Report on Muslim deaths helps calm
Thai tensions By Marwaan
Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - A report released this
week accusing Thai troops of using excessive force to
confront poorly armed Muslim militants who had taken
refuge in a mosque in late April is offering the Thai
government a much-needed opportunity to mend fences with
the country's Malay-Muslim minority in the
violence-plagued southern provinces.
The authors
of the report, a government-appointed commission of
legal experts, Muslim academics and a former judge, drew
attention to one feature of the attack - the lobbing of
eight grenades into the Krue Se Mosque in the southern
province of Pattani - to amplify the military excesses.
Foreign diplomats are skeptical of the
explanation given by the six-member independent panel
for the disproportionate use of force on April 28. But
the message is going down well with the Muslim minority
in this predominantly Buddhist nation.
"The
government is on the right track. It will help lessen
the tension in the south," said Niti Hassan, president
of the Council of Muslim Organizations of Thailand. Some
Malay-Muslims say the violence is partly due to the
government's lack of sensitivity to their culture, and
they point to government measures such as the closing of
Islamic boarding schools as evidence of this. So Muslims
needed to hear the panel's message, particularly after
many witnessed the attack on the mosque, said Arong
Suthansana, chairman of the Institute of Islamic World
Studies, a Bangkok-based independent research center.
Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra is also receiving bouquets for
offering to compensate the families of the 32 Muslim
militants who were killed when the heavily armed Thai
security forces stormed the Krue Se Mosque.
"Compensating the families will show that the
government is concerned about what happened," said
Ismail Ali, director of the College of Islamic Studies
at Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani.
The
killings at the mosque were part of a bloody showdown
that occurred on the morning of April 28, the worst day
of violence since fighting erupted in the country's
southern provinces on January 4. In all, 107 Muslim
assailants were killed that day when scores of young
Muslim men, armed mostly with knives and machetes but
some with guns, raided 10 police stations and security
checkpoints in the southern provinces of Yala, Songkhla
and Pattani. Only five members of the government's
forces died in the fighting.
Over the past seven
months the violence has continued unabated. Assailants
have continued attacking police, soldiers, Buddhist
monks, teachers and government officials, resulting in
more than 250 deaths. Attackers have also torched
schools and bombed restaurants and government buildings.
The violence began when attackers stormed a
military camp in the south on January 4 and made off
with an estimated 400 M-16 rifles. Bangkok is still
searching for answers as to who was behind the assault.
The search has become increasingly desperate, so much so
that the army division in charge of security in the
predominantly Muslim-Malay provinces announced last
weekend that it was offering monetary rewards and free
trips to Mecca for families who revealed information
about the missing weapons.
Some Muslims,
however, are interpreting that gesture as another
example of the government's inability to grasp the
culture of the Malay-Muslims. "The government should not
have offered money, because Muslims know what the
religion has said about paying one's way to go to
Mecca," research center chairman Arong said.
That slip will be hard to ignore, since
Malay-Muslims say that Bangkok's lack of sensitivity to
their culture, which is distinct from the Thai-Buddhist
culture that the majority of the country's 63 million
people identify with, is at the heart of the violence.
Thailand is home to 2.3 million Malay-Muslims, most of
whom live in the country's five southern provinces, four
of which share a border with Malaysia.
Another
move by Bangkok is also helping to harden feelings
Muslims have toward state officials. The government
announced last month that it wants to close 21 Islamic
boarding schools it suspects of being linked to the
attacks against the state.
Last week, however,
Abdulrohni Kahama, secretary general of the Islamic
boarding schools in the southern provinces, told the
press that he would defy the government's order to close
the schools until proper evidence to back the charges
was shown. He also warned Bangkok that a heavy-handed
approach to force the schools to shut would only inflame
the already tense environment in the south.
"There is a lot of fear among the Muslims here,
and there is a lack of trust between the people and the
authorities," Ismail Ali said.
During the past
seven months, the government has pointed fingers at
Muslim separatist groups in the south and other Muslim
extremists for spearheading the attacks, the most recent
of which was a roadside bomb directed against security
forces protecting southern teachers on Wednesday that
injured two policemen.
The charge stems from a
mix of sketchy evidence gathered by intelligence
officials and the region's history. In the early 1970s,
Muslim rebels launched a separatist struggle to restore
the once independent Muslim kingdom of Pattani, which
was annexed by Bangkok in 1902.
Despite bringing
that rebellion under control in the 1980s, Thailand's
south has experienced regular bursts of violence
beginning in the 1990s. Attacks since 1993 have averaged
between 40 and 70 a year.
The scale of violence
witnessed since January has marked a turn for the worse,
however. And according to editorials here, Bangkok needs
to win the trust of the Muslims to quell it.
"There are many urgent, non-military issues
which need to be addressed," the Bangkok Post newspaper
commented recently. "First and foremost is the need to
win the trust of southern Muslims in the government and
its offices."
