over Muslim south

Nopporn Wong-Anan, Reuters/Bangkok

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra assumed emergency powers
on Friday after about 60 militants launched a dramatic attack on
a town in the largely Muslim far south.

The powers, approved at an emergency cabinet meeting after two
policemen were killed and 23 people wounded in Thursday night's
attack on Yala, allow him to order phone taps, censor news
reports and detain suspects without charge.

The "Emergency Powers Law" replaces localized martial law in
the three southernmost provinces where more than 800 people have
been killed in 19 months of violence.

"This law will, of course, restrict people's rights and
liberty," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters.

"It is a law to handle emergency situations that undermine
national security and the wellbeing and safety of the public," he
said of a decree which brings responsibility for security
directly into the PM's office.

Southern police chief Adul Saengsingkaew told reporters that
interrogations of arrested suspects suggested that about 60
people were involved in the orchestrated attacks on Yala.

Police were still checking closed circuit television in the
hunt for the people who set off six bombs during a raid in which
militant bombs caused an hour-long blackout.

In the darkness, gunmen on motorcycles fired at random and
tossed petrol bombs into shops and houses. They also scattered
metal spikes across three main roads to hinder the movement of
security forces, police said.

Bombs hit a newly opened cinema complex, a hotel cafe, a
karaoke restaurant and a convenience store almost simultaneously.

The new law allows Thaksin to ban newspaper, radio and
television reports deemed "threatening to national security or
causing public anxiety", according to a draft seen by Reuters.

As the cabinet meeting ended, a bomb exploded at a Yala
restaurant, wounding four people and damaging two motorcycles,
police said.

Two teachers were shot dead as they drove to work in
neighboring Narathiwat province, they said.

Five policemen and three "bandits" were seriously wounded in
the Yala clashes, Public Health Minister Suchai Charoenrattanakul
told Channel 9 television. Only six people were still in hospital
on Friday morning, he said.

Police said seven suspects were captured after the coordinated
attack caught security forces by surprise in a region where most
Muslims speak a Malay dialect and many cannot communicate in
Thai.

"Our intelligence is very poor. We must improve it," Deputy
Yala Governor Winyu Thongsakul told a Bangkok radio station.

There are 30,000 troops dealing with the latest bout of
violence against the government of overwhelmingly Buddhist
Thailand in a region it annexed a century ago.

But analysts say the ease with which militants launch almost
daily hit-and-run attacks suggests brute force will never win in
the region, once an independent Muslim sultanate where militants
fought a low-key separatist war in the 1970s and 1980s.