It may take weeks before Thailand and, beyond it, the rest of the world absorb the shock of the tragedy in which 78 Muslim detainees were suffocated while in police custody. There are, however, already signs that the Thai authorities plan to prevent any serious investigation of the incident. In what looked like a rather amateurish attempt at smoke-and-mirrors tricks, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told the Senate in Bangkok yesterday that the deaths had been caused by “a number of mistakes.” In what must be rated as the understatement of the year, Thaksin said the detainees had been crammed into four trucks because the police did not have enough vehicles available to transfer them. Authorities had to “pile them up on top of each other and they died,” he said. “It was a bit rough,” the Thai leader insisted, adding insult to injury. To make matters even worse he claimed that the detainees died “so quickly” because “they had become weakened by fasting during Ramadan.”
A bit rough? Weakened by fasting?
Thaksin would do well to remember that in the past year alone, more than 400 people have been killed in the same area where the ill-fated detainees came from. During the same period, an estimated 22,000 people have been imprisoned for varying lengths of time. Last Monday, the police arrested 1,300 people during a peaceful demonstration. During the arrests, the police shot and killed at least eight people and injured 76 others. Forensic experts from the Ministry of Justice in Bangkok have already established that several of those who died had broken necks. The photos of the victims posted by the Thai news agency clearly show some of them with facial scars that appear to have been caused by burning.
The tragedy should alert the world to what is going on in the Pattani province in southern Thailand. For the past three years, the Thai authorities have treated the province as an occupied territory in a war zone. Normal life has been disrupted in many localities in the province. Having one or more of their members taken away by the Thai police has broken many families. Large parts of the province have been declared “a forbidden zone” for both local and foreign journalists. And the government is currently building a wall — longer and higher than the one the Israelis are building in the West Bank — to seal off the province’s estimated 2.5 million Muslims as if they were lepers.
The high-handed way the Thai government has chosen to deal with radical elements is bound to anger the estimated six million Muslims who regard Thailand as home. A few years ago Thailand sought, and was granted, associate member status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The repressive policy adopted since then is in clear contradiction of Thailand’s moral and political obligations.
Thaksin needs to think again about how to cope with the consequences of this tragedy. The first step he might take would be to accept an international enquiry and to offer a firm pledge to find and punish those responsible.
