THAILAND: Exchange the Iron Fist for Reconciliation Down South, Urge Groups

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 19 2005 (IPS) - As the Thai government mulls its next move to counter violence in the country’s south, it is facing calls from diverse quarters to broaden its recently unveiled conciliatory policies as the best hope for peace in that troubled region.

Most significant for Bangkok is the nod of approval it received Thursday from a prominent member of the country’s Malay-Muslim minority – who in the southern provinces form the largest number of people there in a predominantly Buddhist country.

Wan Kadir Che Man, a leader of a Malay-Muslim separatist organisation, has ”welcomed the government’s policy shift towards a softer approach in dealing with violence in the Malay- speaking deep south and urged local residents to work towards peace,” an English-language daily, ‘The Nation,’ reported.

Wan Kadir singled out the creation of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) by the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the shift away from military solutions to legal remedies as positive steps, the paper added.

”Unlike the past battles carried out between government security forces and separatist groups, this most recent wave of violence has driven a wedge between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in the region,” Wan Kadir told ‘The Nation’ during an interview conducted in Sweden, where he lives in exile.

Earlier in the week, Bangkok was warned that a shift away from its conciliatory policies for a more heavy-handed military approach to quell the violence in the south would play into the hands of insurgents active in that region.

”The groups responsible for the bombings and killings have an interest in an excessive government response, precisely so that the separatist sentiment is fuelled,” the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, said in a report on the escalating violence in southern Thailand.

”It is up to the Thaksin government to break the cycle of violence by pursuing a measured response that addresses the security threats but also acknowledges the accumulated political grievances,” added the report, ‘Southern Thailand: Insurgency not Jihad.’ ”It should hold intensive consultations with local community leaders in an effort to open a genuine dialogue.”

Francesca Law-Davies, an ICG analyst, backed Bangkok’s decision to set up the NRC, headed by respected former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, in March. ”The establishment of the National Reconciliation Commission in March was the first step in the right direction, and the commission has made some useful recommendations,” she said. ”But unless it acts more quickly and more boldly, it may be too little, too late, to have a meaningful impact on government policy.”

According to ICG, the troubles in southern Thailand since January last year still have the hallmarks of a local insurgency fuelled by domestic tensions and not, as suspected in some quarters, a jihad that has attracted militant Muslims from abroad.

It is a view that Anand, the NRC chief, also echoes. ”This is a local issue and can be managed by local resources. The worst thing is for it to be internationalised,” he told a packed audience at Bangkok’s Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand on Wednesday night. ”There is a separatist movement but it has to be dealt with by our government.”

What is more, he dismissed the prevailing view that all acts of violence in the south are rooted in politics. ”My own estimates are that no less than 50 percent of the incidents were criminal activities linked to narcotics, smuggling and gambling,” he said.

”It is an open secret that certain elements in the military and the police have been engaged in illegal business activities in the area,” he added. ”I would not be surprised if some killings (are) linked to these illegal business activity.”

Thaksin’s shift away from the tough stance he had pursued since January last year came soon after his political party was re-elected to power with a thumping majority at the general elections in February. He set this new tone by endorsing the need for compromise during a historic debate involving Thailand’s parliament and senate.

According to media reports, close to 700 people have died in the south since assailants stormed a military camp in January last year. The attacks by suspected separatist groups, none of whom have claimed responsibility for the violence, have largely occurred in the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala.

The victims of the suspected insurgents have included soldiers, policemen, government officials, Buddhist monks, village headmen and Buddhist and Muslim civilians.

The Malay-Muslims who have lost their lives at the hands of government troops include over 100 who died during a bloody clash with the military in April last year and 78 boys and men who died due to suffocation while in military custody last October.

This latest violent outburst comes after a lull that followed the end of separatist violence in the southern provinces during the 1970s and 1980s. The Malay-Muslim militants in the vanguard of that phase wanted to carve out a region that had belonged to the kingdom of Pattani a century ago before it was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.

The Malay-Muslims who make up about 2.3 million of Thailand’s 64 million people speak a different language than the Thai of the majority and have a different cultural heritage and history from the dominant Thai-Buddhist culture.

Their complaints of discrimination have not been limited to their ethnic identity. They have been victims of economic deprivation due to government polices. Narathiwat province, in fact, has almost a third of its population living below the poverty line.

The grievances are valid, said NRC’s Anand. ”Past government policies did not respect the people of different cultures and there was a lack of awareness of the history of the area.”

And to heal these wounds, he said the Thaksin administration’s softer approach should also include a review of the martial law currently in force in the south. ”We are urging the government to withdraw martial law,” he added.