Free Republic

An influential council of Malaysia's state rulers has warned people not to question the supremacy of Islam or the special privileges enjoyed by the country's ethnic Malay majority. The warning underscores the social tensions in Malaysia, where Muslim Malays are about 60% of the nation's 27 million people. Chinese and Indians, who are mostly non-Muslims, comprise a third of the population and friction among the three ethnic groups is always below the surface.

BANGKOK, Aug 28 (Reuters) - A bloody insurgency in Muslim southern Thailand is a struggle for the independence of its ethnic Malay majority involving tens of thousands of people ready to die for their cause, a senior separatist figure said. In his first interview with a major news organisation since violence flared 20 months ago, a spokesman for the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO) said his movement had no ties to international groups such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda or its southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah. "We have no connection with those terrorists," the senior member of PULO,...

Bangkok - The bodies of a Buddhist couple were found shot and nearly decapitated on Friday in restive southern Thailand, adding to the five other beheadings in the past three weeks, police said. Jad Suwanchatree, 52, a defence volunteer in Muang district of Yala province, and his wife Serm, 51, were riding their motorcycle to tap rubber from a plantation when they were killed. "As Jad stopped his motorcycle to remove wood which blocked the road, he was shot and slashed in his neck, as was his wife," police in Yala said. "Their heads were not totally separated from their...