Thai massacre families left without justice as charge deadline expires

Khalijah Musa was just 12 years old when her brother Sari was stuffed into a Thai army truck, hands bound, joining a pile of arrested protesters who all suffocated to death.

Twenty years after the October 25, 2004 tragedy, known as the "Tak Bai massacre", Musa and the other relatives of the 78 victims, are mourning the fact that the killers will never be brought to justice.

On Friday, the 20-year statute of limitations expires, and murder charges against the seven suspects will be dropped.

The incident is one of the bloodiest days in the long-running conflict in Thailand's deep south between government forces and separatist insurgents.

"There is no natural justice in our country," Musa told AFP in an interview, saying those responsible deserved the death penalty.

"It's not equal… we in the southernmost provinces are not part of the (Thai) family. Our voices are just not loud enough."

Families will hold memorial prayers for the victims on Friday and once again repeat their calls for justice.

The case has long stood as an emblem of state impunity in the kingdom's Muslim-majority southernmost provinces, which are culturally distinct from the rest of mostly Buddhist Thailand.

A low-level conflict between security forces and insurgents demanding more autonomy for the region has killed more than 7,000 people since January 2004.

- 'Not worth it' -

On October 25 that year, security forces opened fire on a crowd protesting outside a police station in the town of Tak Bai in Narathiwat province, close to the Malaysian border, killing seven people.

Subsequently 78 people suffocated after they were arrested and stacked on top of each other in the back of Thai military trucks, face down and with their hands tied behind their backs.

In August, a provincial court accepted a criminal case filed by victims' families against seven officials, a move Amnesty International called a "crucial first step towards justice".

But the officials -- including a former army commander elected to parliament last year -- have avoided appearing in court, preventing the case from progressing.

On Monday the court is expected to formally dismiss the charges, ending a case that has become synonymous with lack of accountability in a region governed by emergency laws and flooded with army and police units.

No member of the Thai security forces has ever been jailed for extrajudicial killings or torture in the "deep south", despite years of allegations of abuses across the region.

Parida Tohle, 72, lost her only son Saroj, 26, who was one of those who died in a truck.

Even if suspects are not held accountable, she told AFP, "I would have settled for an apology".

In 2012, the government of then-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra paid the families of each of the dead 7.5 million baht ($220,000) in compensation.

"But," Parida said, "in exchange for my son's life it was not worth it."