Thai, Malaysian war of words heats
up By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR - A diplomatic row between
Thailand and Malaysia over the fate of 131 Thai
Muslims who fled to Malaysia in August, allegedly
to escape ethnic violence and repression, has
worsened as it begins to gain international
attention.
Indeed, Thailand insists that
the "escape" of the refugees was engineered by
separatist Muslim militants precisely to drag
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) into the ethnic conflict simmering in its
southern provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and
Pattani.
Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra wants the UNHCR
to stay away from the
villagers, who fled following violence and
counter-insurgency operations by Thai armed forces
in and around their village in Narathiwat, and not
grant them refugee status.
Malaysia, on
the other hand, says the UNHCR should be allowed
to carry out its humanitarian mission and insists
that Thailand guarantee the safety and rights of
the villagers, now held at an immigration
detention camp, before they can be returned home.
The positions of both countries hardened
this week with words exchanged between leaders
through their respective media. The flap is
developing into a standoff that is affecting the
sometimes choppy bilateral relations.
Thailand has accused Malaysia, which
shares a border with the three Muslim-dominated
southern provinces, of aiding and sheltering
separatist insurgents. Malaysia denies those
charges.
"It is a serious row - the two
countries should open discussions and settle their
differences amicably," a political scientist,
Murugesu Pathmanaban, said. "There are many
mechanisms available, bilateral as well as
multilateral."
Despite warnings from
Thaksin not to "interfere" in Thailand's domestic
affairs, the UNHCR has completed interviewing the
villagers who include 21 women as well as 49
children ranging in age from five months to 17
years.
So far, the UNHCR has refrained
from announcing the results of the interviews,
which included key questions such as what prompted
the villagers to flee, whether they feared for
their safety on return and whether they are indeed
eligible for refugee status.
Thaksin is
sure to react furiously if the UNHCR decides they
are refugees since this will allow the 131
villagers to remain in Malaysia.
Such an
outcome is bound to be favored by many Malaysian
Muslims, who form the majority in this country of
25 million people. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi
is under pressure from Muslims, who backed him
overwhelmingly in the 2004 general election, to
"save and protect" brother Muslims in Thailand.
Bilateral relations have been souring
largely because both countries, instead of talking
to each other directly and in earnest, have
preferred to talk through their respective
national media and to their own galleries.
The result has been rising political
temperatures with almost weekly demonstrations in
Malaysia joined in by even moderate Muslims
protesting against Thaksin's hard-line policies
against Thai Muslims.
Already Muslims have
launched a Malaysia-wide boycott of Thai products.
The issue is further complicated because almost
all of the villagers hold dual Malaysian and Thai
citizenship - a common condition in the border
areas.
Similarities of culture, language
and religion as well as historical ties add to the
problem. Thai Muslims naturally look to Malaysia
for help, and most Malaysians expect their
government to back them.
Thaksin has not
helped matters by describing the protestors as
belonging to the "same pack of villains" as the
Muslim separatists.
Like the Malaysian
government, the UNHCR is also caught between
fulfilling its humanitarian mission and threats
from Thailand not to interfere in its domestic
affairs.
"Given the current sensitive
situation in southern Thailand, the UNHCR has
decided to withhold any public pronouncement on
the status of the 131 southern Thais currently in
Malaysia," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.
Last week, Thailand's Foreign Affairs
Ministry summoned the Malaysian envoy in Bangkok
and lodged a strong protest against Malaysian
Foreign Minister Syed Hamid's statement that
Malaysia would only return the refugees if Bangkok
can guarantee their safety and human rights.
Thaksin upped the ante this week,
rejecting a suggestion by Syed Hamid that both
countries open discussion on the future of the 131
villagers, a dialogue the foreign minister
believes will clear the air.
"The talks
are unnecessary," Thaksin said before leaving for
a one-week visit to the European Union. "The
circumstances are not so pressing as to warrant a
meeting. It is all a matter of procedure."
"The plight of Thai Muslims has become an
emotive issue here - Abdullah has to balance
pressure from [the] domestic audience to act as
protector of Muslims and at the same time maintain
[a] good relationship with Thailand," a prominent
political analyst told IPS on condition he not be
identified because he has sensitive links with
both countries. "The problem is not Thailand but
Thaksin."
Abdullah's soft-spoken,
mild-mannered and fatherly ways contrast sharply
with Thaksin's comments, which are sometimes seen
as callous.
Political analysts see the
contrasting styles and the age gap between the two
leaders as one reason why the war of words has
been escalating and why so much bad blood has
surfaced since the separatist violence surged last
year.
More than 1,000 people have been
killed in escalating violence, shooting and bomb
blasts since the March 2004 kidnap and murder of
prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit,
widely believed to have been killed by his police
abductors.
It is is difficult to put a
finger on who is behind the violence that is
causing hardship to the 6 million Thai Muslims,
but atrocities like Neelaphaijit's murder have not
helped.
Nor has the gruesome deaths by
suffocation of 78 Muslim boys and men while in
custody in October last year helped the situation.
They had been arrested in Narathiwat for
demonstrating against police abuse.
For
his part, Thaksin blames the escalating trouble on
a mixture of separatists, gangsters and rogue
generals.
Nearly 80% of those killed are
ordinary civilians - mostly rubber tappers,
shopkeepers and civil servants. Tourist arrivals,
mostly from Malaysia, have dropped dramatically.
Traders have closed shops and left. Hotels are
empty and schools are shut.
The insurgents
show confidence and pick targets at their leisure,
killing and maiming police and troops with bomb
attacks and roadside ambushes before melting back
into the local population.
Muslim
disaffection against the Thai state has grown
since the southern provinces, once part of the
defunct Muslim kingdom of Pattani, were annexed by
Siam (as Thailand was known) in 1902.
Successive military regimes and elected
governments in Thailand, with policies aimed at
steamrolling over regional identities in a drive
to build a unified Thai identity, have steadily
fueled resentment among the Muslims.
Their
Islamic faith and Yawei language, a Malay dialect,
mark them as distinct from the Thai-speaking
Buddhists who form the majority community in
Thailand.
By the 1970s Malay-Muslim rebel
movements committed to waging a separatist
struggle against the state of Thailand had gained
in strength and are now waging a classic
guerilla-style war that can only be won with
compassion and grace - something Thaksin's critics
say he has not shown in abundance.
The
resulting anger and suspicion has soured the once
cordial relationship between the two neighboring
countries, and analysts predict it will only get
worse before it gets better, if at all.
