He’s backed by a fat budgetSITTING on the floor with neighbours, Sakariya uses a mobile phone to flick through photos of his son. In one, Kholid stands dressed in his school uniform. In another he sits hunched over his university work. In a third he is dead—lying cold on a mortuary slab. The picture was taken in March, only hours after soldiers surrounded a group of men at a construction site in Toh Chud, their home in Thailand’s restive south. Seven bullet holes perforate his chest.
Kholid was one of four to die that day—victims of a botched operation seeking to collar murderous separatists who for years have dreamed of resurrecting an independent sultanate in Thailand’s southern borderlands. Nearly two dozen villagers were detained and interrogated but later released. The men who were shot may have tried to run, perhaps for fear of being found with soft drugs on them. A fact-finding panel says the killings were an error. Compensation is promised. But what the families want is justice, says Mohammad, another parent whose son is among the dead.
Toh Chud up in the hills had mostly managed to escape the...Continue reading
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