Thai Deep South: An Elusive Leader, an Enduring Narrative

Don Pathan
BenarNews

Yala, Thailand

For weeks, Thai security and intelligence agencies debated how the death of Sapae-ing Baso would affect the separatist movement he was accused of leading in Thailand’s Muslim-majority Deep South.

One answer: very little. Violence in the restive region has resumed now that the rainy season has ended.

“BRN is a revolutionary organization that is run by a group of elders, not by one individual.  Of course, there is a sense of loss because of what Sapae-ing meant to his people,” said an operative from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), a long-standing Patani Malay separatist group.



Sapae-ing, a former head master of Thammawittaya Foundation School in Yala province, died at age 86 of complications from diabetes in Malaysia on Jan. 10.

BRN cadres say Sapae-ing’s passing will have no impact on their campaign of violence, which, for the time being, aims to make the region as ungovernable as possible.

A hero of the Patani narrative

Armed insurgency in the region known among locals as Patani flared up in the early 1960s – 50 years after then-Siam and British Malaya drew their common border – in response to a government assimilation policy, which, local Malay Muslims thought, came at the expense of their cultural-religious identity.

That wave of violence subsided in the early 1990s as backers in the Middle East and North Africa repositioned themselves for a post-Cold War world.

But a narrative painting the Thai state as invaders in the historical homeland of the Malays never went away. That narrative also made heroes out of men like Sapae-ing, a high school educator who promoted local Malay identity to resist a state-constructed identity and narrative.

Separatist violence returned in late 2001 but was not officially recognized until Jan. 4, 2004, when scores of combatants raided an army battalion and made off with more than 400 rifles. The then-government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra could no longer deny the return of Malay separatist movement in the historically contested region.

Thailand’s counter-insurgency approach has never moved beyond carrot-and-stick proposals, including a blanket amnesty and a small plot of land for former combatants. Government policy has centered on development aimed at winning hearts and minds of the local Malay Muslims, who account for more than 80 percent of the 2 million residents in the area.

Nor has a military approach ended the problem. Soldiers in the Deep South are sitting ducks, as troops can’t distinguish between ordinary citizens and combatants. Today, the insurgents are in towns, cities, villages and municipalities across the region.

As long as the Patani narrative remains intact, separatism as an ideology will never go away, exiled separatist leaders say.

As for Sapae-ing, the fact that a significant number of students from his school took up arms against the Thai state made him an easy target for then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin needed to put a face on the conflict, and Sapae-ing became that face. Thaksin stated in one of his weekly radio addresses that the fugitive cleric, who fled southern Thailand in December 2004, was poised to be the leader of a liberated Patani.

The arrest warrant that forced Sapae-ing to flee was signed by then-Police Col. Thawee Sodsong, a man who would later become a key person the government’s peace initiatives for the far South for Thaksin and his sister, Yingluck.

Thai officials who examined the warrants said evidence against Sapae-ing was extremely flimsy and that he would have beaten the charges easily had he decided to fight it in court.

In the two years immediately after Sapae-ing fled southern Thailand, nine teachers from his school were shot dead, one-by-one, all at close range, presumably by members of a government or pro-government death squad.

Intervention from high-ups in Bangkok put an end to the killing of Sapae-ing’s teachers, according to a senior government source. But what successive administrations failed to grasp was the resilience of the cultural-historical narrative that Sapae-ing represented.

Successive governments tried to lure him to the table with the promise of leniency. It didn’t work. He was not about to sell his soul to the Thais, one associate said.

And since Thailand was not even willing to talk about the historical grievances and root cause of the conflict that claimed nearly 7,000 lives since January 2004, Sapae-ing didn’t see any point in talking to Thai officials.

Yoda-like

Artef Sohko, a youth leader from the far South, described Sapae-ing, his late principal, as a strict, polite and simple man who led by example.

The principal would go around pick up trash around the school like an ordinary janitor. After school, he would go around town to check to see if any of his students were getting into trouble.

Young people saw in him a role-model of the man they wanted to grow up to be. Parents admired his moral authority with students. Clerics in the region admired his leadership.

Foreign observers who closely monitor the conflict jokingly compared Sapae-ing to Yoda, the wise and powerful Jedi master from Star Wars. Some separatist combatants speculated that Sapae-ing was blessed with the power to go invisible and thus evade arrest.

After more than a decade of living secretly in exile and up until his death, the mystique around Sapae-ing never seemed to fade.

Upon learning of his death, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha expressed his sorrow to Sapae-ing’s family, while Thawee, the man who sent him and many other suspects on the run, also dropped by his family home to pay respects.

Today, weeks after his death, observers are asking who, if anyone, can replace him. One thing is clear: the end to the current wave of insurgency is nowhere in sight.

Don Pathan is a consultant and security analyst based in Thailand. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews.

Persecuting the peacemakers: A dismal tale from the South

The systematic harassment of men like Artef Sohko has shut down grass-roots activism and blocked the path to lasting peace in this contested region

Don Pathan
Special to The Nation

Artef Sohko says he is fed up with being constantly harassed by unnamed government or pro-government entities, but he's not sure what he can do about it.

