PENANG, Malaysia -
Malaysian groups have reacted with outrage to the grisly
deaths of more than 80 Muslim protesters in neighboring
southern Thailand, with Kuala Lumpur expressing concern
over the escalating violence and non-governmental
organizations calling for sanctions against the country.
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has offered help
to control the situation and prevent further clashes.
"We hope that the situation there does not worsen and
spread to other provinces and that it will be contained
quickly," he was quoted as saying by Malaysia's state
news agency during a tour of the northern state of
Kedah, which borders Thailand.
Abdullah was
reported to have contacted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra to inform him of the importance of resolving
the issue through consultations with community leaders
in southern Thailand, so as to obtain their support to
end the violence.
Most of the protest victims
died from suffocation while several broke their necks
when 1,300 people were stuffed into vehicles for at
least six hours, after police and troops used water
cannons, gunfire and tear gas to break up a
demonstration on Monday outside a police station in the
Muslim-dominated Narathiwat province. The province
shares its southern border with Malaysia's northeast
state of Kelantan, which is ruled by the opposition
Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS).
Monday's violence,
which comes in the midst of the Muslim fasting month
Ramadan, was the worst violence in southern Thailand
since April 28, when Thai troops stormed the ancient
Krue Se mosque in Pattani, killing more than 100 alleged
Muslim insurgents who had taken refuge there.
Thaksin blamed the suffocation deaths on Muslim
protesters being exhausted due to the two-week-old fast
they were observing. Then he pointed a finger at drugs -
saying the arrested protesters were in a "drug-induced
state".
Abdullah, a devout Muslim, said late on
Thursday that the deaths should never have happened.
"If there is anything that we can do to help, we
will," said Abdullah, who is also chairman of the
Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC). "If not, we
wish that the Thai government will be able to manage
this crisis so that it will not spread and cause further
violence.
"We want the Thai government to take
firm action," Abdullah added.
That request for
"firm action" prompted a sharp response from PAS, which
said Abdullah's statement was confusing and ambiguous
and implied that he agreed with the actions of the Thai
security forces.
"If he meant that the Thai
government had to take even stronger action and
sacrifice more lives, that would be regrettable,"
Kamarudin Jaafar, a PAS central committee member, told
Inter Press Service.
Since Monday's violence,
four Muslim non-governmental organizations have issued a
joint statement calling on the OIC and the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to meet and lodge
their protest against the Thai government. They also
went a step further, calling for sanctions against
Thailand.
"The Thai government is not being
sincere in handling the problem, and Islamic nations
worldwide must stop trade relations with it until they
succeed in resolving this issue peacefully and bringing
to book those responsible for this cruelty," said a
joint statement issued by the Malay Initiatives Network
(Teras), the Secretariat for Asian Ulamas (Shura), the
Institute for Community Progress and Development (Impak)
and the Institute for the Research and Development of
Syariah (Isra).
Bangkok, however, is still
holding to the view that the military remained
blameless. "It was a tragic incident, but we would like
to point out that the military did their best to
exercise self-restraint and did not use force during the
demonstrations," Sihasak Phuangketkeow, a foreign
ministry spokesman, told Inter Press Service.
"It is not the government's policy to treat
people inhumanely," he added in reference to the deaths
in custody.
The PAS youth wing, meanwhile, said
it deeply regretted what happened in southern Thailand.
"We will launch a special fund to help families of the
victims of indiscriminate shootings by Thai troops,"
said youth wing leader Salahudin Ayub. The wing's
Kelantan section has handed a protest memorandum to a
Thai consulate representative in the state capital, Kota
Baru.
"We appeal to Thailand to act fairly
towards the minority Malay community in south Thailand,
and consultations must be carried out swiftly so that no
group feels oppressed," said Zulkafli Yaacob, the
Kelantan PAS youth wing leader.
The
Malay-Muslims account for 2.3 million people of
Thailand's 63 million population, the majority of whom
are Buddhists.
Militants among this Muslim
minority waged separatist struggles in the 1970s to
reclaim three of Thailand's southern provinces that are
home to a majority of Muslims. Over a century ago, these
provinces belonged to the kingdom of Pattani, which was
annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.
"The unhappiness of Thailand's three southern,
predominantly Muslim, Malay-speaking provinces has
international implications - for the West in its
self-proclaimed 'war on terror'; for ASEAN, in which
Muslims are the largest religious group; and for Malays
in Malaysia, who inevitably sympathize with their
brethren across the border," wrote columnist Philip
Bowring in the International Herald Tribune.
Parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang
said Malaysia and ASEAN should send fact-finding
missions to investigate the escalating violence and
bloodshed in southern Thailand, in particular the deaths
of the protestors in Narathiwat.
"Thaksin should
welcome such fact-finding missions by Malaysia and ASEAN
and should not regard them as intrusions or interference
with Thai domestic affairs," he said.
Lim added
that the continuing turmoil and bloodshed in southern
Thailand was bound to have an adverse impact on
Malaysia, as Thailand's closest neighbor, and on the
international credibility of ASEAN. As violence
continued on Thursday, one Malaysian was killed and two
were injured when a bomb ripped through two bars in the
town of Sungai Kolok on the Thai-Malaysian border.
Lim's colleague, Ronnie Liu, who is
international secretary of the Democratic Action Party,
said that "Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra must
seriously take steps to initiate a peace accord with the
Thai Muslims in southern Thailand to prevent further
violence and upheavals in his country."
The
incident on Monday showed both excessive use of force
and a blatant disregard of human lives, observed Zaid
Kamarudin, the president of Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM),
a Muslim missionary group promoting reforms. "There
should be a channel of communication and discussion
between the protagonists," he told IPS. "If it needs
mediation, let there be mediation."
In its
coverage of the killings in southern Thailand, Berita
Harian, a major Malay-language daily, carried a banner
front-page headline with the words: "World condemns
Thailand: Excessive force against Muslims." The paper's
lead story was a stinging condemnation of the
human-rights abuses, supported by sharp criticism from
around the world.
The secretary of the PAS's
Ulama (Islamic religious leaders) wing, Badrulzzaman
Yusuf, said that the tragic deaths showed that the Thai
authorities had no respect for the holy month of
Ramadan, when Muslims practice fasting.
"Those
who were gathered outside the police station were only
trying to ensure the safety of their friends who had
been detained and we are confident they had no other
motive," he said.
To cram 1,300 people into a
few trucks was inhuman, Badrulzzaman said, and lowered
their dignity to below that accorded to animals.
However, he urged the victims' families to be patient
and act according to the law.
Mustapa Yaacob, a
former secretary of the ruling United Malays National
Organization's international bureau also spoke out
against the security forces' actions. "They [Thai
security forces] should be sensitive to the feelings of
the Muslims in Malaysia, especially in this neighboring
area, who have family connections with many of the
Thais," he said. "We don't like to interfere in other
country's affairs, but as Muslim neighbors, we want to
call for an investigation to ensure justice is done."
