Thai refugees embarrass
Bangkok By Marwaan
Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Uneasiness is
steadily spreading through the government of Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as ethnic disaffection
in Thailand's southern provinces threatens to
stain the country's laudable record in dealing
with refugees.
Thaksin's unease over the
flight of 131 Thai citizens of Muslim-Malay ethnic
origin for asylum in neighboring Malaysia was more
than evident during a meeting of Southeast Asian
leaders this week in New York.
"Without
coordination and headquarters' guidelines, a UN
agency went out of its way and allowed itself to
be trapped into local political exploitation that
could lead to international misunderstanding,"
Thaksin said in a pointed reference to the United
Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). He
also did not spare predominantly Muslim Malaysia
for entertaining the
asylum seekers since August
30. "Countries in the [Southeast Asian] community
must be prepared to create an air of cooperation,
not mistrust," the Thai prime minister said during
the second ASEAN-UN summit.
Both Thailand
and Malaysia are founding members of the 10-member
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The other countries of this regional grouping are
Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the
Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.
UN
officials, who spoke to Inter Press Service
(IPS)on condition of anonymity, suggest otherwise:
that the refugee agency was following standard
practice of interviewing the men, women and
children who had fled Thailand in search of asylum
in Malaysia.
Each asylum seeker from
southern Thailand's Narathiwat province is being
interviewed by UNHCR staff and a decision about
the merits of each case will be made in a week to
10 days.
"Those Muslims fled because the
people in the south are losing faith in the
government," Kraisak Choonhavan, chairman of the
foreign affairs committee in the Thai Senate, told
IPS. "The use of violence has alienated the
people."
The villagers reportedly fled
soon after a highly respected imam (Islamic
religious leader) from their village was killed,
allegedly by uniformed men.
"Since the
government imposed an emergency decree [in July],
there is growing abuse in the south. There is
sufficient reason for the people to feel unsafe
and flee," Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political
scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University,
said in an interview. "It is natural to seek
sanctuary."
But the flight of these 131
Malay-Muslims from predominantly Buddhist Thailand
is politically damaging to the Thaksin
administration for another reason - it marks a
glaring reversal of roles involving Thailand and
refugees fleeing conflict and terror in this
region.
Since 1975, Thailand has been the
land of hope for more than 1.5 million people who
fled their native Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia due
to the raging wars and oppressive governments.
Bangkok let these victims of violence lead a
temporary life of security in asylum, though not
being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee
Convention.
Currently, the border Thailand
shares with Myanmar to its west offers a reminder
of this humanitarian gesture by Bangkok for nearly
three decades. It is dotted with 10 camps housing
nearly 140,000 men, women and children who have
fled military-ruled Myanmar due to government
crackdowns and ethnic conflicts.
No wonder
some analysts have begun to label the case of the
131 Thai asylum seekers a "national disgrace",
since it marks the first time that Thai citizens
are being forced to flee due to persecution at
home.
"Will the government of Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra be the first to spawn
refugees, reversing the history of a country that
has given asylum to hundreds of thousands of
Cambodians, Laotians, Vietnamese and Burmese
fleeing leaderships beyond the brink?" asked
Anuraj Manibhandu in a recent column in the
Bangkok Post newspaper.
Senator Kraisak
feels that such a scenario may very well be the
case, given that many more Malay-Muslims have
already fled the region and many aim to follow.
"The situation is getting out of hand and the
government will end up destroying the political
culture we had built in Thailand - being a place
where refugees come to, not go from."
The
violence in the country's three southern-most
provinces near the Malaysian border has already
claimed 1,037 lives, the Thai police told the
government-run Thai News Agency this week.
It began in January last year, following
an attack on an army camp by suspected
Malay-Muslim insurgents. Bangkok has blamed Muslim
separatist groups in the region for reviving a
conflict between government troops and the Muslim
minority that has gone through cycles of bloodshed
during the 1970s and the decades before.
The disaffection of Malay-Muslims in the
provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat goes
back to 1902, when these provinces, once part of
the Muslim kingdom of Pattani, were annexed by
Siam, as Thailand was then known.
While
the suspected militants have been accused of
killing civilians, Buddhist monks, Muslim
villagers, bureaucrats and teachers, government
troops have been responsible for the gruesome
deaths, from suffocation, of 78 Muslim boys and
men while in military custody.
In July,
after failing with a range of options to contain
the violence, the government imposed a Draconian
emergency decree to strengthen Thaksin's hands and
give free rein to nearly 30,000 troops in dealing
with suspected militants.
"The government
sees this problem as a law enforcement one," said
Thitinan, the political scientist. "But that will
only result in more persecution and more people
fleeing."
