teachers, headmasters, and students have been killed and schools torched presumably because schools represent a symbol of the Thai government. Civil servants, regardless of religion, have been targeted for assassination. According to the Thai Journalists Association, during the year 2008 alone there were over 500 attacks, resulting in more than 300 deaths in the four provinces where the insurgents operate. Meanwhile, local Muslims have been beaten, killed, or simply "disappeared" during police questioning and custody. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 20 such disappearances. Soldiers and police have sometimes been indiscriminate when pursuing suspected insurgents, resulting in civilian collateral damage. Of the 2,463 people killed in attacks from 2004 to 2007, almost 90% were civilians. Buddhist Thais and ethnic Malay Muslims were killed in bomb attacks, shootings, assassinations, ambushes, and machete attacks. At least 29 victims have been beheaded and mutilated. "There have been hundreds of militant attacks on teachers, schools, public health workers, hospital staff, and community health centers. For the first time in the region's history of separatist insurgencies, Buddhist monks and novices are now among those killed and injured by separatist militants," HRW said in a 2007 report. "Village-based militants called Pejuang Kemerdekaan Patani (Patani Freedom Fighters) in the loose network of BRN-Coordinate (National Revolution Front-Coordinate) have now emerged as the backbone of the new generation of separatist militants. "Increasingly, they claim that the southern border provinces are not the land of Buddhist Thais, but a religious 'conflict zone' which must be divided between ethnic Malay Muslims and 'infidels'. The separatists seek to forcibly liberate Patani Darulsalam (Islamic Land of Patani), from what they call a Buddhist Thai occupation", HRW continued. The 2010 World Report from Human Rights Watch highlighted escalating human rights abuses throughout Thailand, with the south reflecting overall policies against individual human rights. Sharply increased powers for police and the military were accompanied by a perceived lack of accountability. Government harassment of suspected insurgents The Asian Human Rights Commission accused the military of beating and torturing suspected insurgents by burning their genitals with cigarettes, smashing beer bottles over their knees, and chaining them to dogs. Such abuses were alleged to have occurred in October 2006, after the military seized power. In December 2006, a group of 20 Muslims, nine men and 11 women aged between two and 55, sought political asylum in Malaysia. They claimed that the post-coup regime was more aggressive against