Time for Asean to extend help to Thai's Muslims
Thursday, March 22, 2007
THINK not about statistics. Think, instead, about individual human's suffering and their terror at the hands of violence. What thoughts flashed in a person's mind, moments before their oppressor pull the trigger? Did that person have time to send up a brief prayer for salvation, or had he been too paralyzed with fear to even pray?
The New York-based Human Rights Watch detailed the 22 unresolved cases of "disappearance" of ethnic Malay Muslims in the southern of Thailand which the body attributed to the Thai security forces' policy in dealing with the increasingly bloody separatist rebellion. Said Brad Adams, Asia director of the group, "These 'disappearances' appear to be a matter of policy, not simply the work of rogue elements in the security services", and that the real total was likely to be far higher because many families were too scared to speak out in fear of reprisals.
The group said most of the disappearances occurred under ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra — a part of the decades-long conflict between Thai government and the separatists that has killed more than 2,000 people in Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani provinces in the past three years.
Army spokesman Acra Tiproch denied any abuses were continuing. However, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a separate report last week that "credible reports of torture and extra-judicial killings" have persisted even now.
The number of disappearance cases reported by the Human Rights Watch may have been small, "only" 22, but who can say the terror had been any less than that felt by the Muslim community of Tak Bai town when some 85 of their members were killed in October 2005, with 78 of them dying of suffocation when they were piled onto army trucks? Their relatives have recently been financially compensated, but the fact that nobody from the security forces had been charged over the death raises serious questions whether the trend will stop.
Religion and rebellion are a lethal combination for a nation undergoing political changes — especially when its leaders are themselves embroiled in conflicts. Those losing out would be the weak — in this case the Muslims in Southern Thailand.
The community has to contend on a daily basis with widespread fear, suspicion amongst each other, being suspected by their fellow countrymen who embrace a different faith, as well as with poverty and lack of education despite their region being an important oil producer for the country.
The scenario being played out in Thailand today resembles the situations affecting or have affected other countries in the region, most notably Indonesia when it engaged in its decades-long armed conflicts with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatists in one of the country's "poor little oil-rich" province of Aceh.
The kind of terror and oppression each party inflicted on the other — with the innocent people being caught in the middle and the most victimised — had left physical and psychological traumas that will take untold number of years to heal despite the recent happy ending of peace.
One of the reasons why the Aceh conflict in Indonesia dragged on for so long was the inability of the region, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), to differentiate between the need to respect its non-intervention policy into individual member's internal affairs, and downright brazenness to look the other way when problems ensued that might introduce discord.
Aceh was an embarrassment for the grouping's image for so long, yet most members continued to hide behind the facade of harmonious regional relations.
Towards the dragging end of the conflict, it was an international intervention — started by the Swiss NGO Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and followed by the government of Finland — that saved the day. Indonesia's closest neighbours of Asean missed out on the opportunity not only to help, but to also get the credit for the restoration of peace in their own region. Even Asean's monitors in the Indonesia's pullout of its troops from Aceh were outnumbered by monitors from European Union.
Is Asean willing to miss out again on the opportunity to play a role in putting a stop the hostility and violence being inflicted on the Malay Muslim ethnic of southern Thailand?
The New York-based Human Rights Watch detailed the 22 unresolved cases of "disappearance" of ethnic Malay Muslims in the southern of Thailand which the body attributed to the Thai security forces' policy in dealing with the increasingly bloody separatist rebellion. Said Brad Adams, Asia director of the group, "These 'disappearances' appear to be a matter of policy, not simply the work of rogue elements in the security services", and that the real total was likely to be far higher because many families were too scared to speak out in fear of reprisals.
The group said most of the disappearances occurred under ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra — a part of the decades-long conflict between Thai government and the separatists that has killed more than 2,000 people in Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani provinces in the past three years.
Army spokesman Acra Tiproch denied any abuses were continuing. However, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a separate report last week that "credible reports of torture and extra-judicial killings" have persisted even now.
The number of disappearance cases reported by the Human Rights Watch may have been small, "only" 22, but who can say the terror had been any less than that felt by the Muslim community of Tak Bai town when some 85 of their members were killed in October 2005, with 78 of them dying of suffocation when they were piled onto army trucks? Their relatives have recently been financially compensated, but the fact that nobody from the security forces had been charged over the death raises serious questions whether the trend will stop.
Religion and rebellion are a lethal combination for a nation undergoing political changes — especially when its leaders are themselves embroiled in conflicts. Those losing out would be the weak — in this case the Muslims in Southern Thailand.
The community has to contend on a daily basis with widespread fear, suspicion amongst each other, being suspected by their fellow countrymen who embrace a different faith, as well as with poverty and lack of education despite their region being an important oil producer for the country.
The scenario being played out in Thailand today resembles the situations affecting or have affected other countries in the region, most notably Indonesia when it engaged in its decades-long armed conflicts with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatists in one of the country's "poor little oil-rich" province of Aceh.
The kind of terror and oppression each party inflicted on the other — with the innocent people being caught in the middle and the most victimised — had left physical and psychological traumas that will take untold number of years to heal despite the recent happy ending of peace.
One of the reasons why the Aceh conflict in Indonesia dragged on for so long was the inability of the region, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), to differentiate between the need to respect its non-intervention policy into individual member's internal affairs, and downright brazenness to look the other way when problems ensued that might introduce discord.
Aceh was an embarrassment for the grouping's image for so long, yet most members continued to hide behind the facade of harmonious regional relations.
Towards the dragging end of the conflict, it was an international intervention — started by the Swiss NGO Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and followed by the government of Finland — that saved the day. Indonesia's closest neighbours of Asean missed out on the opportunity not only to help, but to also get the credit for the restoration of peace in their own region. Even Asean's monitors in the Indonesia's pullout of its troops from Aceh were outnumbered by monitors from European Union.
Is Asean willing to miss out again on the opportunity to play a role in putting a stop the hostility and violence being inflicted on the Malay Muslim ethnic of southern Thailand?
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