Land rights battle Thailand analysed

[Gerrard Winstanley]

The article about the 78 land rights demonstrators killed in Thailand
last week has been mysteriously deleted from the Diggers 350 archive. 
Not, it appears, by anyone conected with tlio.

So I've repeated it here, below this more recent analysis of the 
situation in Pattani from a Turkish/American website. Muslim ethical 
and cultural values are under ruthless attack, it seems, right across 
the globe. How long until Christian, and Jewish cultures get the same 
treatment?

Tony Gosling
TLIO - 0117 373 0346



Thai Muslims Massacred
What Lies Beneath?		  		
http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=2004102811430524

Thursday, October 28 2004 @ 11:43 AM Central Daylight Time

By Mohamed Gamal Arafa

The latest confrontations in southern Thailand that culminated in the 
brutal death of over 80 Muslims in police custody have opened a new 
chapter of violence in the predominantly-Muslim region.

At least 78 Muslims died after being either suffocated or crushed on 
October 26, in military custody. They were arrested at a demonstration 
in the country's restive south.

The official reaction was unnerving to Muslims, who make up 18 per 
cent of the country's overall population.

The Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was quick to praise the 
security forces for ending the protests.

"They have done a great job," he said. "They [the protesters] really 
set out to cause trouble, so we had to take drastic action against 
them."

Muslims Reactions

Abdulraman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council in Narathiwat, 
said: "I believe hell will break out."

A local separatist organization, the Pattani United Liberation 
Organization (PULO), posted a warning on its website saying Bangkok 
would be a target for retaliation.

"Their capital will be burned down in the same way the Pattani capital 
has been burned," the statement said.

The tragic incident -- denounced by international rights groups -- was 
the worst Muslim loss of life since April, when 108 Muslims were shot 
dead in clashes between Muslim youth and security forces.

The demonstrators wanted nothing less than improving their harsh 
living conditions and satisfying their tendency to separatism.

The south has also seen several bloody clashes when Muslims took to 
the streets to push forward their long-cherished demands.

Police usually respond with unjustified excessive force to end the 
protests, according to reports by local and international groups.

On one occasion, security forces shelled a mosque in which 30 
individuals were hiding. The building was demolished with the bodies 
inside smashed beyond recognition.

Separatism Fears

The excessive use of force by Thai security forces against Muslims - 
in addition to official complacency -- shows how the Buddhist 
government greatly fears the growing influence of Muslim groups in the 
south.

The five to eight million Muslims have been calling for the formation 
of a Muslim state comprising the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and 
Yala provinces, a demand the government reacts to with excessive 
violence.

The government seems to be playing on the current situation worldwide, 
exploiting the international enmity towards Muslims to quell any 
separatism by what it now calls "terrorist" movements.

Thai premier is also under pressure to end the violence in the Muslim-
majority provinces that border Malaysia, as he faces elections in 
February.

Further, the government has escalated the tension taking up the chance 
of the "war on terrorism" to avoid criticism of international human 
rights and win over more supporters for its line of violent reactions 
to the protests.

Amnesty International had urged the Thai government to impartially 
investigate the deaths, in the province of Narathiwat.

But Thaksin reacted with defiance, saying the government had resorted 
to "gentle measures" and did not use force.

Feelings are running high among the Muslim community in the southern 
provinces following the imposition of martial law in January.

More than 350 have since died in clashes with security forces, 
according to a BBC count.

Tourism

To add salt to injury, Muslims in the southern region also complain 
about sex trade, rampant in its tourist attractions frequented by many 
western vacationers.

The existence of night clubs and alcohol shops in the region further 
infuriate the predominantly Muslim inhabitants.

On May 7, the PULO has posted a warning on the internet warning 
Muslims against going to night clubs or music concerts.

The government has disregarded these appeals, leading Muslim youths to 
protest on a regular basis.

The violent response of police could be attributed to the government 
fears for the collapse of the tourism industry, a key earner of hard 
currency and a key boost to the country's economy.

