THAILAND: Muslims in Dire Straits after Bloodiest Day in the South

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 28 2004 (IPS) - An unprecedented scale of violence in Thailand’s southern region – which resulted in over 110 people dead on Wednesday – has placed the country’s Muslim minority in dire straits.

”We are very worried about the situation. There is a lot of tension in the area,” Niti Hassan, president of the Council of Muslim Organisations of Thailand, told IPS in the aftermath of the bloodshed Wednesday.

”People are shocked by the attacks. They don’t know who is behind it,” he added.

Equally troubling, he said, is the site of the heaviest fighting – the Kru Se mosque in the southern province of Pattani – between the assailants that authorities have identified as young Thai Muslims, and the security forces.

Over 30 assailants were killed after a standoff with heavily armed security forces at the mosque, which is held in high regard by Muslims here for its historic value.

”We have learnt that the security forces attacked the mosque,” he said of the attempt by the government’s troops to force their way into the ancient mosque, where some of the assailants had taken cover.

The violence in Pattani was part of what appeared to be coordinated attacks at dawn on 11 police stations and security checkpoints in three of Thailand’s predominantly Muslim provinces, Yala, Songkhla and Pattani. The other two provinces in the area with substantial Muslim populations are Narathiwat and Satun.

According to Thai journalists reporting from the south, the authorities have identified some of the assailants as Muslim teenagers from the local communities. ”They had few guns, with some only having knives,” Supalak Ganjanakhundee of ‘The Nation’ daily newspaper told IPS.

Since the attacks, Thai television stations have been offering the country graphic images of the scale of the bloodshed in the provinces that border Malaysia, including footage of the bodies of the assailants scattered on the ground, blood all over.

Estimates of the numbers killed have reached 113, but that is expected to rise, officials told the media. Of that number, 107 have been identified as bodies of the assailants, while five of the dead were soldiers and two were policemen.

The government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appears to be in some discomfort following Wednesday’s bloodshed, yet that has not muted its sense of achievement at the success of the security forces in confronting the assailants with minimum casualties.

”The government sees this as a tragic event. And we are bothered that the people who attacked were Thai people,” Jakrapob Penkair, the government spokesman, told IPS. ”These militants deliberately planned the attacks in eleven spots that were symbols of government authority and we had to respond.”

But there were two areas of ”progress,” he added. ”We lost very few in the attacks, but they lost more.”

As important, he revealed, was the fact that the authorities ”were tipped off by people in the neighbourhood” about the impending attacks. ”This reflects the faith of the people in the government’s efforts in the south.”

Yet he admitted that while the assailants are ”Muslim youth from the area,” the ”mastermind (behind the attacks) remains unknown”.

This week’s attack has taken to a new level the violence that for months has punctuated the lives of people living in southern Thailand, say analysts.

”It is more violent than what we have witnessed in the past, particularly going back to late 2002 when the government pulled the army out of the south,” Chris Baker, an author of books on Thai politics and economics, explained during an interview.

For Kavi Chongkittavorn, a senior editor and columnist of ‘The Nation’ newspaper, the clashes and the death toll that followed Wednesday is ”one of the single biggest incidents in Thai history in the south”.

He warned that worse could follow: ”With this, the conflict in the south will change. We are moving towards a very pivotal period.”

In early January this year, unknown assailants stormed an army camp in the south and stole a substantial quantity of arms, including 380 M-16 rifles, seven rocket-propelled grenade launches, two M-60 machine guns and 24 pistols.

The attacks have not ceased since then, as school buildings were torched and police posts hit.

Lives were not spared either. Soldiers, policemen, Buddhist monks and government officials are among the estimated 70 people who have been killed by unidentified attackers between Jan. 4 till this weekend.

At regular intervals, the government has pointed the finger at various groups it claims to be responsible for the attacks, ranging from Thai Muslim separatists who were once active in the south, to people linked to criminal organisations.

Even a Muslim group in the region that has been identified by security officials as spearheading a campaign of terror across South-east Asia has been named.

But Muslims from the south are not convinced about Bangkok’s theories about the involvement of Thai Muslim separatist groups such as the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO).

That stems from the change in PULO and other separatist groups after the government prevailed over these groups in the 1980s. PULO, one of the oldest southern separatist groups, began its struggle in the early 1970s.

Thai Muslims, who account for some six million of the country’s 63 million population, majority of whom are Buddhists, have long complained that the Thai government has ignored developing the southern region. They have also felt discriminated against in education opportunities, among others.

But what also sets these Muslims apart from the rest of the Thais are their unique history, cultural traditions and language, which is Yawi, a dialect of Malay. Just over a century ago, the five predominantly Muslim provinces belonged to the kingdom of Pattani, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.

”The Muslims will only feel more bitter and more alienated if it is revealed that the way the security forces responded to the attack was excessive,” said Kavi, the editor. ”It will only help breed new recruits for future attacks.”