Islamic teachers in southern Thailand are 'brainwashing' students and there will be no quick end to the Muslim insurgency there, Thailand's Prime Minister said yesterday, while police reported four more slayings in the region's latest bloodshed.
Several Muslim teachers have been arrested recently because of suspicions that they may be encouraging students to take part in the rebellion and many militants killed in fighting have been teenagers studying at religious schools.
'The problem is difficult to resolve because the religious teachers have been brainwashing people with the wrong interpretation of the Quran,' Mr Thaksin Shinawatra told journalists in Bangkok.
'It will take time to resolve the problem.'
More than 330 people have been killed in fighting this year in the three Muslim-dominated southern provinces of predominantly Buddhist Thailand.
Muslims in the region have long complained about unfair treatment.
A separatist movement thrived in the area for decades before largely disappearing after a government amnesty in the 1980s. The violence re- surged in January.
In the latest violence yesterday, a gunman riding on the back of a motorcycle shot dead an assistant village chief and his wife in Pattani province's Kokpho district.
A day earlier, an attacker stormed
the house of the chief of Chalerm village, Narathiwat province, and shot
him to death. Also on Wednesday, in the province's Rangae district, a gunman
killed a shop worker. -- AP