EDITORIAL: Take away the licence to kill

TRIGGER-HAPPY SECURITY OFFICIALS IN THE SOUTH NEED TO REASSESS PROCEDURES THAT FUEL THE ANGER ON WHICH INSURGENCY FEEDS

Thai security forces are in hot water again over their actions in the deep South. This time the controversy is over the shooting to death of four young men in Pattani’s Yarang district.

According to the official version, a group of paramilitary rangers were tracking suspected insurgents who had gathered in Pattani’s Tung Yang Daeng District to plan attacks against government security agencies. The scene of the gathering was a construction site at a village in the district.

The rangers’ actions in storming the gathering and shooting dead four young men has drawn fierce criticism from the rector of Fatoni University, where two of the victims had been studying.
Dr Ismail Lutfi Japakiya has every right to voice his concern, especially now that his students are at the centre of the debate.

Dr Lutfi is proud of his university’s reputation as “cleaner than clean” and not involved in the region’s ongoing separatist conflict.

Academics and researchers who work in this contested region see the insurgency as part of a nationalist movement.

Meanwhile, Lutfi’s brand of Islam places religion above all else, which is why those very same academics and researchers do not talk about his institution in the light of separatism.
Thai authorities, of course, disagree with his claim that none of the students at Fatoni University has embraced separatism as an ideology or has joined the separatist militants.

They claim that just because the university as an institution does not embrace or promote Patani Malay separatism, that doesn’t mean its students – including the two shot dead in Tung Yang Daeng – hadn’t embraced the ideology.

Lutfi and his university staff have in the past been helpful to the state, often making themselves available to receive foreign dignitaries and reporters invited to the South by the government. To show its appreciation, the Yingluck Shinawatra administration added
 another academic building to the Fatoni campus.
That appreciation must now be extended by ensuring justice for the two dead students and their families.
The problem of trigger-happy Thai security officials is nothing new in the deep South, but this latest incident adds weight to arguments that their approach and tactics are in urgent need of an overhaul.
In January 2012, soldiers attached to a ranger unit in Pattani’s Nong Chik district, who were reportedly “itching for a fight” after their base had been attacked by militants, gunned down a group of Muslim funeral-goers who happened to be passing, killing four and injuring five.
 Expectations that the military would reassess their rules of engagement in response to that debacle came to nothing.

The decade-old emergency decree, coupled with a culture of impunity for security officials, has helped foster a “shoot-to-kill” attitude among security officials. They know that the law – which many locals have dubbed a licence to kill – will protect them. Public indifference in the rest of Thailand towards the plight of Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces also ensures that whatever controversial measures the government takes in the region will be met with little or no criticism elsewhere.

Dr Lutfi has maintained a good working relationship with the Thai state and, thus, the authorities owe it to him to conduct their investigation into the Tung Yang Daeng shootings honestly and accurately.
If the two students were part of the insurgency, the burden is on the state to convince the public of that fact. Meanwhile, Thai security officials’ standard operating procedures in the South must be closely scrutinised and reassessed.

We should not lose sight of the fact that more than 6,000 people – most of them Malay Muslim residents – have been killed in insurgency-related violence in the three southernmost provinces.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/opinion/today_editorial/30257529