Thailand gets tough, again

Marwaan Macan-Markar
Asia Times Online
June 28, 2005

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)