THAILAND: Premier in Damage-Control Mode after Southern Violence

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 11 2004 (IPS) - The Thai government’s damage control measures in the wake of recent bloodshed in the south are aimed at the larger Islamic world in addition to its own Muslim minority.

The Thai government’s damage control measures in the wake of recent bloodshed in the south are aimed at the larger Islamic world in addition to its own Muslim minority.

In recent days, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration invited diplomats from 12 Islamic countries to visit scenes in the predominantly Muslim provinces in the south, where the unprecedented scale of violence occurred on Apr. 28.

The diplomats’ weekend visit came amidst a tour that Thaksin himself, under tight security, made of the violence-marred area. He stopped at the historic Krue Se mosque, where Muslim assailants, most of them youth and armed with machetes, were gunned down by heavily armed Thai troops.

”The prime minister is very sensitive about the sentiments of our friends in the Muslim world about what happened at the Krue Se mosque,” said Jakrapob Penkair, the government spokesman. ”He was worried that the incidents in the south may be perceived as an attack on the Muslim minority.”

Jakropob told IPS that after their visit, the diplomats felt that ”the reports in the international media were greatly exaggerated” and what had happened ”was not the way it was portrayed in the media”.

Since the bloodshed, where Muslim youth armed with knives, machetes and some guns launched a dawn raid on 10 police posts in the south, the government has taken the international media to task for its coverage.

”The foreign media are very bad,” Thaksin was quoted as having told the local press last week. ”I am shocked sometimes when reading certain news reports.”

Those comments came in the wake of mounting criticism that the government’s troops had used excessive force in combating the assailants. Over 110 people, majority of them assailants, died in the late April clash. Among them were the 32 Muslim militants killed while taking cover in the Krue Se mosque.

The diplomatic entourage included envoys from Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, Kazakhstan and Morocco.

Prior to this, Bangkok also opened its doors to the deputy prime minister of Malaysia, its Muslim neighbour with which it shares the southern border, to explain the course of events.

Kuala Lumpur’s stance – that the violence in southern Thailand was largely linked to poverty rather than the consequence of any anti-Muslim policies by Bangkok – fit Thaksin’s script of the unfolding events.

For one, the Thai premier himself has been the main proponent of the theory that economic hardship – and not radical Islamic tendencies – is behind the violence.

For another, it helps the government to be free of charges that it is pursuing policies that discriminate and oppress its Muslim minorities. Muslims in the south make up only 2.3 million of the country’s 63 million population, the majority of whom are Buddhists.

”The government has done the right thing by showing the diplomats what is going on in the south, ” said Arong Suthasana, head of the Institute of Islamic World Studies, a Bangkok-based think tank. ”The government does not want what happened here to be viewed as a Muslim separatist struggle like in Mindanao in the Philippines or in Aceh in Indonesia.”

”They have to convince the Islamic world that it is different here, that there is no racism, no suppression,” Arong, a member of Thailand’s Muslim minority, explained in an interview.

The more difficult part for the Thaksin administration, he added, is to win the confidence of the local Muslim community ”after the worst incident that ever happened in the south”.

The government’s failure to reach out to the Muslims in the south and an escalation of violence bodes ill, he warned. ”A split between the majority Thais and the Muslims may occur. This can lead towards separation.”

Over the weekend, Thaksin mounted a charm offensive to ensure that such would not be the case. He met with members of the Muslim public and community leaders to help heal the wounds caused by the late April carnage.

In addition, he met schoolchildren, and was photographed carrying babies and holding the hands of villagers. He pledged to help the communities overcome poverty and find employment.

In a politically significant act, the premier also said that his government was ready to talk to members of Muslim separatist groups in the south that have been active and have been linked by some Thai military officials to the violence.

Thailand’s Muslim separatist groups were most active between the 1970s through the early 1980s, after which they ceased fire after striking pacts with Bangkok.

These rebellions arose from the fact that the Muslims in the south have always seen themselves as distinct from Thailand’s majority community, not least because they are Malay by ethnicity and speak a Malay dialect instead of Thai.

The Muslims were only counted as Thais after their kingdom of Pattani was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known. Thailand’s southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Satun, Songkhla and Yala were part of the Pattani kingdom.

Prior to the separatist struggles, the southern Muslims revolted against Thailand’s military governments due to policies that impinged on their culture and faith.

Thaksin, however, is at pains to distance what the country is witnessing currently with what occurred in the past. Most glaring is his view that the violence that has hit the south intermittently since late 2001 and then more regularly since early January this year is the work of criminal gangs.

He has held that view despite attacks that have ranged from the storming of an army camp, raids on police posts, the stealing of weapons, and the torching of schools. Many people, including soldiers, policemen, government officials and Buddhist monks, have been killed.

”The prime minister believes that the people behind the violence are those with illegal businesses, criminal gangs, who are using the territorial dispute to draw young people in the south to attack,” said spokesman Jakrapob.