‘REFUGEE’ INCIDENT: Pulo denies role in Muslim exodus

Outlawed separatist group says flight of 131 Narathiwat asylum seekers into Malaysia was spurred by harassment 

Don Pathan
The Nation

The Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) has dismissed allegations by the Thai government that it hatched a plot for 131 Thai Muslims to flee to Malaysia and to smear Thailand’s reputation by drawing international attention to the incident.

In a statement delivered to The Nation last weekend from the exiled outlawed Muslim militant organisation’s headquarters in Europe, Pulo said the 131 Thai nationals were ordinary villagers who fled their homes in southern Thailand because “they cannot live under Thai harassment.”

Pulo officials also dismissed accusations that the Pattani Malay Human Rights Organisation was their political “front” organisation. The Pulo statement said the Malay human rights organisation had been formed shortly after the Tak Bai demonstration last October when 78 Muslim demonstrators died in the custody of Thai security forces.

The organisation is an independent organisation with no link to Pulo, and that it helps “displaced people who need shelter and basic needs for survival”, according to Pulo. The 131 Thai Muslims seeking asylum in Malaysia are residents of Narathiwat’s border districts and appear to have crossed into Malaysia simultaneously before taking refuge in two mosques in the state of Kelantan.

They have since been relocated to a shelter and are being interviewed by officials working for a UN refugee agency. The incident took on a bitter diplomatic note when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra accused some of the purported refugees of being insurgents. The Malaysian government responded by inviting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to interview the Thai Muslims to determine their status.

Outspoken former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad ratcheted up the controversy when he suggested the 131 Thai Muslims be given asylum once their status as refugees was established. Muslim residents in Narathiwat said they believed the asylum-seekers had fled because of a misunderstanding with security officials who ordered locals to report to provincial offices to undergo a week-long “re-education programme” aimed instilling a heightened sense of patriotism.

 Residents said a recently passed controversial emergency decree, described by critics as “a license to kill”, may also have been a factor in further alarming local Muslims fearing abuse at the hands of security forces. Pulo surfaced in the 1970s at the height of the armed struggle by ethnic Malays seeking independence from Thailand.

Hostilities died down in the previous decade before they resurfaced again in January 2004 with a raid on an army arsenal. Since then nearly 900 people have been killed in the South. “As you may have notice, we are back,” the exiled organisation’s statement read. Pulo also accused the Thai government of misleading the Organisation of Islamic Conference in order to enhance relations with Muslim countries.

The statement by Pulo asserted that it was police and army “brutality” that had led to the renewed insurgency. The statement stated that Thai security forces had carried out extra-judicial killings of at least 17 Muslims prior to the assassination of Imam Stopa Yusoh in Lahar village in Narathiwat. It said these incidents had fostered resentment against the state, particularly after the killings were not properly investigated.

“We are engaged in defending and protecting local people who, as you know, are confronting Thai security men,” the statement said. In another statement issued by the organisation, exiled deputy president Abae Kamae dismissed recent news reports that Pulo was holding talks with government officials. He also dismissed a statement by an unnamed “spokesman” that the organisation was planning attacks in Phuket, Bangkok, and Pattaya. “It is not our policy” to stage such attacks, he said.

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BURNING ISSUE: Malaysia row may backfire
Thaksin’s bitter ‘refugee’ pillis entirely self-administered

Don Pathan
The Nation

September 16, 2005

Thailand and Malaysia have once again found themselves at loggerheads in the
aftermath of a diplomatic tussle that involves the 131 Thai Muslims who fled their
villages for the Malaysian state of Kelantan, reportedly because they were scared by
an impending crackdown on their community by government security forces.
But this round of a political tussle could prove very costly for Bangkok now that the
stakes have been raised. An unwanted international spotlight is shining brightly on the
restive region, although the government insists that the incident is an internal affair.
Senior security officials on the ground said the issue could have been settled at a very
local level between the immigration officers of the two countries.
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They said the Foreign Ministry had hit the right note when suggesting on the first day
that it was a case of simple misunderstanding and that the villagers would be treated
with dignity upon their return. But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra could not stay
quiet long enough for diplomacy to take its due course.
Thaksin put the ball in Kuala Lumpur’s court when he stated that some of the 131
were Muslim insurgents, whom authorities accuse of trying to carve out a separate
homeland for the ethnic Malays in Thailand’s deep South.
Malaysia responded by permitting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) to get into the act – an unprecedented move on this sticky issue, which has
long been at the centre of dealings between the two countries.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed turned up the heat even
further when he suggested that the 131 Narathiwat villagers should be given asylum if
they are deemed to be genuine refugees.
Defence Minister Thamarak Isarangura then shot back, suggesting that Kuala Lumpur
has turned a blind eye to supposed meetings among Thai Muslim insurgents on the
Malaysian island of Langkawi. But his move to implicate Malaysia could very well
pave the way for a completely new tone and context for future bilateral dialogues over
the border region, although not all stakeholders are convinced that this is best for the
two countries.
For one thing, the two governments have never really agreed between themselves
whether the violence in the South is criminal or political in nature.
The two sides cannot even agree on whether the extradition treaty dating from the
colonial period should be honoured.
Thailand has insisted all along that the violence in the deep South is a domestic matter
but overlooked the possibility that somehow along the way, Malaysia would be
brought into the picture.
So when the 131 local residents fled across the border, it was a question of too little
and too late to come up with an agreement about what is the appropriate terminology.
Diplomats and observers say that the Malaysian authorities have never really trusted
their Thai counterparts to treat the suspects whom they had previously handed over in
a proper manner – or at least in line with the country’s legal procedures.
If the UN deems the 131 to be genuine refugees, then any arrest warrants from the
Thai police would be almost meaningless as insurgent crimes in the unruly region
could be conveniently deemed political. And as refugees, they would have the right to
ask for resettlement in a third country.
At the recent Asean-UN summit in New York, Thaksin lashed out at an unnamed UN
agency for allowing itself to be “trapped into local political exploitation that could
lead to international misunderstanding”.
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“Had the agency paid due respect to Thailand’s concern and had it tried to understand
the real cause of the incident, it would not have been so exploited,” Thaksin added.
But why hasn’t Thaksin asked Kuala Lumpur directly about this? Why couldn’t the
PM and his men stay quiet long enough to let officials handle the problem at the local
level?Some two years ago Thaksin said the UN was not his father – an angry remark
about the world body’s criticism of his government’s human rights record.
That may be true – the UN is not his father. But for the time being, Thaksin is
beginning to feel the might of an organisation often referred to as a “paper tiger”.
If the UNHCR grants the 131 “refugee” status, Thailand would know what a bitter pill
tastes like – the kind of pill that Burma and the Indochinese countries had been taking
for the most of the last half of the previous century when internal conflicts pushed
their own people across someone else’s border.
Don Pathan