Homeric epithet “restive,” endlessly used to characterize the Thai jihad: check. Obfuscation of the jihadist identity of the perpetrators, by identifying them as “separatist militants” involved in a “separatist insurgency”: check. Passive voice used for jihadist murders, with no agent identified — “more than 2,900 people have been killed”: check. Treatment of violence as a kind of disease that one day unaccountably “broke out,” rather than being attributable to the jihad ideology: check. Mischaracterization of the historical roots of how the Muslim area came to be part of Thailand: check.
Looks like this one scores a 100: it’s a perfect mainstream media whitewash!
“Police: Muslim couple shot dead in restive Thai south,” from Agence France-Presse (thanks to Twostellas):
YALA, Thailand – A Muslim couple was shot dead after separatist militants stormed into their home in Thailand’s restive Muslim-majority south, police said Saturday.
Militants used assault rifles to gun down the 55-year-old man and his 48-year-old wife late Friday in Yala, one of three provinces roiled by a bloody separatist insurgency, they said.
Police said the man was killed because he provided information to authorities about the shadowy insurgency that has battled the government for more than four years.
More than 2,900 people have been killed since the violence broke out along the southern border with Malaysia in a region once an autonomous Malay sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago….