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Thailand gets tough,
again
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - June is likely to become the
most violent month in southern Thailand since
clashes erupted there 18 months ago between
government forces and suspected Muslim militants.
Lending a gruesome element to this
disturbing reality are the five people who were
beheaded this month in that predominantly Muslim
part of the country. One of the victims was
34-year-old Lek Pongpla, a civilian who was
decapitated in broad daylight in the presence of
witnesses at a roadside tea shop.
Such
attacks have added to the surge in incidents in
June, and by the end of the month the number could
"equal or exceed" the violence witnessed in May,
said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a national security
expert at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
May saw 150 violent incidents in the
south, which included bomb blasts, shootings,
arson and other attacks against symbols of the
state, Panitan said in an interview. "That number
was the highest on record since tensions erupted
in January last year," he noted. "There clearly is
an escalation; attacks are happening more
frequently."
In April there were 105 cases
of violence, largely in the southern provinces of
Narathiwat and Yala, he said, and added, "The
current environment is a challenge to the
authorities."
Comparing the current
violence with that documented at this time last
year reveals just how much the conflict in the
southern provinces of largely Buddhist Thailand
has mushroomed. According to available reports,
there were 72 incidents of violence in that
troubled region in June 2004 and 58 cases in May.
During the first eight months of 2004, there were
a total of 500 attacks, with January, the first
month in this cycle of violence, accounting for 29
incidents.
As a result of the latest
violence, the government of Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra has been compelled to reconsider the
conciliatory gestures it made public in March this
year to combat the attackers, who the government
says belong to the country's Malay-Muslim
minority.
Last week, Bangkok announced
plans to classify areas in the south as "violent
zones", where security forces will be given
license to go after the militants linked to the
current bloodshed.
"Insurgents are killing
people indiscriminately and will continue to do so
until those militants are killed," Thaksin told
reporters. "They want to keep local people afraid
in a bid to gain full control."
This tone by
Thaksin reveals a sea change from what he
articulated in March, when he told a historic
joint meeting of the country's parliament and
senate that it was time to place faith in
"compromise and abandon prejudices for the sake of
reconciliation".
It was in that spirit
that Thaksin set up a much-praised National
Reconciliation Commission, under the chairmanship
of a respected former prime minister, to help
diffuse the tension and distrust between the
Malay-Muslim minority and the state. The
government also put on hold military plans it had
for the estimated 35,000-strong Thai troops that
enjoyed sweeping powers under martial law that had
been imposed in the region since early 2004.
Yet Bangkok seems far from ready to
abandon its plans to give peace a chance, as
reflected last week in the government's position
that the new strategy in the south would also
classify areas with less hostility as "peaceful
zones".
The violence that is spiraling out
of control in the south has claimed more than 700
lives since militants attacked an army camp in
early January 2004. The victims have included
civilians - both Buddhist and Muslim, government
officials, Buddhist monks, teachers and police and
army officers.
The death toll also
includes the more than 100 Muslim youths who died
during a bloody showdown with Thai troops in April
last year and the 78 Malay-Muslim men and boys who
died due to suffocation in military custody
following a protest in October last year.
The current violence is the latest in a
cycle that goes back decades, in a region where
the Malay-Muslim minority complains of cultural
discrimination arising from differences in
language and religion and of being victims of
economic deprivation.
During the 1970s and
through the mid-1980s, Malay-Muslim rebel groups
waged a separatist struggle against Thai troops to
carve out a region that belonged to the kingdom of
Pattani a century ago. Thailand's five southern
provinces, including Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and
Songkhla, close to the Malaysian border, were part
of the Pattani kingdom until it was annexed in
1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.
Malay-Muslims make up about 2.3 million of
Thailand's 64 million population. Many of them are
living in fear, just like the Thai Buddhists in
the area, because of the increasing violence, said
security expert Panitan. "They are confused at the
government's inability to protect them. They don't
know when they will be hit."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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