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Bangkok, Dec 15: A group of 20 Muslims from southern Thailand entered Malaysia to seek political asylum after claiming their lives were in danger from "military pressure," the official Bernama news agency said Friday.
The group, comprising nine men and 11 women, aged between two and 55, entered Malaysia late Thursday through several illegal jetties in the north-eastern state of Kelantan.
A spokesman from the group, who claim to be from the troubled Narathiwat province, alleged that they were forced to flee their homes after having to endure harassment by Thai army officials.
"They trespassed into our homes and arrested whoever they suspected as terrorists without checking. They took several members of my family and we do not know where they are now," the man told Bernama.
"The action is torturing the villagers who have been hoping for a better life after a new government was formed recently," he said, declining to have his name published.
The group is currently being held at a detention centre for illegal immigrants. They are seeking refugee status from the UN refugee agency in the capital Kuala Lumpur.
In August last year, a group of 131 Thai Muslims fled across the border to seek asylum, claiming that their safety was in jeopardy in the troubled southern Thai region.
They were given temporary shelter at a holding centre in the north-eastern state of Terengganu, and were interviewed by officers from the UN agency, a move which Bangkok slammed as interfering with its internal affairs.
In December, Malaysia handed over one of the refugees to Thailand after a request by authorities to question the man on his alleged involvement in the January 4, 2004 robbery of 300 weapons from an army depot.
The 130 others still remain in the holding centre.
The three southernmost provinces in Thailand comprise the only majority Muslim area in predominantly Buddhist Thailand. The region, which was first conquered by Bangkok in 1786, has strong historical and cultural links with mainly Muslim Malaysia.
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