(Bangkok) – Separatist insurgents in southern Thailand carried out an unlawful grenade attack against civilians on November 20, 2024, at the construction site of a 136-meter-high statue of a Chinese goddess in Songkhla province, Human Rights Watch said today. This was the first insurgent attack in five years against a non-Islamic religious site.
The insurgents fired grenades at about 6:10 a.m. into the construction site of the world’s tallest Guanyin (Chinese goddess of mercy) statue, in Thepa district, injuring two workers and a 9-year-old girl. The explosions started fires in the workers’ camp and wrecked a pickup truck. The assailants left behind leaflets threatening to kill Thai Buddhist and Myanmar workers if they continued work at the site.
“The insurgent attack on workers at the Guanyin statue construction site is a serious violation of the laws of war and an apparent war crime,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The armed group and individuals responsible should be held to account for this unlawful and morally reprehensible act.”
Since 2022, local ethnic Malay Muslims have protested against the Guanyin statue project, funded by the industrial estate company TPI Polene Power, out of concerns that the statue would pave the way for the development of the company’s controversial proposed industrial estate and facilitate Chinese influence in the region.
International humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, including houses of worship and cultural property, and indiscriminate attacks not directed at a specific military objective.
The insurgent attack on the Guanyin statue construction site is the first on a Chinese shrine in Thailand’s restive southern border region. Previously, Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN or National Revolutionary Front) insurgents, who claim to represent ethnic Malay Muslim communities, targeted Buddhist temples and monks, which they consider to be emblematic of the Thai Buddhist state’s occupation of their traditional territory. Between 2004 and 2019, insurgents killed at least 23 monks and wounded more than 20. The insurgents also targeted security personnel assigned to provide monks safe passage to and from the temples.
Amid a peace dialogue between the Thai government and the BRN, insurgents have continued to attack civilians and civilian objects. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned such laws-of-war violations by BRN.
Thai government security forces and militias have also committed numerous violations of the laws of war and international human rights law against ethnic Malay Muslim civilians and suspected BRN members, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture. Insurgent attacks do not justify such violations.
An entrenched culture of impunity for abuses by officials has exacerbated the situation in the southern border provinces, Human Rights Watch said. Thai authorities have failed to prosecute 14 former military personnel and government officials indicted on charges related to the violent dispersal of ethnic Malay Muslim protesters in Tak Bai district of Narathiwat province in October 2004, and the subsequent death in military custody of 85 and injuries to several hundred. The 20-year statute of limitations ended on October 25, preventing further legal action.
“It’s critically important for the BRN and other insurgents to immediately cease attacks on civilians and for the Thai authorities to fully prosecute security personnel responsible for rights violations,” Pearson said. “Only then will civilians in Thailand’s deep south escape this 20-year cycle of abuses by all sides.”
