Facing insurgency with indiscriminate incarcerations in Thailand

In the eyes of Thailand's military, Arafat Yunoo is an enemy of the state. They have kept the clean-shaven, 21-year-old Malay-Muslim behind the heavily fortified walls of the main prison in this southern province for over two years. Mohammed Sofian Manosa, 24, also falls into the same class of men accused by the army of being linked to an insurgency that has been raging in this country's three southern provinces, home to Buddhist Thailand's largest minority, the Malay-Muslims. Yet, both men have still to learn why a group in "military uniform" arrested them in the wee hours of a morning in June 2004, in the house that they were boarded at. "They found an alarm clock, a remote control toy car, a map of Yala and a list of police officers' names they told us," says Arafat, who was dressed on a recent afternoon in the standard blue shirt and blue knee-length trousers that serve as prison uniform. "We have been to the courts for only two hearings," adds Arafat, who was seated in a room that faced an open area where other prisoners mingled. "It is stressful to be here. Very upsetting." Arafat, a native of southern Thailand, like Mohammed, is among the 41 Malay-Muslim men locked behind the grey steel gates of the Yala prison for national security reasons. The prison currently has 632 inmates in all. In neighboring Pattani province, the main prison offers a similar tale of young Muslim men arrested by the police or army on grounds that lawyers here say are "very weak." At the beginning of August, there were 67 Malay-Muslims inmates linked to the country's southern violence out of the prison population of 622 people. Among them is Anwar Haete, 20, who was arrested by the police in August 2005, shortly after he had returned home in the evening. "Four men in police uniform took him away. They said he would be released in three days. But now it is a year," Mariyo Haete, Anwar's mother, said during a conversation in the roadside teashop that she runs with her husband. "He was accused of killing a police officer. But at the time of the killing, Anwar was in the mosque teaching the Koran to children." The picture in Narathiwat, the third of the three provinces, is no different. Nor is the anger towards such a pattern of arrests in villages located near rubber plantations, paddy fields or forested hills. "They take away innocent people. There was no evidence, no warrant, they are just put in jail," says Muhammed Jedao, a 60-year-old owner of an orchard in Sungai Padi. "I am not happy about this." Currently, close to 600 Malay-Muslim men suspected of ties with the violence in this region have been arrested, according to officials. They are among the 1,264 Malay men identified by the police in the south as responsible for the latest phase of an insurgency that has resulted in close to 1,400 deaths since it erupted in January 2004. On top of that, the police and the military have also rounded up men in this area close to the border that Thailand shares with Malaysia to be "re-educated" in detention centers. Those compelled to attend such camps in southern and central Thailand end up staying there for durations of up to 30 days. Some human rights groups estimate that close to 900 men, with no access to lawyers, have been held in the nearly 20 detention centers at some periods this year. Senior military officers justify these arrests, made under the expanded martial law that came into effect in 2004 or the harsher emergency decree, with wider powers to the military that was introduced in July last year. "The ordinary law does not allow the arrest of culprits who are suspected of being behind the violence," Lt. Col. Chalermpon Jinarat told a group of journalists in Narathiwat. "With the emergency law, the government has been able to conduct preventive action to arrest people before they attack." Chalermpon, who commands the 39th battalion, added that the emergency decree "has helped, partly, to improve things." To drive home the point, he refers to the access Thai troops under his command have to Malay-Muslim villages such as Ban Bo Ko and Toh Deng. "In the past, military or government officials would not be allowed to come here because of security problems. But that has changed." Yet lawyers and human rights activists tracking the mounting cases of Malay-Muslims arrested in this region are at odds with the harsh laws being imposed. Court verdicts appear to support those rallying against Bangkok's iron-fisted approach to solve this conflict. According to the Rule of Law Center, based at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, the courts have already dismissed seven of the 72 cases that the center is handling. They are in keeping with a verdict that gained wide notice in June 2005 when three respected community leaders from Narathiwat, including a medical doctor, were freed by a Bangkok court for lack of evidence. These men had been arrested by Thai authorities in 2003 for allegedly planning to bomb western embassies and popular tourist centers in Bangkok. "Even though the government says the emergency decree is an effective tool to stop the violence, it does not create confidence in the people," Adilan Ali-Ishak, a lawyer and member of the center, told IPS. "The law enforcers are using emotion rather than reason to arrest people." The insecurity created by the one-year-old emergency decree has made the Malay-Muslims feel "paranoid and not confident about the process," he added. "The people are afraid to go and lodge complaints with the police. So they are seeking new mechanisms to help them, like going to the imams or lawyers." When introduced last year, the emergency decree was viewed as a potent tool to end the spiraling violence pitting still-to-be-identified Malay-Muslim militants against heavily armed Thai troops, which number 30,000 and are spread across the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. The current cycle of violence is rooted in a dispute dating back to 1902, when Siam, as Thailand was then known, annexed the three southern provinces that had been part of the Muslim kingdom of Pattani. Since then, the Malay-Muslims, who make up nearly 80 percent of the population in the south, began to accuse Bangkok of political, economic and cultural discrimination. By the 1970s, Malay-Muslim rebel groups were locked in a struggle with Bangkok to create separatist state for the locals who spoke a different language and had a different faith from the Thai majority. Malay-Muslim leaders fear that further loss of faith in justice here can only harden political views. "The emergency laws have increased the distance between the people and the state," Semae Mulukareem, head of a pondok (Islamic school), said in an interview. "There is a 50-50 chance in the court now. I have given advice to other people not to be silent because of the injustice around."