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Published on October 13, 2007

Rights activist Angkana Neelaphaijit yesterday voiced disappointment at the refusal of the authorities to release about 200 Muslims, detained without formal charges under a controversial emergency law, so that they could be with their family to celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The men are going through a four-month re-education camp in various military bases in the upper region of southern Thailand. They are deemed to be "vulnerable" to joining militants in the Malay-speaking deep South.

Ankana, a member of the Working Group on Justice and Peace, has consistently voiced criticism over the rounding up of young Muslim men under the controversial law.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas told military officers in Yala not to overlook the rise of drug abuse and trafficking in the restive region.

Boonrawd said traffickers were linked to networks in northern Thailand and that there was a connection between the drug business and the insurgency in the deep South.

His claim, however, contradicted some of the senior military and civilian officers in the region, who consistently claim that members of this generation of insurgents tend to be quite pious and are not criminal by nature. 

 The Nation