I didn’t want to blog or even think about this, but I feel that I can no longer claim a clear conscience if I continue to be silent. Right now there is a lot of heated debates in Thailand (I talk about it almost daily with my family, friends, and colleagues), and I feel I have to do everything I can to spread the word to non-Thais about how desperate this crisis has become… even if there is only a handful of foreigners who read this blog.
So with a heavy heart, I have to tell you that the ongoing violence in Thailand’s three Southernmost provinces is rapidly spinning out of control, and in all likelihood will plunge the whole nation into turmoil and make the dangerous generalization of “Islam = evil” stick in the minds of most Thais, just as it already has for millions of Americans.
Like many Bangkokians, I have been living more or less in denial about the Southern crisis for the past three years. I told myself that this is only a “provincial” problem involving a handful of Muslim insurgents and separatists who have been trying for centuries to ‘liberate’ these provinces (which 800 years ago was a Malay state called Kingdom of Pattani). I told myself that the escalation of violence post-September 11 was predictable: it was in line with increased activities of Muslim fundamentalists worldwide. I told myself that these provinces, which together account for less than 0.5% of the country’s GDP, contribute so little to our economy their plight can’t hurt national development. I told myself the violence has little to do with the fact that we have a new government headed by a telecom mogul named Thaksin Shinawatra.
I didn’t want to blog or even think about this, but I feel that I can no longer claim a clear conscience if I continue to be silent. Right now there is a lot of heated debates in Thailand (I talk about it almost daily with my family, friends, and colleagues), and I feel I have to do everything I can to spread the word to non-Thais about how desperate this crisis has become… even if there is only a handful of foreigners who read this blog.
So with a heavy heart, I have to tell you that the ongoing violence in Thailand’s three Southernmost provinces is rapidly spinning out of control, and in all likelihood will plunge the whole nation into turmoil and make the dangerous generalization of “Islam = evil” stick in the minds of most Thais, just as it already has for millions of Americans.
Like many Bangkokians, I have been living more or less in denial about the Southern crisis for the past three years. I told myself that this is only a “provincial” problem involving a handful of Muslim insurgents and separatists who have been trying for centuries to ‘liberate’ these provinces (which 800 years ago was a Malay state called Kingdom of Pattani). I told myself that the escalation of violence post-September 11 was predictable: it was in line with increased activities of Muslim fundamentalists worldwide. I told myself that these provinces, which together account for less than 0.5% of the country’s GDP, contribute so little to our economy their plight can’t hurt national development. I told myself the violence has little to do with the fact that we have a new government headed by a telecom mogul named Thaksin Shinawatra.
But events early this week in which two marines were brutally tortured and murdered in Tanyonglimo village of Narathiwat province opened my eyes to a new truth: people in these Southern provinces no longer have any shred of trust left for the Thai government or any of its officials, policemen or soldiers.
I was alarmed by this news not because two soldiers were killed; after all, people including many innocent civilians are killed on a daily basis in these parts (casualties number is approaching 1,000 as I write this). But I was alarmed by the image of dozens of villagers – many of whom women and children – setting up a roadblock in front of their village (see below) after the two marines were kidnapped, demanding to speak only to the Malaysian press.
Thaksin, as usual, only adds fuel to the fire. The two marines were abducted in the first place as an act of retaliation the day after 2 people were killed and 6 injured in a shootout on Tuesday evening. All eight men are believed to be innocent civilians. Yet Thaksin said nothing about them in his passionate vow to bring the marines’ killers to justice.
This is a major problem of Thaksin and his government: he only talks about supporting the troops and bringing the bad guys to justice. But he rarely, if ever, talks about innocent civilians in the middle whose lives are being torn apart in the conflict. This apathy for the wellbeing of Thai Muslims, compounded by rampant corruption of government officials and the take-no-prisoners approach of the army, have compeled and will compel even more people to join the Muslim insurgency or separatist organizations like the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO), which told Reuters last month that they are behind the bloody violence. They claim that the separatist movement “…had no ties to international groups such as Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda or its Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah… We have no connection with those terrorists… Our struggle is for our own people, to get back what is rightfully ours. Pattani belongs to the Malays, just like Malaysia.” It is also worth noting that the Thai government, in its typical “keep Thai people in the dark” approach, did not tell the public about secret talks held with PULO from August 24-27 in Switzerland.
At a weekly conference yesterday, Thaksin said “I instructed the officials to do what they should do. Don’t be afraid of anything, otherwise they would die like the two marines. All blame, if any, should come directly to me.” To me, this is a dangerous green light that gives the police and soldiers the power to do anything they please with impunity: because clearly if Thaksin ‘takes the blame,’ that means nobody will be held accountable at all because his party has such a dominant control of the parliament that the opposition party doesn’t even have enough seats to launch a no-confidence debate on the prime minister. Which means that even if all blames are ‘directed’ at Thaksin, they are meaningless because nobody can remove him from power.
After the government passed a tough Emergency Decree that violated Thailand’s constitution and several international laws, over 130 residents of the Southern provinces have fled across the border to Malaysia, and the government is denying that they are refugees – a denial that seems stupid to me, since they fit the UN’s definition pretty well:
A refugee is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…”
The UNHCR will publish the results of their investigation into the status of these ‘refugees’ soon, and I will not be surprised if most, if not all, will be considered refugees – which means they can apply for political asylum. If and when that happens, Thailand-Malaysia relations will no doubt deteriorate even further.
In summary, Thaksin and his government is worsening the already volatile situation beyond all hope of control. They are “deaf to reason,” as this good article at The Guardian illustrates.
Thai people must finally wake up to the plight of our fellow Thais and tell the world how heinous the situation has become, and how incompetent the government is in handling it. Sending one millions paper birds or erecting a huge paper bird statue (picture here) will only serve as a stark reminder of how utterly useless Thaksin’s marketing-oriented, ultra-nationalistic mentality really is in the face of today’s harsh realities.