Thai Army Reveals Two Faces

By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR

BANGKOK — Calls by the country's army chief for the prime minister's resignation over the deaths of two anti-government demonstrators in clashes with the police have left the Malay-Muslim minority with reason to wonder if their lives are less valuable in this predominantly Buddhist country.

Gen Anupong Paojinda, the army commander, used an hour-long, nationally-viewed interview, last Thursday, to call for Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat’s resignation over the deaths in Bangkok, earlier this month.

This unprecedented criticism of the head of an elected government—which a local paper headlined as ‘’A Coup Via TV?’’—had Anupong saying: "No government can survive after the spilling of people's blood, because society can never accept this."

"If the government gave the order, it has to take responsibility. If the people cannot tolerate it, there will be chaos," said Anupong, who has already defied orders by the ruling coalition to get the military help quell protests aimed at bringing down the government.

The sympathetic image that Anupong cut has earned him praise among sections of the government’s critics in Bangkok, including some in the largely conservative and right-wing People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). The latter, which has occupied the prime minister’s office and has mounted regular street protests, wants the army to do more, including staging a coup, which, if it happens, will be this Southeast Asian nation’s 19th.

But Anupong’s concerns over the loss of life in the Bangkok protest has had a different impact in Thailand’s three southern provinces close to the Malaysian border, where an insurgency is raging. More so since it comes just ahead of a painful anniversary for the Malay-Muslims—the deaths of 84 Muslim men and boys at the hands of the military, following a protest outside a police station in the town of Tak Bai on October 26, 2004.

"It is clear that our lives have less value," Abdulaziz Tadae, a 53-year-old community leader in the southern province of Yala, said in an interview. "There is no pressure like what we heard (from Anupong) to hold accountable those responsible for the Tak Bai deaths."

Others from the neighboring provinces of Pattani and Narathiwat echoed similar sentiments during telephone interviews, pointing to a further sense of alienation felt by Thailand’s largest minority who reside in the south. The three provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani have been torn apart by a nearly five-year-long insurgency between Malay-Muslim separatists and Thai troops, resulting in over 3,000 deaths.

The protest in Tak Bai, which had drawn thousands of the local people, had begun as a relatively peaceful one. The villagers had gathered there to seek the release of six men who had been arrested the previous day by the police.

But it ended with deaths that shocked many in Thailand at the time. Six protesters were killed after army, which had been called in to reinforce the police, shot into the crowds. A further 78 died due to suffocation while they were being transported during a three-hour journey in military trucks that had little ventilation. Each truck had men, with their hands tied behind their backs, stacked one on top of the other like logs.

Yet there have been little public appeals in the media by ranking military officers before Anupong, or since he took over, to ensure that the soldiers responsible for the Tak Bai deaths are held accountable. In the south, say the Malay-Muslims, it is a different face of the military that prevails.

"The families of the Tak Bai victims have still not received justice, and this week marks four years since the deaths," says Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, coordinator of the access to justice and legal protection program under the Cross-Cultural Foundation, a local body championing human rights. "The people still talk about Tak Bai. It is part of their memory. It has left a deep impact among the Malay-Muslim community."

"The inquest into the deaths is still dragging on and the state prosecutors have still not called all the top military commanders of the southern region who were serving at that time," she added during an interview. "No officer has accepted guilt for what went wrong and has been punished for it."

According to a fact-finding committee appointed to investigate the deaths, three senior army officers were fingered as having failed to monitor and supervise the military operations that day. They are Lt-Gen Pisarn Wattanawongkiri, Maj-Gen Sinchai Nutsatit and Maj-Gen Chalerm Wiroonphet.

The lack of justice in the south and the draconian laws enforced have created "a climate of impunity and heightens the risk of human rights abuse," revealed the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, in a report on the Malay-Muslim dominated provinces released in late August. "Stepped-up military operations since early 2008 appear to have led to an increase in deaths of Muslims."

"The crux of the problem in the south is about injustice," says Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, Thailand analyst for the Crisis Group. "The government’s failure to expedite the trial for the Tak Bai victims is the most glaring case. There are many more cases of injustice that have not been addressed, like the killing of an imam by soldiers (in March)."

Such an attitude by the government will only add to a "sense of alienation that the Malay-Muslims have been feeling for a long time," he told IPS. "The injustice that they see will only make them feel that they are being treated as second-class citizens because of the cultural differences."

The current conflict is the latest in a cycle of violence going back decades. It is rooted in issues of political, economic and cultural discrimination that emerged after Siam, as Thailand was previously known, annexed the provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, which were part of the defunct Muslim kingdom of Pattani, in 1902.

The majority of Thailand 64 million people speaks Thai and is Buddhist by faith, while four percent of the population who make up the largest minority speak a Malay dialect and follow the Islamic faith.

In the 1970s, Thai troops had to battle Malay-Muslim rebels intent on carving a separate state for the Muslims here. The violence appeared to have abated by the early 1990s till its current eruption.

Hopes of peace lie in a political solution and not a military one, warns the Crisis Group. "The government will need to address the sense of injustice and alienation from Thai society felt by Malay-Muslims, eradicate abusive behaviour of officials and offer Malay-Muslims ways of living life with dignity."