Commentary on Massacre in Southern Thailand

Imagine your sons dead in a truck
Sanitsuda Ekachai
Bangkok Post, November 4, 2004

What if the Tak Bai protest had occurred in Bangkok and it was our children who were beaten black and blue before being suffocated and crushed to death in crammed trucks?

Do you think you would allow Thaksin Shinawatra to explain away your sons' death as just a regrettable accident?

If not, then we will have to probe deep into our hearts as to why we are letting Mr Thaksin and his government get away with the Tak Bai massacre.

Is what we are dealing with an evil government? Or is it the evil in our hearts that allows us to accept Mr Thaksin's justification of gross dehumanisation and violence which we would never allow in the matter of our own children?

Mr Thaksin's lack of repent is worrying. But of more concern is the public endorsement of his hardline policy towards the southern Muslims and his ultra-nationalistic pretext in whitewashing state crime.

Talk to taxi drivers or check the web-board postings on the Tak Bai crackdown and you will understand why Mr Thaksin does not feel he has to apologise to the southern Muslims nor resign to show responsibility.

Why would he when he knows that, given our society's deep prejudice against the Malay Muslims, he can easily turn the victims of his policy follies into the enemies of national sovereignty? Besides, creating an enemy of the state is always a good political gambit when a general election draws near.

The support for Mr Thaksin's crackdown raises the question of whether ours is truly the tolerant Buddhist society we like the world to believe.

Buddhism is not only about non-violence. It is also about the need to see through all forms of illusion of the "self'' that condition our thoughts and spur our prejudices, constantly pitting "us'' against "them''.

An extension of self as a group identity based on race, religion, language, ethnicity or country may give us a reassuring sense of belonging. But it is also a breeding ground of divisiveness, violence and war. Hence the Buddhist emphasis that all are one and the same in the cycles of suffering, that though most of us are still mired in greed, anger and illusion, we all possess a similar potential to attain spiritual liberation.

This is why respect for our fellow human beings is fundamental to Buddhism. Anyone, regardless of their identity, can become the awakened one like the Buddha.

Yet, many of us decry human dignity and endorse state violence against rural folk protesting mega-projects as the enemies of economic development. And the Malay Muslims for being a threat to national sovereignty.

This shows that our religion is not really Buddhism, but ultra-nationalism and materialism.

Buddhism, however, does not seek to condemn, but to understand the causes of a phenomenon so we can produce change.

What causes our ethnic prejudice is glaringly evident: the fallacy that our society is racially homogenous; the ultra-nationalism that treats non-ethnic Thais as outsiders and as a threat to national security; the education system that denies cultural pluralism and destroys local roots; the national history that oppresses local memories and invokes racism; the political centralisation and economic policies that destroy local peoples' way of life and livelihoods; the entertainment industry which fans ethnic prejudice; and the media which perpetuate rather than undo state-construct fallacies that cause so much misery among the weak and poor whose rights the media are supposed to protect.

In short, it is not only the government to blame, but also ourselves for endorsing this oppressive system.

To heal the open wounds in the South, we have no choice but to confront our prejudices. If not, we will have to learn the Buddhist teachings on inter-connectedness the hard way _ that if there is no peace in the South, there will be no peace in our homes.

Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.sanitsudae