Since 2007, when he became the first ethnic Malay to be elected president of the Student Federation of Thailand, Artef says Thai security agencies have routinely persecuted him because of his outspoken demands for justice and equality for ethnic Malays in the historically contested deep South.

Artef Sohko (right) speaking at the FCCT. 

The year 2007 saw a peak in violence as allegations of rape and torture were made against security forces in the region. Artef and other student leaders felt they had enough and they decided to seize the Pattani Central Mosque in protest.

"There were allegations that a [Paramilitary] Ranger had raped a woman in front of her mother in [Yala's] Yaha district. We also heard about other rape incidents, but the victims and their families were too ashamed to speak out," Artef said.

Senior military commanders agreed to set up a joint working group to look into the allegations. But like every other ad-hoc committee set up by authorities in this region, it slowly slipped from the agenda and out of the minds of government officials.

Meanwhile relations between ethnic Malays and Thai Buddhist communities in the South took a nosedive as innocent bystanders became the targets - often as part of tit-for-tat vendettas between security forces and insurgents.

International watchdogs such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have condemned actions on both sides, but they consistently criticise Thai security forces for a "culture of impunity" and have urged the government to punish wrongdoers. But such requests have fallen on deaf ears and quickly slipped from public consciousness - even in high-profile cases like the beating to death of Imam Yapa Kaseng. A full seven years after the Muslim religious leader's killing, the National Anti-Corruption Commission last week suggested that the accused, Army Sub-Lieutenant Sirikhet Wanitbamrung, face disciplinary and criminal action.

Artef says he has never been tortured, but he describes how a security official once beat a person in front of him as a way of demonstrating his unrestrained power.

"The idea was to demoralise me. He wanted to show what he could do and that there was not a thing that I could do about it," he said.

The persecution also took on a devious, personal angle. An elaborate flowchart was faked-up showing him, his wife and her father linked in a crime syndicate and drug trafficking ring. It was released via the social media, making it difficult to trace without help from the authorities. But given that no Thai government in the last decade has taken legal action against an official in the deep South, Artef said it would be a pipe dream to expect help in this case.

"The attitude of many Thai officials is you are either with us or you are with the insurgents. And if you're with the state, you shouldn't criticise us even when the conduct of an official is wrong or illegal," Artef said.

He is not the only activist to face harassment. Others both in and outside of his network have faced similar trouble, being detained or having their DNA taken on flimsy pretences, or have their residences searched without probable cause or warrant.

Zawawee Zawawee Jujur, a 26-year-old local activist and former member of Media Selantan, a Pattani-based community radio station, says he has been DNA tested three times already. When he refused a fourth test earlier this year, police threatened him at the point of a gun.

The authorities' action is based, Zawawee says, on the assumption that he will eventually commit an illegal act, at which time "they will already be prepared to charge me".

Security officials even visited his village in Narathiwat's Tak Bai district and told the headman there to keep an eye on this "young man who has joined an anti-state organisation".

Artef's outspokenness has won a great deal of support not just from the grass roots in this majority-Malay Muslim region but also from foreign governments, who have often sought his insights into the ongoing conflict and the peace process. He doesn't think very highly of the latter, explaining that the participants lack any real influence over the insurgent combatants.

Thailand's approach to peace has always been very short-sighted, usually seeking quick gains while avoiding asking the central question of how the two sides can coexist peacefully and with mutual respect.

On the public front, Artef is often the key speaker at the Bicara Patani, a political rally that draws crowds of up to 10,000, mostly villagers - which gives an idea of his popularity with local people.

Many of these events are documented by Wartani, a grass-roots media organisation run by local Patani Malay activists closely associated with Artef. Wartani reporters say that they too have been harassed by Thai security officials.

Artef refuses to tar all Thai officials with the same brush, though, explaining that many have a great working relationship with him and the youth network.

Yet many others in authority continue to insist that Artef and his activist colleagues are either part of the separatist movement or inspired by the political wing of its umbrella group, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) - a claim he vociferously denies. But he does admit that Thai authorities, both security and political, have asked him to act as a go-between with the BRN and other separatist leaders.

"It's a fine line to walk and the best way to go about it is to maintain your integrity. I don't take sides or support any particular [separatist] organisations," Artef said.

When asked if his agenda includes independence for the Malay-speaking region, Artef said: "It's not my decision to make. It's up to all the people of this region. But I do want to see peace and justice for all sides."

Artef says that though he is often followed by plainclothes officials, the authorities can never pin anything on him because he hasn't done any wrong. "Nevertheless, it is still irritating," he adds.

In the aftermath of the May 2014 coup, security officials suggested that he leave the country for about three years, which he did. For everybody's sake, he decided to leave his wife and three-year-old son behind and live in India, where he studied English. "The cost of living was affordable," he said.

The low point came late last week when a hooded man in black broke into the home of his mother-in-law in the middle of the night in Narathiwat's Joh I Rong sub-district and took all the printed documents from the bedroom where his wife and his son normally sleep.

"They didn't take any of the valuable stuff. Perhaps it was an indication of things to come," he said.

Don Pathan is a Yala-based freelance security and development consultant and a founding member of the Patani Forum (www.pataniforum.com).