THAILAND: Grudging Flood Relief Further Alienates Muslim Areas

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK , Dec 29 2005 (IPS) - Lukewarm efforts by the Thai government to get relief to predominantly Malay-Muslim provinces in the south, badly hit by recent rain and floods, may obstruct efforts to find a solution to escalating insurgency in the area.

Nothing symbolised the government’s attitude more than Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s reluctance to tour the flood-ravaged south until last weekend- and then it was a brief, token visit. Thaksin responded to his critics by saying he was in regular telephone contact with authorities handling relief efforts.

By the time he flew in, the worst rain and floods in 30 years had resulted in 35 deaths, 30,000 people rendered homeless and some 700,000 people affected by the raging waters in major towns and villages.

The economic cost to southern provinces affected by incessant rains since mid-November has been as high. Paddy fields, rubber plantations, orchards, fish ponds and farms have been hit. The estimated damage to the area is nearly 12.5 million US dollars, the government said on Tuesday.

”The floods have affected a lot of people; many have been made homeless and are struggling to survive,” Nimu Makaje, vice president of the Yala Province Islamic Council, told IPS. ”This is the worst flood after the ones in 1967 and 1977.”

Muslim leaders welcomed efforts by Thai troops, stationed in the area, to help the victims but said these have been inadequate. ”The aid and assistance from the government through the military has not been enough,” Abdul Rohman Abdul Samad, chairman of the Narathiwat Province Islamic Council, said in an interview to IPS. ”Most of the help came from volunteers and community members.”

Yet, peace activists feel it is still not late for the government to intervene and perhaps seize an opportunity to reduce the alienation of the Malay-Muslim minority in the three affected provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat that border Malaysia.

”The Thai authorities can still give the lead to convert this calamity into something positive and show a sense of solidarity that we are all Thais,” Gothom Arya, director at the research centre for peace building at Bangkok’s Mahidol University, told IPS. ”Some of what the government has done is good.”

Thaksin’s reluctance to visit the flood-hit areas had more to do with his domestic political agenda than the escalating violence, say local analysts. His governing Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party was defeated in the southern provinces during a general election in February. Since then, Thaksin has gone on record saying his government would do more to help the provinces that supported his party at the polls than those who rejected it.

The heavy rains came just as the government was unfurling a new tactic to stop the Muslims in the south from being hostile to the state-compelling Muslims ”suspected” of being militants to undergo ”re-education” programmes.

The Malay-Muslims in the south account for about 2.3 million people of this South-east Asian country’s 64 million population, most of whom are Buddhists.

But this latest effort to induce loyalty has raised a storm of protest from sections of the press and human rights groups. They have not only criticised the effort to brainwash Muslim youth during a 20-day programme as being counterproductive, but they have also questioned the manner in which local officials identified youth expected to sign on for this crash-course in Thai nationalism.

Among those picked out as ”suspected Malay-Muslim rebels” are a mother of two, currently in her third trimester of pregnancy, and a perennially sick young boy.

”Camp activities that are supposed to instill a sense of patriotism have been described as somewhere between silly and absurd,” wrote ‘The Nation,’ an English language daily, in an editorial this month. ”The course includes listening to boring lectures from top military brass and singing, ‘Chang, chang, chang,’ about an elephant they have never even seen.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned Bangkok for the ”use of blacklists of suspected militants” to force them to join the re-education camps.

”Thai soldiers have admitted to HRW that they visit villages in full combat gear, knock on the doors of blacklisted suspects, and threaten them with ‘serious consequences’ if they refuse to voluntarily surrender,” the New York-based global rights lobby said in a statement released this month. ”No warrants are produced and no legal procedure is invoked.”

HRW expressed fear that these lists, compiled through questionable means by local administrators, military personnel and the police, could lead to a repeat of the violence witnessed in 2003 during the government’s ”war on drugs,” when over 2,500 ”suspected” drug pushers were killed after their names were listed.

January 2006 will marks two years since violence in Thailand’s south erupted after a long lull and has take an increasingly vicious turn. Over 1,100 people have been killed in the conflict that has pitted government forces against still to be identified militant groups.

While the suspected militants have been responsible for killing teachers, community leaders, rubber tappers, soldiers and policemen from both the Buddhist and Muslim communities, Thai troops have been responsible for the deaths over 180 Muslim boys and men in confrontations at a mosque and while in military custody.

Confrontations between the state and Muslim separatists have erupted in the region in the past as a result of the Malay-Muslim disenchantment with Bangkok’s heavily centralised approach to governance and cultural and economic discrimination.

The three Muslim provinces caught up in the current violence were once part of the Malay-Muslim kingdom of Pattani, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.

A powerful bomb that recently exploded in Narathiwat, followed by five killings over the weekend, offer a reminder that the rains and floods have done little to cool the tempers of those raging against the Thai state.