Tales of Black Ninjas Are Spreading Fear in Rural Thailand
By SETH MYDANS
ANGKOK, May 24 — The two plainclothes policemen were terrified, and the mob that beat them to death last month was terrified as well.
Seeking refuge in a small rural shop, one of the officers, Sgt. Sophon Phonchalee, told a local reporter that he and his partner, newly assigned to Thailand's violent southern provinces, had simply lost their way.
But people there did not believe them. A crowd armed with knives and sticks quickly swelled to 3,000, witnesses said, and the fatal words passed among them: black ninjas.
Rumors of evildoers dressed in black are the latest wave of panic that has swept through the largely Muslim provinces of southern Thailand, an area where violence has ebbed and flowed for decades.
Since a separatist insurgency was largely defused a decade ago, the central government in this overwhelmingly Buddhist nation has failed to reduce the area's widespread poverty and disaffection.
At various times it has blamed bandits, drug smugglers, feuding politicians and the remnants of separatist bands for the violence. Human rights groups and academics are similarly divided on the causes.
The past year has been particularly deadly. At least 20 police officers were ambushed and killed in 2002, three schools were burned, bombs were planted at two Buddhist temples and 31 guns were stolen from a local forestry office.
Over the past month the violence has surged again. On April 28, five Thai marines were killed in attacks on two military outposts in the provinces of Yala and Narathiwat.
Among many rural people, the recent fears have focused on black-clad ninja warriors — real or supernatural — who are said to be roaming the countryside, robbing and raping. The panic parallels similar reports in Indonesia five years ago that were never resolved.
Villagers stay home at night, according to local reports; shops close. One terrified woman is reported to have attacked her daughter with a knife in the dark, thinking she was an intruding ninja.
When two students reported that they had seen two men in black in a nearby forest, the village headman organized a posse to search for them.
That is when Sergeant Sophon and his partner, Cpl. Somkid Jermkhunthod, arrived on their motorcycle in Tam Nob village in Narathiwat Province and stopped at dusk on April 25 to buy a cup of coffee and to ask directions.
A reporter for the newspaper Matichon said the two men fled into a rubber plantation, but they were set upon by villagers when they emerged the next morning.
The village headman gave them shelter, but when he tried to calm the crowd, the paper said, he was booed and jeered. "Villagers said that I was protecting the two," said the headman, Isama-ae Tori. "It was an angry mob."
In the end, nothing could hold back the crowd, and the two police officers were beaten and stabbed to death.
Thailand's Muslim provinces, which border strongly Islamic provinces in Malaysia, have never been fully integrated into the nation.
Over the years, the central government has promised economic development and political integration. But its primary policy has been to bring in troops and police officers who do not share the religion of the south or speak its most common language, Yawi.
The two policemen who were killed were apparent victims of this policy — strangers who aroused suspicion and anger in a region that feels neglected and victimized.