THAILAND: Ties with Muslim South Tense with Lawyer’s Disappearance

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 20 2004 (IPS) - The disappearance of a senior Muslim lawyer has added another troubling dimension to the Thai government’s increasingly tense relationship with the country’s Muslim minority.

During the week, members of the Thai legal establishment, the human rights community and Thai Muslims have been asking if Somchai Neelaphaijit, the chairman of the country’s Muslim Lawyers Association, had become a victim of his untiring quest to champion the legal rights of his co-religionists.

There are others who wonder if Somchai’s absence since the night of Mar. 12 may be linked to his spearheading a successful signature campaign to lift martial law in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim provinces in the south. This campaign attracted 50,000 signatures of support.

However, the government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has cautioned against speculation, including theories that the military or police may be involved in the 53-year-old lawyer’s disappearance.

But the government has not helped its case with comments such as the flippant one made by the prime minister, who told reporters during the week that the lawyer’s absence had more to do with a domestic dispute.

”Somchai had disputes with his wife. Perhaps, he just wants to be away from his family problems for a while,” Thaksin was quoted in ‘The Nation’ newspaper as saying.

Yet at the same time, Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh and police officials were hinting at a more sinister fact- that Somchai had been kidnapped after he left a hotel popular among Thai Muslims in eastern Bangkok.

”The kidnapping is likely to have happened between the Chaleena Hotel and Lamsali intersection when he was heading to Baan Suan Son where his brother lives,” Saritchai Anekweang, head of the police investigation team, was quoted as having told Saturday’s ‘The Nation.’ But while the country awaits more information about the whereabouts of Somchai, a father of five, the Muslim community is deeply troubled by the disappearance of a man who enjoys the status of a hero for his legal and human rights battles.

On Friday, for instance, some of the major mosques in Bangkok invited the congregation that had gathered for the special afternoon prayer to join in an Islamic recital appealing for the well-being of the prominent lawyer.

According to Niti Hassan, president of the Council of Muslim Organisations of Thailand, mosques in Thailand’s southern provinces also dedicated a prayer for the lawyer’s safety.

Other religious establishments, such as the Bangkok-based Thai Islamic Centre, demonstrated their concern Friday by conducting a seminar attended by close to 700 people to seek the views of legal, religious and human rights experts about what Somchai’s disappearance could mean to Thailand’s Muslim minority.

”He is a very important lawyer for us because of the cases he has handled in the south,” Niti admitted to IPS. ”They were very risky, but he took them on.”

Senior members of The Law Society of Thailand also attest to the missing lawyer’s courage in taking on cases of Thai Muslims arrested by the police for being threats to the country’s national security.

”A few days before he disappeared, Somchai won a ruling in his favour about police mistreatment and torture of his clients in police custody,” Dej-Udom Krairit, of the law society’s legal aid committee, told IPS. ”They were transferred to the department of corrections.”

The clients were five Muslim men accused of participating in a raid on an army camp in southern Thailand on Jan. 4, which was the first in a series of steadily spreading acts of violence that have included brutal murders and arson.

He is also representing three prominent southern Muslims arrested for planning to bomb embassies and tourist sites in Bangkok on behalf of Jemaah Islamiyah, a shadowy group named by security officials as spearheading a campaign of terror across South-east Asia.

This case had resulted in Somchai receiving threats, states the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a statement. ”Colleagues and family members fear he may have been abducted in retaliation for his participation as a defence lawyer in these cases.”

That Somchai has a record going back years is reflected in his successful defence of a man accused of being among the Muslims who had torched 35 public schools in 1993 in southern Thailand.

”He was willing to take up these cases in the south and now his disappearance will be worrying to the lawyers there,” Sak Khosangruang, president of the law society, told IPS. ”The government cannot ignore what it means: a threat of due process of law and to the justice system here.”

The lawyer’s disappearance has already resulted in disclosures by opposition parliamentarians revealing that such incidents are far from isolated. On Thursday, Tharin Jaisamut, a member of parliament from the south, drew the legislature’s attention to over 100 ”missing people” in the Muslim-dominated regions of the country.

Yet at the same time, Thailand has been forced to confront other troubling details from the south, such as Thursday’s acts of arson in three largely Muslim provinces, Pattani, Songkhla and Yala. Over 20 government buildings were set on fire.

This was the latest in a string of such attacks in the south since Jan. 4 when, in addition to an attack of the camp, 21 public schools were set on fire by assailants.

During the three-month period, at least 50 people have been killed, including Buddhist monks, civil servants, civilians, police and soldiers.

The bulk of Thai Muslims, who number six million out of the country’s 63 million predominantly Buddhist population, live in the south. It is a region that has experienced unrest since the early 1970s, when Thai Muslim rebels launched a separatist struggle to reclaim what was once an independent Muslim kingdom till it was annexed by Bangkok in 1902. On Friday, the government sacked from their jobs national police chief Gen Sant Sarutanond and southern forces commander Lt Gen Pongsak Ekbannasingh

In a desperate bid to quell the violence from escalating, the government has announced plans to pump in much-needed money to develop the often neglected and economically marginalised southern provinces.

But for some Thai Muslims, Bangkok’s show of concern will not only be judged on the development front, but also with its search for the missing lawyer.