19 religious teachers still in detention
Yala - Police continued detention of 19 religious teachers at a Yala school and a boat driver for questioning after their return from an island in Satun province, suspecting they might involve in a spate of violence in the deep south.
Police said they would be detained for at least seven days in accordance with the emergency law, which allows detention without charge for maximum 30 days.
The teachers belong to Thammawithaya whose founder Spaing Basoh is on the run after an allegation of masterminding violence in the restive south.
A lawyer at Muslim Lawyer club said the group was at the Sam island in Satun for a workshop on education plan, nothing involved in the ongoing violence in predominantly region.
Nidir Waba, chairman of Religious Private School Association, said his association would seek further information about the group and the school before giving his hand to help them.
"I would like to urge concern officials to caution over handling the case. If the group is innocent, it would damage credit of the government," he said.
Over 1,000 people died since the beginning of 2004 when a military camp in Narathiwat was raid killing four soldiers and stealing over 300 pieces of war weapons. The government blamed separatists for creating trouble in the three southernmost province, Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.
In an unrelated event, the Justice Department's Department of Special Investigation (DSI) yesterday issued arrest warrants for two Thai Muslims exiles, amid a growing criticism that authorities are not doing enough to curb the flow of antiKingdom information in the web,
DSI's Pol Colonel Kanaphon said arrest warrants have been issued for Chipley Buthra Chengoh and Abdul Rosah Chengoh, accusing them of le majeste. The two are living in exiles in the Middle East and Sweden, respectively.
Kanaphon said the two were responsible for the www.pulo.org and the www.manusaya.com websites, which generate antiKingdom statements and attack the government over its handling of the violence in the Malayspeaking south.
Kanaphon said DSI has succeeded in getting the host of these websites to comply with the government's request by shutting them down.
The warrants announced on Wednesday was the latest in a series of tit-for-tat between the exile community and the government amid a growing international attention over the violence in the southernmost provinces where about 1,200 people have been killed since January 2004.
The Nation
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