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HONG KONG — In Thailand, it’s the teachers who are being targeted and killed — in their schools, during the day, in front of their students, with assault weapons.

Attacks on schoolteachers by Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand have escalated terribly in recent days, like last week, when men with M-16s walked into a school cafeteria in Pattani Province, separated out two Buddhist instructors and killed them on the spot. One of them, the school principal, was shot in the head at point-blank range.

Khru Ya, a retired teacher in Pattani, and a Muslim, told The Bangkok Post: “There is a saying among insurgents: ‘Get Buddhists, gain merit.’ They believe that if they kill Buddhists, they will go to heaven.”

An investigative report released Monday by Human Rights Watch demanded that the insurgents end their school attacks and called for added security measures by the Thai government.

“Insurgents in southern Thailand who execute teachers show utter depravity and disregard for humanity,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “These attacks harm not only teachers and schools, but the Muslim students, their families, and the broader Muslim community the insurgents claim to represent.”

Thailand: Rebels Escalate Killings of Teachers bit.ly/ZAxLJJ — Human Rights Watch (@hrw) December 16, 2012

Car bombs, homemade grenades, assassinations and arson have become part of daily life in southern Thailand since a wave of separatist and sectarian violence began there in 2004. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the ongoing strife.

But now teachers — like police officers and army soldiers — have become “targets of opportunity.”

“Since the attacks on teachers began,” according to a Post investigation, “157 have been murdered. Most of the victims were Buddhist.”

The most recent killings caused the southern teachers’ union to stage a two-day strike last week, shutting 1,300 public schools. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the head of the Thai Army visited the area on Thursday, although Human Rights Watch said insurgents circulated leaflets during their visit that promised further school attacks.

“Whatever happens,” Ms. Yingluck told reporters, “children need to have a safe place to learn. I thank teachers for having the courage to teach, and I will ask for reinforcements and extra troops to ensure their security.”

“They go after the teachers for a few reasons,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor of political science at Simmons College in Boston and an expert on security issues, terrorism and insurgencies in Southeast Asia. “Out in the countryside, teachers are the agents of the Thai state. The schools are one of the only social services that most people get from the government.

“They’re also vulnerable/easy targets, and most of the teachers are Buddhists, sent from other parts of the country,” Mr. Abuza said in an e-mail interview with Rendezvous. “If the teachers go on prolonged strike and the schools shut down it leads to more Buddhists fleeing the region, while the Muslims put their kids into madrasas.”

Mr. Abuza noted that teachers have become “high-impact targets” whose murders get the attention of the central government. “Yingluck made her first visit to the south after four teachers were killed,” he said. “Until then she’d barely touched the south.”

Teachers in the south are now driven to school each morning in army trucks. If they drive their own cars, they must join a military convoy.

“After we arrive at school, the soldiers stick around for a while until the morning flag-raising ceremony is over and the students are in their classrooms,” said Mr. Khru Ya, the former teacher. “At lunchtime, the soldiers return to protect us inside the school grounds. Then the same thing happens in the afternoon when class is over. The soldiers escort us back home.”

Some of Mr. Khru Ya’s other remarks to The Post:

Instead of soldiers, these [insurgents] seem to target only teachers because they are unarmed and easy to kill. That is why we call them jone gra jork [cowardly bandits], because they choose to attack people who have no way to fight back. I know what they really want is to drive the military out of the area, so that they can trade and traffic drugs more easily. Pattani is located in a very advantageous area for drug trafficking since it is connected to Malaysia. They are trying to create a religious war in the area, but Buddhists and Muslims are peaceful people. We have lived happily together before in the past, and we intend to remain that way.

Teachers in the Thai-Malaysian border areas have asked for security cameras to be installed at their schools, the H.R.W. report said, along with increased hazard pay for educators and government compensation for the relatives of victimized teachers.

The Post reported that teachers get monthly bonuses between $82 and $115 for working in the south. The families of murdered teachers are eligible for death benefits of $32,600.

“Teachers are courageously risking their lives to ensure children’s access to education in southern Thailand,” Mr. Adams said. “But the government is still stuck in a cycle of ineffectual responses to the deadly threats teachers and students are facing every day.”