<p>A soldier in Thailand’s Deep South has died a few days after he was reportedly tortured at a military base for committing disciplinary offences. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="http://mgr.manager.co.th/South/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9590000034453">The Manager Online reported</a>&nbsp;on Monday, 4 April 2016, that 23-year-old Private Songtham Mutmat from Phayak Military Camp in Bannang Sata District of the restive Deep Southern Province of Yala, died at the provincial hospital. &nbsp;</p>

<div><em>A human rights activist from Thailand’s Deep South speaks about her motivation for co-founding a human rights organization, after her own experience of a family member being harassed. Since the start of 2016, she has been repeatedly harassed by the military due to a report, co-written by her, revealing allegations of torture by the state.&nbsp;</em></div> <p></p>

<p>Rangers in the Deep South visited the family of a local human rights activist one day after he organised a seminar on torture.</p> <p>According to Wartani News, four rangers from a Special Task Force in Itimung Village, Mamong Subdistrict, Sukhirin District of the Deep Southern province of Narathiwat, at 1 am on Wednesday, 2 March 2016 visited the house belonging to the mother of Isama-ae Tae, president of HAP, a civil society human rights group in the region.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Men claiming to be border police officers have visited the home of a Deep South activist who took part in compiling a recent report on the torture of Malay Muslims in the region. &nbsp;</p> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://tlhr2014.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/south_threaten/">Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR)</a> reported that at about 5 pm on Friday, 19 February 2016, a group of ten men in green uniforms visited the home of Anchana Heemmina, a local activist in the Duay Jai Group, in Songkhla Province.</p>

<p>The Thai police have denied allegations that they tortured suspects in the 2015 Erawan shrine bombing, while hinting that they might press charges against a lawyer of one of the suspects, saying that he allegedly caused damage to the nation.</p> <p>On Wednesday, 17 February 2016, the chief investigator into the deadly 2015 Erawan shrine bombing denied allegations that one of the suspects, Adem Karadag, a Chinese ethnic Uighur, was tortured to force a confession.</p>

<p>Two suspects accused of killing 20 people at a shrine in Bangkok denied the charges today before a military tribunal.</p> <p>Adem Karadag, 31, aka Bilal Mohammed, told the military court Tuesday he was not even in Thailand at the time of the Aug. 17 explosion at the Erawan Shrine, which killed mostly foreign tourists.</p> <p>His co-defendant, 27-year-old Yusufu Mieraili, said he did not want the court-appointed military lawyer assigned to him despite his request for civilian representation.</p>

<div>On 11 February 2016 the Thai army threatened human rights defenders for documenting the military’s continued use of torture on detainees in the country’s south. Major General Banpot Poonpien, the spokesperson for a specialist counterinsurgency agency, the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), accused the human rights groups of fabricating accounts of torture to obtain funding from abroad. He also asked whether or not the groups had the mandate to investigate the work of state officers. </div>

<p>On 11 Feb 16, the spokesperson of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), Maj. Gen. Banpot Poonpien, revealed that regarding the torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in the Deep South, the security agencies have been well aware of it and have taken precaution to prevent such practice and to avoid any act that would become a problem from a human rights perspective. But even though the environment in the Deep South has changed, some civil society organizations continue to resort to the same old tactic to mobilize their cause without adjusting their roles.</p>

<p>A wrongly identified theft suspect says that police officers threatened to kill him and dump his body on a mountain. &nbsp;</p> <p>The Cross Cultural &nbsp;Foundation (CrCF), a human rights advocacy group, reported that on Monday, 8 February 2016, the Provincial Court of Prachinburi in the east of Thailand held a second witness examination hearing in a case filed by Rittirong Chuenjit, 25, against seven police officers.</p>

<p>A spokesman for the national counter-insurgency agency today denounced a report alleging the use of more than a dozen torture techniques to force confessions from insurgent suspects in the Deep South as a work of fiction aimed at destroying the credibility of the army.</p>

<p>Allegations of torture and ill-treatment committed by state authorities against the Malay Muslim minority in the restive Deep South are currently double the level reported after the 2014 coup d’état. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>The <a href="http://th.macmuslim.com/?p=1025#more-1025">Muslim Attorney Centre (MAC)</a>, a civil society organisation providing legal aid in the Deep South, on Tuesday, 2 February 2016, published a report on allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Deep South insurgent suspects arrested and detained under special security laws in the region in 2015.</p>

<p>The Provincial Court in the eastern province of Trat has dismissed murder charges against three suspects in a PDRC bombing case, but sentenced one suspect to five years in jail for possessing illegal weapons. &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Trat Provincial Court on Tuesday, 26 January 2016, dismissed murder charges against Watchara Krajangklang, Somsak Poonsawad, and Somsak Sunan, three suspects in the bombing case of a People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) anti-election protest in 2014.</p>