BANGKOK —Relatives of 85 people who died 20 years ago at a protest in Thailand's Muslim-majority south are in a race against time to take former military and police officers to trial before the statute of limitations for their alleged crimes runs out.

A court in southern Thailand is holding hearings that continue this week to decide whether to indict nine former officers for the so-called Tak Bai Massacre of Oct. 25, 2004, which is still the deadliest single event in Thailand since a Muslim insurgency began earlier that same year.

On that day two decades ago in Tak Bai district, Narathiwat province, soldiers and police responding to a protest for the release of detained rebel suspects shot seven people dead. The officers forced many more protesters into police trucks destined for a military camp some 140 kilometers away, leaving them packed inside and forced to lie on top of one another for hours.

Seventy-eight of them died. A state inquest later determined that they had suffocated. Many others were injured, some for life.

No one has ever been charged over the deaths or injuries, let alone convicted.

Hoping to change that, 48 survivors and relatives of the dead filed a lawsuit with the Narathiwat provincial court in April against nine officers, all since retired, for unlawful detention, malfeasance and murder.

The court began hearings on whether to indict any of the accused last month. It held a third day of hearings last Friday and is due to hold another on July 26.

With the statute of limitations due to expire in October, exactly 20 years from the event, it is a race against time for the plaintiffs, including Latipah Mudo, whose 62-year-old father, Sama-ae Mudo, was among those who died in the trucks.

"I was very sad when it happened, and the feeling is the same today," Mudo, who is now 45, told VOA.

"I want the perpetrators to be punished for what they did to us. Tak Bai should be an example that this kind of thing will never happen again," she said.

Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a human rights activist and lawyer representing a survivor of the trucks whose arm and leg were permanently paralyzed, says the plaintiffs want to hear the accused account for their actions on the record.

"This incident has been haunting ... the communities," she said. "They want the perpetrators to [stand] up in the court and tell them what happened, why did they do this, why did they do [or act] as a not human."

The plaintiffs hope their case can help prevent similar alleged abuses in Thailand's insurgency-racked south from recurring, she added.

Once the seat of a Muslim sultanate, the southern provinces of modern-day Thailand were deeded to the then-kingdom of Siam by the British in 1909. Rejecting the transfer, several armed ethnic Malay Muslim groups have waged a guerrilla war against the Thai state to win independence for the provinces.

More than 7,000 people have died in related violence since fighting intensified in January 2004.

Since the deaths at Tak Bai, locals and rights groups say Thai authorities have repeatedly abused the martial and emergency laws imposed on much of the south in the years that followed in a bid to put the insurgency down. They cite several cases of alleged torture and extrajudicial killings of suspected rebels in custody. Thai courts and prior governments have rejected claims of the state's responsibility in a number of those cases.

"As I learned from the locals since I've been working on other documentation of torture, enforced disappearances, the violence still continues, from then until now. And most of the time there [was] no power enough to bring perpetrators to justice," Pornpen said. "We wanted to bring the [Tak Bai] case ... to prove that something like this should not happen again."

In December 2004, a fact-finding committee appointed by the government concluded that security forces used inappropriate measures to disperse the Tak Bai protesters and that commanding officers failed to adequately supervise the transport of the detainees. But authorities did not pursue charges, and the police claimed force majeure, a legal term referring to events beyond the parties' control.

The plaintiffs reject the claim.

"It's not true. It happened because of somebody's actions; that's why they died. Their excuse is not reasonable," said Mudo.

According to local media reports, the Narathiwat court said Friday it would announce its decision whether to take any of the accused to trial on August 23. The court could not be reached to confirm or comment on the date.

Pornpen said the plaintiffs had not filed a case sooner for many reasons, including the compensation the government paid out to relatives of the dead and fear of reprisal from authorities, especially during the intervening years of military-led and -backed governments.

After nearly two decades, though, the events of Oct. 25, 2004, continue to loom large over the country's deep south, says Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, a lecturer at the Peace Studies Institute of southern Thailand's Prince of Songkla University.

She says the deaths remain a prime recruiting tool for the insurgent groups, and an enduring example of what many Thais believe to be a two-tier justice system.

"It is a testament of the culture of impunity that [is] happening in southern Thailand, so people want to see that those responsible are being punished, brought to [the] justice system, and that has never happened in the past nearly 20 years," she said.

Insurgent groups often draw on generations-old grievances to entice and inspire new recruits.

"But when they use the Tak Bai incident, this is something that they don't really have to tell people so much [about] because it's still vivid in their memory, so it's easy ... to encourage people to join the movement," Rungrawee said.

While bombings, assassinations and shootouts across the south continue to occur alongside police raids and arrests, the pace of the violence has waned over the years. The government has gradually scaled back some of its emergency powers over the region as well and is in talks with some of the rebel groups over the terms of a possible cease-fire.

Should the Narathiwat court decide to indict the retired officers and ultimately be seen to have held them accountable, Rungrawee said the Tak Bai case could also help ease tensions and even move the peace talks forward.

"It would help to create a better atmosphere," she said, "to show ... that the state does not endure this culture of impunity, [that] the rule of law will be strictly respected."

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