July 7, 2008
BANA, Thailand (AFP) - Sixteen-year-old Muktar was walking to a local football match when he says Thai soldiers shot him in the head, kicked him into a ditch and left him to die.
He awoke three weeks later in hospital, breathing through a tube in his neck. The gunshot had entered his skull and blown away both eyes.
His father, Jaema Marming, says the soldiers were drunk and fearful of an attack by separatists, whose insurgency has claimed more than 3,300 lives in Thailand's Muslim-majority south over the last four years.
Two cotton pads cover the spots on Muktar's deformed face where his eyes once were, soaking up the tears which still, somehow, emerge.
Two months after the attacks, Muktar says he now spends his days using his feet to navigate the floorboards in his corrugated iron-framed home, with brain damage which makes him feel disoriented and wet his bed.
"I feel so much anger towards the soldiers because I don't know why they did this," Muktar told AFP. "I want them to be shot like they shot me, and prosecuted."
But few people ever face justice for horrific daily shootings and bombings along the southern border with Malaysia, which was once an autonomous Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed the region more than a century ago
Muktar's parents received only a third of the four million baht (120,000 dollars) they sought from the government. A promised apology from the soldier never came.
They quit their jobs to care for him, and say they cannot afford a specialist school for the blind.
Muktar's father speaks only the local Yawi dialect, and signed a Thai-language document that he could not read promising to take no further action against the army.
"If the government had more justice we would receive more care from them," Jaema said.
Experts say such examples of impunity for soldiers only fuel the anger against Bangkok.
"Impunity has always been the root cause of this kind of alienation and anger. All that's important for the radicalisation and recruitment of insurgents," said Sunai Phasuk, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
Before the incident, Muktar's village of Bana had been largely safe, but the day after the shooting insurgents burned down the local school, Sunai said.
Residents "feel that they've been physically abused by the government so they suddenly turn a blind eye to whatever insurgents want to do," Sunai said.
Anger over Muktar's shooting has only worsened public outrage at imam Yapa Kaseng's death in custody in March. According to an official autopsy, his body had nine cracked ribs, and an inquiry is underway.
Just last month, another imam, Korya Masae, was shot dead as he walked between a mosque and his nearby home.
No one knows who killed him, but his wife Tuantimoh says her neighbours suspect soldiers because a car was seen entering a nearby military base shortly after the shooting.
"I don't trust the military anymore. I want more justice," Tuantimoh told AFP. "Why don't they try to find some suspects?"
The military denies soldiers were involved, and an investigation is underway.
"The shooting was not done by the army but by separatists dressed as soldiers to cause hatred of the authorities," army spokesman Colonel Acra Tiproch told AFP.
But the denials do little to reassure Muslims here.
"I cannot trust the soldiers now," one 73-year-old man in Yala told AFP.
"Sometimes they arrest good people who haven't done anything," shopkeeper Asma, 22, said.
Yala's provincial government is trying to ease the mistrust. Three months ago a new outreach centre opened to accept complaints about government officers, deputy governor Puchong Pothigudsai told AFP.
"We try to find out the facts from both sides to stop violence and misunderstanding," he said.
Since the centre opened, soldiers find more villages willing to accept their presence, while the death toll in the province has dropped, Puchong said.
But until justice prevails, Human Rights Watch's Sunai says the conflict will continue.
"With impunity it's a vicious circle -- people see things starting to fall into place but before you can end impunity there's a new case. Just as trust starts to be built, it collapses."
