text: Thailand's Military government slammed detention of Muslim students| almuslim.com.au
  Thailand's Military government slammed detention of Muslim students
  2015-04-04 06:26:02 | Al Muslim News
  Men among 39 rounded up in Thailand's south - which has been wracked by violence since 2004 - in the last 10 days
  Thailand is a monarchy headed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and governed by a military junta that took power in May 2014.
  An international human rights organization is asking Thailand's junta to "immediately" confirm the whereabouts of 17 Muslim students it says were arbitrarily arrested on Thursday in the country's Muslim south, Anadolu Agency reported. "The activists should be freed unless they have been charged by a judge with a credible offense," Human Rights Watch said in a statement Saturday.
  HRW said that the military forced at least 17 from the association of ethnic Malay Muslim students to give DNA samples and then took them into custody. It added that authorities have provided no explanation for the students' detention or said when they would be released.
  "Arbitrary arrests, secret detention, and unaccountable officials are a recipe for human rights abuses,� said Brad Adams, the organization's Asia director.
  "The use of martial law to detain student activists shows how out of control the Thai military authorities have become.�
  On March 25, authorities launched a raid on a construction site, after informers warned of an impending attack on To Chud village in Pattani. Pattani is one of the four provinces of Thailand where the majority of the population are Malay Muslim, making up 88% of the population..
  Human Rights Watch has repeatedly raised serious concerns regarding the use of arbitrary arrest and secret military detention in Thailand's three southernmost Thai provinces – Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat - which were constituted an independent Islamic sultanate until the area was incorporated into Siam (Thailand) after a 1909 Anglo-Siamese agreement.
  Since January 2004, the area has been the scene of a brutal internal armed conflict that has claimed more than 6,000 lives. Civilians have accounted for approximately 90 percent of those deaths.
  "Violent insurgency is no excuse for the Thai military to resort to summary and abusive measures against the Malay Muslim population,� Adams said.