Thailand: The riddle of the South
By Roger Hardy BBC Islamic affairs analyst
Survivors allege they were packed into trucks in layers I The police station at Tak Bai, a small town near the Thai-Malaysian border, looks deceptively ordinary.
It is hard to imagine the chain of events which began here last October and ended in the rests of 85 local Muslims.
A few bullet holes in a nearby wall are the only sign that something terrible happened here.
An eyewitness - too afraid to give me his name or even the name of his village - told me his version of events.
When over 2,000 Muslims demonstrated outside the police station, the Thai police and army responded with water cannons and gunfire.
Then the soldiers bundled hundreds of Muslim men into trucks, four deep. By the time the trucks reached an army base further north, 78 of the men had died of lack of air.
What made the event even more shocking to local Muslims was that it occurred during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.
It was the bloodiest moment in a year of violence, beginning in January 2004, which has claimed over 500 lives - and thrown a spotlight on one of the world's largely forgotten Muslim minorities.
Thailand is an overwhelmingly Buddhist country where Muslims are less than ten per cent of the population.
Muslims feel economically marginalised - the south is one of the poorest parts of the country, drawing little benefit, for example, from the country's successful tourist industry
There are Muslims in the north and centre of the country, but in the three provinces of the deep south - Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat - they are in the majority.
Until recently, Muslims and Buddhists lived side by side in the south in relative harmony.
Now civilians on both sides are being end and the mood is one of bitterness and mistrust.
