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Push Muslims too hard and risk
jihad
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - A global human-rights watchdog
has warned the Thai government that its harsh
polices to stamp out violence in the country's
predominantly Muslim provinces could trigger
sympathy among extremists in the Islamic world.
"It seems like Thailand wants to attract
jihadis," Brad Adams, executive director of the
Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told
reporters in the Thai capital on Thursday. "The
Thai government's policy is a recipe for
attracting such support."
Researchers from
the New York-based group monitoring Arabic
websites have noticed that the "Thai name has
appeared" on them, he added.
The reference
to jihadis - Muslim extremists driven by a passion
to use violence - is with reason. In the last two
decades, angry young men from parts of the Islamic
world have been drawn to wage what they perceive
as jihad (religious war) to help their persecuted
fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and
Chechnya.
The warning by Human Rights
Watch is the latest in a string of criticisms
leveled against the government of Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra for contemplating measures
aimed at denying government funds to villages
sympathetic to suspected separatists in the
country's three predominantly Muslim southern
provinces.
Since Thaksin announced his
plan on February 16, critics ranging from leading
human-rights activists to a former chief of the
Thai army have denounced the idea.
"People
might think they are being segregated. If this
feeling is abused, it's like throwing oil onto a
fire," former army commander General Surayud
Chulanont was quoted in Tuesday's The Nation
newspaper as saying.
A ranking member of
the country's premier human-rights body argued
likewise. "The policy is discrimination. It
violates human rights and is unconstitutional,"
Pradit Charoenthaithawee, a member of the National
Human Rights Commission, told The Nation on
Sunday.
By mid-week, Thaksin had consented
to having his hardline stance discussed during a
joint session of the country's parliament and
senate. Yet media reports continued to reflect the
premier's mindset on this contentious issue. While
lashing out at his critics, Thaksin asked: "What
should I do? Should I give them [southern
insurgents] money to buy more bombs?"
The
government's plan seeks to divide nearly 1,500
villages in the troubled provinces of Yala,
Narathiwat and Pattani into three zones. Villages
placed within the "red zones" would be deprived of
development funds worth 30 billion baht (US$750
million) for not cooperating with the government
and being sympathetic with the insurgents.
Villages classified as "yellow zones"
would also be on the government's watch list, due
to some resistance against the state and marginal
support for the assailants. But development
assistance would still flow to them.
Villages in the "green zones," according
to the government, are the most favorable, due to
the absence of any insurgent activity.
Thaksin unveiled this policy a week after
he led his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai or TRT)
party to a landslide victory in the February 6
general election. It was an unprecedented
achievement on two levels, being the first time a
prime minister had been re-elected for a
consecutive term, and with TRT winning 375 seats
in a 500-member parliament, marking the largest
victory ever for a single political party.
Yet at the same time, the Malay-Muslim
minority in the south turned their backs on TRT by
endorsing the opposition Democrat Party
candidates.
Analysts attribute TRT's
failure to win any of the 11 parliamentary seats
up for grabs in the southernmost provinces to the
disenchantment stemming from the government's
hardline measures against the insurgency since
January 2004.
"The message was clear:
those people in the south wanted change. They were
not happy with the Thai Rak Thai's policies,"
Gotham Arya, head of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based
regional human rights lobby, said in reference to
TRT's southern losses.
On the eve of the
election, for instance, Bangkok revealed its faith
in a military solution by announcing it would be
sending 12,000 more troops to strengthen the
20,000 already stationed in the restive region.
It seemed to flow from the decision last
year to impose martial law, giving the police and
army sweeping powers to target civilians,
including the right to destroy property belonging
to suspected insurgents.
The government
has also not been transparent with two emotionally
charged events in the south last year - the death
of 32 Muslim militants, in April, when government
troops attacked a historic mosque they had taken
refuge in and the October deaths of 78 Muslim
protesters while in the custody of the Thai army.
The full report that the government has of
the Kru Se mosque deaths and the deaths of the
protesters in Tak Bai should be made public, said
HRW's Adams. "The next step, vigorous prosecution,
should follow."
Since early January last
year, when unknown assailants attacked a military
camp in the south, violence has been on an upward
spiral. Among those targeted by exploding bombs
and shootings have been civilians, government
officials and the police and army. By the end of
2004, the Thai army had recorded 888 such attacks.
According to the media, more than 600
people have been killed over the past year. Seven
people were shot dead this week alone as attacks
escalated on the back of Thailand's first car
bombing last week just hours after Thaksin ended a
tour of the region.
The Malay-Muslim
minority in this predominantly Buddhist country
has often complained of cultural and economic
discrimination. To that has been added a sense of
fear in this southern community, due to alleged
police and army brutality, growing cases of
torture and disappearances.
The current
outburst of violence comes after a period of
relative calm in an area that experienced clashes
between Muslim separatists and government troops
from the 1970s through to the 1980s.
The
three southern provinces that are under siege -
Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani - were once part of
the independent kingdom of Pattani that was
annexed by Siam, as Thailand was then called, in
1902.
(Inter Press Service) |
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