Word: buddhists
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Jiranan Phedsri confesses that she has "one true friend." The 51-year-old Thai housewife strokes the object of her affection, caressing its cool curves. The recipient of the devout Buddhist's ardor? A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol Jiranan carries wherever she goes in Thailand's troubled deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has resulted in roughly 4,000 deaths since it gained momentum in 2004. The handgun, though, isn't Jiranan's only trusted companion. As a volunteer in the Iron Ladies, an all-female civilian militia designed to protect Buddhists from Islamic extremists, she received military training...
...common with the barbed-wire disquiet of Iraq or Afghanistan than the sunny image projected in tourist brochures. Nearly every day, violence - motorcycle bombs, shootings, arson attacks, beheadings - claims another life in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which, unlike the rest of the Buddhist-majority country, are 80% Muslim. The region was a Malay sultanate until the early 20th century when Thailand annexed it. While members of both faiths have been killed by Muslim militants, as a proportion of the population more Buddhists have perished. This year looks set to eclipse 2008 in terms...
...names like the Iron Ladies, the Night Butterflies and the Eyes of a Pineapple. Around 100,000 civilians are now members of such armed groups, and they either receive free guns from the military or can buy them at deeply subsidized rates. The majority of militia members come from Buddhist ranks because the government feels they are most vulnerable to attack...
...state readily distributes firearms to everyone from teachers to government officials. In Narathiwat's Tak Bai district, for instance, none of the 56 village chiefs owned a gun before 2004. Now all do. "Guns can't totally protect us against insurgents," says Yoon Yerntorn, chief of Tak Bai's Buddhist Sai Khao village, where five locals have been killed over the past few years. "But at least we can try to shoot back." (Read "Despite Outreach, Violence Is Up In Southern Thailand...
...renamed Myanmar by its ruling generals. For decades the U.S. has shunned contact with the Burmese military regime and in recent years has tightened financial sanctions on its leaders for their murderous treatment of their citizens. (In the most recent crackdown in 2007, security forces gunned down dozens of Buddhist monks and other peaceful protesters...