THAILAND: Thaksin’s Shoot-from-the-Hip Courts Regional Backlash

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 19 2004 (IPS) - Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is in danger of becoming the loose cannon among South-east Asian leaders due to his shoot-from-the-hip tendency in responding to the violence in this country’s southern provinces.

Thaksin revealed such stripes over the weekend by putting Thailand’s famed practice of quiet diplomacy aside to openly declare that Malaysia and Indonesia are linked to the violence that has ripped through the mostly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Patani.

”Separatists rebels had received training deep in the forests of Malaysia’s Kelantan state bordering Thailand’s southern province of Narathiwat,” the Thai premier was quoted as having said in Saturday’s ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper.

He added further that ”Kuala Lumpur was unaware of the clandestine activities.”

These charges, which were not substantiated, have drawn an angry response from Malaysia.

”I am shocked over such a statement. If Thaksin Shinawatra has such information, he should convey this to Malaysia through diplomatic channels,” Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was quoted as having told ‘Bernama’, the country’s state news agency.

”We question Thaksin’s motive for making the statement…He said he knows and we don’t know. So it is right to tell us,” added Abdullah, currently visiting the Middle East.

Indonesia has still to react to the allegations made by Thaksin during his weekly radio speech on Saturday that suspected Muslim militants in southern Thailand were influenced by Indonesian Muslims while studying Islam there..

Thaksin was quoted in Sunday’s ‘The Nation’ newspaper saying that some of the Thai Muslims arrested for fuelling violence in the south had ”studied Islam in Indonesia, where they fell under the spell of extremists.”

Bangkok’s bold pronouncements – establishing a regional link to the violence in southern Thailand – marks a shift from the earlier view maintained by Thaksin and his government that the conflict was not the result of foreign instigators.

”The Thai foreign ministry has always denied that our problem in the south is linked to international terrorism or regional extremists,” Kraisak Choonhavan, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Thai Senate, told IPS.

More significant, though, is the manner in which Thaksin has faulted Malaysia and Indonesia in the wake of the stubborn stance he took on the eve of a summit of South- east Asian leaders held in late November in Laos.

Days before attending the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting, Thaksin fired a warning that he would walk out if the region’s leading Muslim nations, Indonesia and Malaysia, pressured Thailand to explain the carnage in the southern Thai town of Tak Bai in late October.

Seventy-eight boys and men belonging to the Malay-Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist Thailand ”suffocated” to death while in military custody after they were arrested while protesting outside a police station.

Thaksin won that round with his regional counterparts, since he was not asked to take the hot seat. At the same time, the Thai premier urged other leaders at the summit to throw their weight behind quite diplomacy as the best remedy to achieve political reform in a fellow ASEAN nation, military-ruled Burma.

Thailand’s stance at ASEAN meeting regards Tak Bai has not been lost on some parliamentarians across the region. ”The Thai Premier’s outburst is most unfortunate, as Thailand had been regarded as one of the more progressive nations in ASEAN,” said Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition in Malaysia’s parliament.

”There is a stark contradiction between what Thaksin said before the ASEAN meeting and what he is doing now,” adds Senator Kraisak. ”It is because of his inability to mitigate the violence in the south after using harsh policies.”

Thai media estimate that over 500 people have died in the violence that has erupted in southern Thailand since January. The victims have included civilians and Buddhist monks killed by suspected Malay-Muslim rebels and Muslim boys and men, who died during confrontations with Thai troops or in military custody.

The violence this year comes after a relative lull in an area that has witnessed clashes between Muslim separatists and government troops three decades ago. The southern provinces, which border Malaysia, were once part of the independent kingdom of Pattani that was annexed by Siam, as Thailand was then called, in 1902

A solution requires cooperation with regional neighbours, not confrontation, Asda Jaynama, a former Thai diplomat, told IPS. ”This departure from Thailand’s tradition of quite diplomacy by accusing Malaysian and Indonesia could become embarrassing.”

He described both countries as ”genuine friends” of Thailand. In the interest of regional solidarity, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur has helped Bangkok before when under scrutiny by the Islamic world, he added.

Among such diplomatic feats were when these two South-east Asian Muslim nations lined up with their Buddhist neighbour during the years of intense conflict between the southern separatist rebels and Thai troops.

”Thaksin can hurt regional ties by implying that Indonesia and Malaysia are turning a blind eye about what is going on in southern Thailand,” added Kraisak. ”He should call for more collaboration and not try to win some political points locally.”