THAILAND: SHARI'AH SHOULD BE GIVEN A BIGGER ROLE IN SOUTHERN THAILAND

PM backs Shariah law for southern Thailand

BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, in another significant gesture to Muslim insurgents in the far south, said yesterday Islamic law should be given a bigger role there.

He also said the only condition his post-coup government would impose for talks with insurgents in the region was that there should be no discussion of separation.

Surayud told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand that shariah, or Islamic law, should be allowed in the area, where 80% of the people are ethnic Malay and Muslim.

“They should have the Islamic law in practice, sharia, because the way they are dealing with the normal practice in their society, in their life, is completely different from us,” said the former army chief of predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

“So that’s the way we are trying to say, that you can live with your own group, own morals,” he said in reply to a question without giving other details.

That gesture came soon after he went to the far south last week to make a public apology for past hardline government policies blamed for stoking unrest in a region that was an Islamic sultanate until annexed by Bangkok a century ago.

His apology was followed by the dropping of charges against 92 Muslims involved in a 2004 protest after which 78 protesters were crushed or suffocated to death in army custody.

Unlike his predecessor, Thaksin Shinawatra, who opposed any form of talks with insurgents, Surayud said he wanted to “establish a constructive dialogue with all concerned parties” as long as they did not demand independence.

“No separation. That’s the only condition that we have. In the Thai constitution, we cannot separate our land any more. This is the rule of this land that we are not going to be divided any more,” he said.

In another show of goodwill in hopes of ending nearly three years of violence in which more than 1,700 people have been killed, the government agreed yesterday to pay families of the Muslims who died in army custody, their lawyer said.

After little progress in a year-long court battle until Thaksin was ousted on Sept. 19, the families would receive 42mn baht ($1.2mn) of the 107mn baht they had sued for, lawyer Peerawat Praweenamai told Reuters.

“My clients are happy about today’s outcome, which followed months of stalled negotiations with the previous government,” he said.

“They feel the government of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont is really trying to reconcile with the people after he made a public apology, which I think will convince people to be more cooperative with the state,” Peerawat said.

On Oct 25, 2004, police and soldiers shot dead seven Muslim protesters as they tried to disperse a rally in front of the police station in the town of Tak Bai, near the Malaysian border.

Another 78 were crushed or suffocated to death after they were stacked “like bricks”, in the words of one survivor, in the back of trucks and transported to an army camp.

Families of the 78 victims sued for compensation.

Relatives of the seven protesters and other injured survivors filed lawsuits demanding a total of 50 mn baht and a hearing on that case is set for December 19.

YALA, Thailand:

Four people were shot dead by suspected Islamic militants in Thailand’s violence-torn south, police said a day ahead of a peace-building visit to the troubled region by the new premier.A 42-year-old Muslim man was killed by militants in a drive-by shooting late yesterday in Narathiwat.

In neighbouring Yala province, a 47-year-old male Buddhist teacher was gunned down in another drive-by shooting as he drove a motorcycle.

Earlier in the day, a 43-year-old Buddhist man was shot dead on his way to work in Pattani, while a 36-year-old Muslim school janitor was shot dead by two suspected militants in Narathiwat as he drove a motorcycle to work.

Meanwhile, a 5kg remotely-triggered bomb exploded at a railway station aimed at a nearby military camp in Yala yesterday, police said, but adding that no one was injured.

Late Monday in Yala, suspected separatist insurgents set fire to a school, police said, which followed suspected arson attacks during the weekend that gutted three school and partially damaged another in the province.

Thirty-five schools remained closed across Yala province, and a further 14 closed yesterday in the wake of the fresh violence, officials said.

“Local security commanders have not decided when to reopen the schools,” said Adinan Takbara, a regional education head in Yala. “They were closed for the safety of the students and the teachers.”

Surayud will today visit Yala where he will meet university students and teachers in an effort to promote trust and reconciliation between Muslim locals and the authorities.

The Muslim-majority south was an independent sultanate annexed by Buddhist Thailand in 1902. Violence has erupted periodically ever since.


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