Authorities: Dead were properly listed
Local authorities in Pattani have dismissed suggestions 300 un-claimed bodies in the province have not been properly documented.
The Kingdom's top forensic expert Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand this week announced she would perform autopsies on the corpses, but questioned the authorities' record-keeping in relation to how the people died and why they had been buried in unmarked graves.Pornthip did not specify the exact location of the 300 corpses, but local rescue workers suggested she was referring to a section of the Talubok Cemetery, where unclaimed bodies are generally buried. The unclaimed bodies in Pattani Talubok Cemetery have been documented, said Somporn Puengchit, an officer with Pattani's Tong Tek Siang Tung Foundation, which is responsible for most of the unclaimed bodies in the province. On Thursday Pornthip, director of the Justice Ministry's Forensic Science Institute, said she would investigate a burial site in Pattani, where about 300 unidentified corpses had been discovered. She said the vast majority of the dead did not appear to have died from natural causes. Somporn said the majority of the unclaimed bodies the foundation delivered to that section of Talubok Cemetery were those found dead in Pattani's Muang district, with very few from other areas. He said mostly they had been foreign fishermen working on Thai-owned trawlers operating out of Pattani. Pornthip yesterday said she had contacted Pattani's former governor asking to exhume the bodies, but it would be another month before her team could conduct any autopsies. The Muslim community believes not all of the bodies may be fishermen and supports Pornthip's move to establish causes of death. The Nation Pattani
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