Published on 28 Jun 2013 : More than 5,000 people have been killed in Thailand's restive southern provinces since 2004. The deadly insurgency is shadowy and shapeless. Attacks often come with no formal demands, causing a vicious circle of violence between Malay-Muslim separatist groups and death squads backed by security forces. The innocent live in fear of the next hit. No government in this predominantly Buddhist nation has been able to get a grip on the unrest, despite measures ranging from brutal to conciliatory. Unprecedented high-powered peace talks this year were supposed to signal hope, yet the killings escalated. How will it stop?
Schedule 7 was introduced as part of the 2000 Terrorism Act and gives the police the right to stop and search people at airports, to fingerprint them and take their DNA, and to hold them for up to 9 hours without legal representation.
More than 70,000 people were stopped and questioned under the Schedule 7 law last year and although most of them were white a hugely disproportionate number were ethnic minorities or Muslims. And the most intrusive and humiliating searches were conducted on those of “Muslim appearance.”
Schedule 7 victims