By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Aug 28 2007 (IPS)

The image of a leading private school in southern Thailand took a beating after a new report, released Tuesday, fingered its teachers and alumni as being instrumental in an increasingly brutal insurgency in the region that borders Malaysia.

The revelation by the New York-based rights lobby Human Rights Watch (HRW) is the first public confirmation by an independent body of the links between the alumni of the Thamma Withaya Foundation School and Malay-Muslim rebels waging a separatist campaign in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.

Till now, it was only the government that charged Thamma Withaya and other educational institutions with such a connection. Thamma Withaya, which is the largest private college in Yala with a student population of over 5,000, has been raided by Thai troops on a number of occasions. Some of its teachers have been killed; some arrested and released; some imprisoned to face cases linked to the insurgency.

Teachers IPS spoke with maintain that the school has always been targeted unfairly. The teaching of Islam and the local Malay-Muslim culture have been defended as a means to retain and strengthen the cultural identity of the Malay-Muslims who form the majority in the three provinces. The language Thailand’s largest minority speaks -‘Yawei,’ a Malay dialect – and their Islamic faith gives them a distinct identity against this South-east Asian nation’s Buddhist Thai-speaking majority.

Yet, a village chief in Pattani was one of the many people in the area who told HRW researchers that ‘ustadz,’ or Muslim religious teachers who had graduated from Thamma Withaya revealed through their preaching that ‘’they were militants,’’ the report said. ‘’(His children) said the ustadz had told them that it was their Islamic duty to take up arms and fight for liberation of our homeland from the kafir (non-believer) occupation.’’

The role of Masae Useng, a former religious teacher at Thamma Withaya, was also exposed in the 104-page report, ‘No One is Safe: Insurgent Attacks on Civilians in Thailand,’ was produced after a year-long study of the area. Over 2,400 people have been killed since the latest cycle of violence erupted in January 2004.

‘’Over the period of ‘quiet years’ in the lead-up to the widespread resurgence of separatist violence in 2004, BRN-Coordinate has focused on expanding its strength through the network of ‘tok guru’ (head of small religious schools called ‘pondoks’), ‘ustadz’ and ‘jehku’ (teachers in the ‘tadika’ – village-based elementary Koranic schools),’’ the report said.

‘’Thamma Withaya was at the centre of this network before the government started cracking down since 2004,’’ Sunai Phasuk, Thai researcher for HRW told IPS. ‘’It played a key role in indoctrinating these people. But now this network of indoctrination has diversified to other pondoks and smaller schools.’’

Other researchers monitoring the violence in southern Thailand echo similar views. ‘’I don’t think it is the school as an institution that is doing so, but more a core group of ustadzs in the school and a section of the administration who have been responsible in indoctrinating and recruiting the young militants,’’ Francesca Lawe-Davis, South-east Asia analyst of the International Crisis Group, said in a telephone interview from Jakarta.

The consequence of such an ideology has spawned a group of militants who have shown little respect for human rights and displayed no limits in who they attack in their quest to establish an independent Malay-Muslim state in southern Thailand. The attacks are being spearheaded by militants called ‘Pejuang Kemerdekann Patani’ (Patani Freedom Fighters), which is affiliated to the BRN-Coordinate, HRW reveals.

The separatist groups are ‘’killing and mutilating civilians and attacking schools, community clinics, and Buddhist temples,’’ the report states. ‘’Of the 2,463 people killed during the past three-and-a-half years, 2,196 (or 89 percent) were civilians. Buddhist Thais and ethnic Malay-Muslims were killed in bomb attacks, shootings, assassinations, ambushes, and machete hackings.’’

‘’Violence against civilians is being used by separatist militants to scare Buddhist Thais away from these provinces, keep ethnic Malay-Muslims under control, and discredit Thai authorities,’’ Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director, said in a statement that accompanied the report. ‘’But it is illegal and morally indefensible to deliberately target civilians in any circumstances.’’

The killing of Abdulloh Daha-ara, a 15-year-old Malay-Muslim, illustrates this violent trend which is undermining the separatists’ claims that their struggle has a higher moral purpose. He was stabbed and hacked to death in a Malay-Muslim village in Narathiwat by ‘’a young man who lived down the road and was Abdulloh’s friend,’’ the victim’s sister told HRW researchers.

The teenager was killed because he disagreed with the militants’ use of violence, a fact that has not been lost on moderate Malay-Muslims in the region that IPS spoke with. It has consequently forced moderates to be restrained in their criticism out of fear that they may be future targets. But such fear also cuts the other way – criticising the government troops and an emerging group of Thai-Buddhist vigilantes for human rights violations.

‘’The violence from the guerrilla groups and from the government side is forcing us to live in fear,’’ Worawit Baru, a professor of Malay studies at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, told IPS. ‘’The moderate Muslims who don’t like violence from both sides do not feel comfortable talking openly against it.’’

The current cycle of violence in southern Thailand has roots going back many decades. The first signs of a Malay-Muslim militancy emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s. It grew out of complaints by the Muslims that they were victims of cultural, religious and economic discrimination by Bangkok’s policymakers.

The Malay-Muslims have always perceived themselves to be distinct from the Thais. The three provinces that they live in was once part of the Muslim sultanate of Pattani, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam as Thailand was then known.

In the years that followed, religious teachers and local schools became the main institution for the Malay-Muslims to learn about their culture, identity and unique history, given Bangkok’s decision to prevent any semblance of Malay-Muslim culture in fields such as the media or government.

Currently, there are over 310 ‘pondoks,’ or religious schools, and about 200 private schools, of which Thamma Withaya is a leading institution, attracting students from across the three provinces.

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