Several western governments have warned their nationals against 
traveling to Thailand following the recent clashes. Thai officials 
undermine the risks, saying the protests are no more than a few of 
thieves and bandits.

History Belies Claims

Looking into the historical background of the Muslim kingdom of 
Pattani, annexed by Thailand, the picture of the current merciless 
anti-Muslim repeated carnages might be clearer.

Most of Thai Muslims live in the five southern provinces bordering 
Malaysia.

Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are the only Muslim majority provinces in 
Thailand.

Muslims in these provinces have long complained of discrimination in 
jobs and education and business opportunities.

The South was a rich Malay kingdom until it was overrun by the 
Buddhist kingdom of Siam in the late 16th century when it declared its 
full independence from its earlier status of semi-independence under 
the rule of the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya.

In 1909, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Siam as part of a treaty 
negotiated with the British Empire.

Both Yala and Narathiwat were originally part of Pattani, but were 
split off and became provinces of their own.

There still exists a separatist movement in Pattani that at times 
erupts in violence like in the late 1980's when the PULO fought 
against the Thai forces for a separate Muslim South.

No Terrorists

"The search operations in schools and Islamic centers in search of 
"white people wearing beards" is furthering tension in the region," 
said Arifin Jehmah, the president of the Yala Islamic Provincial 
Committee in an earlier interview with IslamOnline.net.

Several religious leaders were afraid for their safety and sought 
shelter in Malaysia, Muslims in Kelantan, the Malaysian state 
bordering Thailand, said in the IOL report .

Muslim leaders vehemently denied official claims that terrorists are 
hiding in southern areas, saying the government want to get rid of 
separatists movements by associating them with terrorism.

"There are no terrorists in South Thailand, nothing that is close to 
the alleged al-Qaeda or the JI, which should not be called the Jemaah 
Islamiyah anyway," said Mansor Saleh, a writer and social worker from 
South Thailand.

Saleh had said that Muslims did not believe the government when it 
said two Muslim scholars and a doctor had been arrested for their 
connections with the alleged regional "terror network" called the JI.

Thai Muslim complaints of discrimination in jobs and education, along 
with the economic neglect of the south, have provided fodder for 
separatist movements in the provinces once part of the Muslim kingdom 
of Pattani.



--------------------------------------------------------------------

Community on the Brink After 78 Die in Custody
Published Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 
http://www.world-crisis.com/news/986_0_1_0_M/
Asia - 21:57 GMT

At least 78 demonstrators died yesterday in Thailand's strife-torn 
Muslim-majority southern province of Pattani, many of them beaten, 
crushed, and suffocated, after they were arrested and packed tightly 
into trucks, Thai government officials acknowledged today. 

A team of state pathologists conducted autopsies on the bodies, after 
which the team leader, Dr Pornthip Rojanasunan, confirmed that most of 
them had died from asphyxiation. 

"Eighty percent of them died because they could not breathe," 
Rojanasunan said. Although the pathologists found wounds sustained 
beforehand, "we didn't find any dead bodies with broken arms or legs, 
but between two or three of them had broken necks, which may have been 
caused from the transportation," she said. 

The arrests occurred after a six-hour demonstration by around 2,000 
Muslims on Monday, demanding the release of the six prisoners that the 
government had accused of supplying shotguns to Muslim separatists. 

As the protesters neared the local police station, police and troops 
attempted to disperse the demonstration with water cannon and tear 
gas. Some demonstrators started hurling rocks at the security forces, 
who responded by firing live rounds. The police said afterwards that 
they had only fired live rounds above the demonstrators, but many who 
were there said that they had also fired into the crowd. 

Six demonstrators were killed by live fire during the demonstration. 
Almost two-thirds of the 2,000-strong demonstrators were arrested as 
they left the scene, and lined up. 

Some of the men, were told to strip to the waist, and had their hands 
tied behind their backs. One reporter said that some of the troops 
then beat them with rifles and batons. Reporters were then told to 
leave the area, who said they saw those arrested being herded onto 
trucks. 

