Fear and loathing in the Thai
south By Marwaan Macan-Markar
TANYONG LIMO, Thailand - From the tea shop
that she runs with her husband, Maye Leh surveyed
the silence that had descended on the surrounding
small houses with cracked walls, shut windows and
closed doors on a late Sunday morning.
The
only sounds were those of clucking chickens, the
twitter of caged birds and the odd breeze that
wafts through this village, from which many ethnic
Malay-Muslim inhabitants have fled since heavily armed
troops poured in to search for people responsible
for
the killing of two Thai marines last week.
Maye, 50, is not sure when the normal
rhythm of life in this village, set amid the
rubber plantations and lush tropical vegetation of
southern Narathiwat province, will be restored.
The marines were beaten and stabbed to
death last week after being held hostage in a
single-room building with stained walls, close to
a half-built mosque and the village graveyard.
Thai authorities said Friday they had detained a
man and a woman in connection with the killings,
and had issued arrest warrants for 13 others.
Thailand authorities now say the country
will issue fingerprint-embedded identity cards
early next month for residents in Muslim-dominated
provinces to help authorities hunt down suspected
insurgents in the region. Islamic leaders warn the
move will further alienate Muslim residents
already suspicious and fearful of the government.
Meanwhile, news of
the brutality and accounts of hundreds of
Muslim women barricading the entrance to Tanyong Limo
during the 18-hour hostage drama, brought to an end
years of obscurity for this community.
Instead, the village of some 2,000 people
became the latest entry in a growing list of
blood-soaked localities caught in the spiraling
ethnic unrest that has claimed more than 1,000
deaths since January last year in this region near
the Malaysian border, which includes Thailand's
three southernmost provinces of Narathiwat,
Pattani and Yala - the only ones with Muslim
majorities in the Buddhist-dominated country. (The
latest incidents Tuesday include four Thai
soldiers on motorcycles being shot to death near a
school in Yala and a teacher being gunned down in
his car in Pattani.)
The anger directed at
Tanyong Limo, a community of poor rubber tappers,
by the government of Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra can only help cement a belief that
the government cares little for the welfare of
people in these remote areas.
The marines
were killed in retaliation for the deaths of two
villagers and injuries to four others caused by
indiscriminate firing from a passing vehicle
directed at Maye's run-down tea shop.
"I
have
no idea why they were shot," said Maye, adjusting
the white shawl covering her head. "I told
the men not to linger but to go home because of
what has been happening these days."
"He
was just a rubber tapper," Maeje Niumah, mother of
one of the men killed at the tea shop, said
outside the home of a relative. Angry
villagers in Tanyong Limo accuse troops of being
behind the tea shop deaths just as people in
Lahan, another village in Narathiwat province,
believe that the army was behind the murder of an
imam (religious leader) just days before.
The people of Lahan reacted to the murder
of their religious leader in similar fashion - by
blocking the entry of soldiers with makeshift
barricades.
But additionally, more than
130 men, women and children from Lahan village and
its vicinity fled across the border to asylum in
Malaysia, sparking a diplomatic storm between the
Southeast Asian neighbors.
The villagers'
fear was natural. After all, it was in the
Narathiwat locality of Tak Bai that 78 Muslim boys
and men died in October 2004 of suffocation while
in military custody. They had been arrested for
demonstrating against police abuse.
Feelings of distrust that the villagers
have for the regime in Bangkok is due to "a sense
of injustice", said Perayot Rahimullah, a former
professor of political science, but now a
parliamentarian from Narathiwat for the opposition
Democratic Party.
"The Muslims in the
three provinces feel that they have no social
dignity due to the reality they
encounter," Peryaot told IPS.
But that is
not solely the creation of the Thaksin
administration. The local Muslims have long
complained about the economic neglect and cultural
discrimination they have endured from policymakers
in Bangkok that stretches back decades.
The consequences of those policies are
reflected in studies by United Nations agencies
that have noted that Narathiwat, where 82% of the
province's 730,146 people are Malay-Muslims, has a
poverty rate that is two to three times higher
than Thailand's national average.
The
poverty and deprivation is visible in Tanyong Limo
in the unkempt houses made of wood or drab brick
and cement that are a world away from the
commercial buzz and the acres of plate glass and
chrome that makes Bangkok a world-class capital.
Muslim disaffection against the Thai state
has only grown since the southern provinces, which
were once part of the Muslim kingdom of Pattani,
were annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then
known.
Successive military regimes and elected
governments in Thailand, with policies aimed at
steamrolling regional identities in the drive to build a
unified Thai identity, have steadily fueled
resentment. Their Islamic faith and the Yawei
language make the Malay-Muslims distinct from the
country's majority Thai-speaking Buddhists.
By the 1970s
intolerance and neglect had fostered the growth of
Malay-Muslim rebel movements committed to waging a
separatist struggle against the state of Thailand.
Yet, the escalated violence that has
plagued this region since January last year still
lacks sufficient evidence to merit portrayal as a
separatist uprising. Officials here say that at
least some of the violence is linked to drug
networks and ordinary crime.
But for
witnesses such as Maye, it has already come to
mean days filled with silence and fear. "The
soldiers are okay at times," she said, pausing.
"But I am scared after what we have seen and heard
happening here and in other villages."
