Thai Muslims flee troubled areas in search of security
By Chawadee Nualkhair
SUNGAI KOLOK (Thailand): Along with the ubiquitous cans of soda and packets of pot noodles, the mom-and-pop stores of violence-plagued southern Thailand are selling tickets to a new life.
For 5 baht ($0.12), the stubs of paper buy a 30-second boat ride across a narrow river to Malaysia — the land of opportunity for young Muslims wanting to escape 21 months of unrest in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces.
As the death toll climbs above 900 and the local economy collapses, young Muslims see little point in staying behind to get caught up in an increasingly dirty guerilla conflict between separatist militants and more than 30,000 soldiers and police. “People here worry about three things. Where will the authorities arrest me? When should I leave? How will I die?” said Abdulrahman Abdulsahad, president of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat province, 1,200 km south of Bangkok.
The fear is taking its toll on youngsters in Narathiwat and the neighbouring provinces of Yala and Pattani, once an independent sultanate where Muslims now say they feel like second-class citizens.
“I am definitely going to move,” said Sobri, a 22-year-old Muslim university student in Pattani who wants to further his studies in Malaysia. “If you don’t agree with the government, you are their enemy.”
The mainly Buddhist administration in Bangkok has poured troops into the region, where 80 per cent of the 1.8 million population are Muslim, ethnic Malay and non-Thai speaking, but has failed to halt the daily bombings and shootings.
The presence of so many Buddhist troops is also fuelling local Muslim resentment, leading to fears they are actually exacerbating the situation, rather than calming it.
“It’s like the government has two kids: one who is good in school and one who has been naughty,” said Fakhruddin Boto, a Muslim senator in Narathiwat.
“If you constantly reprimand the naughty boy, tell him he is worthless, what will that naughty boy turn out to be when he grows up?”
For many Muslims, the rules to staying alive are simple but stifling — do not eat at a restaurant or tea shop frequented by the police or soldiers; be wary of venturing out at night after evening prayers; arrange weddings and funerals for daylight hours.
For some, however, such precautions are not enough.
Last month, a group of 131 Muslims, half of them women and children, sparked a diplomatic row with Kuala Lumpur when they fled to northern Malaysia seeking refuge from persecution by Thai security forces.
Bangkok denies its army or police would ever intimidate Muslims, but such a large exodus exposed the reality that some southern Muslims feel scared enough to seek political asylum.
No one knows how many others have slipped quietly over the notoriously porous border to a new life in Malaysia, but the problem appears widespread.
“Many of my students are leaving,” said Abdulrahman, the Narathiwat religious leader.
Sobri, an economics major who used to live in Bangkok, play in a rock band and drink alcohol, felt his world turning upside down the day he visited the grieving relatives of dozens of Muslims who died in army custody last year.
It was one of the bloodiest incidents in the conflict. Security forces fired on Muslim protesters, killing seven people and detaining hundreds more, stacking them like logs in the back of army trucks for the long journey to an army base. During the trip, 78 Muslims died of suffocation.
Since then, Sobri has cut his hair and is singing a new tune.
“If I didn’t have my education, my schooling to fall back on, yes, absolutely, I would pick up a gun and fight,” he said during a night out with friends at a tea shop on the outskirts of Pattani, a provincial capital.
“If they’re pointing a gun at me and threatening to shoot, do you think I should give them flowers? That’s crazy.”
Like many of his peers, Sobri, who would not give his full name for fear of persecution by police, says leaving is the only option in a society that is slowly but surely falling apart.
“The rift is not between Buddhists and Muslims,” said 27-year-old Amin, who helps run a youth development programme in Pattani. “It’s more of a lack of trust between authorities and the people who live here.”
Patchiya Pimanman, who runs an Islamic school in Narathiwat, is more blunt: “Do you want to stop the unrest? Get rid of the soldiers.”
Others, however, are determined to stay. Fah, a 21-year-old Muslim university student, wants to become a civil servant.
“I do get frustrated sometimes. When I watch the news, I want to scream. They are always exaggerating and reporting propaganda,” she said. “But Pattani is my home, regardless of what happens.”—Reuters