Thai Army deputy commander Major General Sinchai Nujsathit later 
confirmed to journalists that more than 1,300 people were packed into 
large trucks and taken on a five-hour journey to barracks in the 
provincial capital, Pattani city. 

After the trucks arrived at the barracks, and troops began herding 
demonstrators into the makeshift jail, he said that seventy-two of 
them were discovered to have died on the journey. The deaths bring the 
number of people killed in unrest in the province so far this year to 
over 430. 


Historic Grievances and Present Discrimination 

Until one hundred years ago, Pattani was an independent state ruled by 
a dynastic monarchy, but after years of war, Thailand annexed the 
region in 1902. However, the majority Muslim Pattanis living there 
still have more in common with their neighbours in Malaysia than they 
do with mainly Buddhist Thai society. Pattanis speak Yawi, a Malay 
dialect, and still live by a local version of Islamic custom. 

Compared to the relatively industrialised and prosperous central 
Thailand provinces around Bangkok, ethnically Malay Pattani's suffer 
disproportionate poverty, and this has fuelled a periodic upsurge in 
separatism which became a major challenge to government control in the 
1970's. 

By the mid-1980s the separatist insurgency was largely under control, 
and central government made a series of promises to channel more funds 
into the province, but region-wide instability in the wake of the `war 
on terror' exploded early this year in Pattani, with a series of 
raids, arson attacks and murders by separatists, who complain that the 
government, far from improving the life of Pattanis, are carrying out 
a systematic campaign designed to cleanse the province of ethnic 
identity.  

Thailand's Muslims often complain of the denial of land rights, of 
freedom of religion and of language, and say that discrimination in 
the country at large, and government policies, including a rule that 
only Thai language is allowed in schools, excludes the Yawi-speaking 
Pattanis from civil society. 

Human Rights Watch has also consistently reported cases of torture, 
kidnapping and bullying tactics by Thai security forces, and 
Thailand's own national human rights commissioner, Wasant Panich, has 
reportedly said he himself has documented many witness accounts of 
police killing people taken into custody. 

Other rights groups have accused the authorities of heavy-handed 
tactics in responding to separatists, only a relatively small group of 
which carry out armed resistance. In April, during a standoff with a 
group of armed separatists, police stormed a 16th century mosque, 
leaving 32 people dead.  

Speaking about this week's deaths in custody, Abd al-Rahman Abd al-
Samad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat province, said 
the security forces should have acted with greater restraint. "I think 
the armed forces over reacted by using force to disperse the 
protesters," he said. "If they were more patient and used a softer 
approach, the incident would not have ended up with lost lives and 
arrests." 

Asked by reporters what he thought the result of the recent deaths 
would be, he replied, "I cannot say what is going to happen, but I 
believe that hell will break out." Referring to the storming of the 
mosque in April, he said, "The memory is still fresh, and with the 
latest killings, I am afraid that there will be more violence and 
revenge from Muslim people." He said that the only way to peace in 
Pattani is to address the long-standing grievances of the people. 

Analyst Steve Wilford, of the Singapore-based Control Risks Group, 
speaking of the growing security problem in the province, warned that 
unless the matter is resolved peacefully soon, Thailand's problems 
will only escalate. "It's all building up to the point," he said, 
"where we're in serious danger of what is so far a rather serious law 
and order issue turning into a broader insurgency," 

Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, today defended the actions of 
his security forces and refused a call from the United Nations for an 
investigation into the deaths. Thaksin, who visited the scene of the 
demonstration, before returning to Bangkok late on Monday, insisted 
that his forces' tactics were justified. 

"We cannot allow these people to harass innocent people and 
authorities any longer," Thaksin said. "We cannot tolerate these bad 
things any longer. The bad-intentioned people instigate the youths to 
create violence and chaos, so we have no choice but to use force to 
suppress them," he added. 

When asked by reporters why so many had died on the journey to the 
provincial capital, Thaksin was dismissive: "This is typical," he 
replied. "It's about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them."