In southern Thailand where unemployment is high, thousands of people have been spending the past couple of weeks collecting paper cranes fired at their villages and towns from the air. By one estimate as many as 100 million such “missiles” were used in what must be the biggest origami “carpet-bombing” in history.
The symbolic “bombing” was organized by the Thai government with an appeal to the people to make paper cranes as symbols of peace between the kingdom’s Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority in the south.
The decision to organize the “bombing” was taken just weeks after clashes between Muslims and Thai security forces claimed over 500 lives. An estimated 3000 Muslims were also rounded up in a series of military-style operations. At least 80 Muslim captives later suffocated to death in police minibuses while being transported to the capital Bangkok. Adding insult to injury, Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra claimed that the Muslim captives died because they had become “weak as a result of fasting” in the month of Ramadan. When that claim was met with the derision it merited, Thaksin said the victims had died because they had been “weakened by drug use.”
The paper cranes campaign represents an attempt by Thaksin to pedal back from a policy marked by arrogance and ignorance.
The killing of hundreds of young Thai Muslims by Thai security forces over the past few weeks, however, is not something that could be covered by origami. And yet Thaksin has so far refused to allow any independent inquiry into the tragic events. Worse still, the provinces affected by the violence, Patani, Yala, Narathiwat and Satun, remain under emergency rule which means many parts are closed to foreign journalists and aid workers. The international community has been relatively quiet about the killings and violence in southern Thailand. Even the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), of which Thailand is an associate member, has chosen to keep the whole thing quiet.
Thailand’s troubles in the southern provinces go back to its past and the imperial legacy of the Thai kingdom. Though the kingdom was and remains a predominantly Buddhist country, its people are culturally diverse; the Thai community happens to be just one of many ethnic groups in present-day Thailand. In the south, the population has always been predominantly Malay and with a rich history and identity of their own. The four provinces where the Malays are concentrated were all part of what was known as Patani Raya (Greater Patani), which covered the domain of the earlier Sultanate of Patani, which was itself derived from the ancient kingdom of Langkasuka (mentioned in the Chinese texts as Lang-Ya-Hsiu). Since the 18th century, successive Thai rulers have sought to subjugate these Malay states and bring them within the domain of the Siamese empire.
In 1901 the Thai ruler King Chulalongkorn broke the peace treaty with the Malay states and launched a military campaign against them. His centralization program (Thesaphiban) regrouped the seven provinces of Patani under one unit called the Boriween Chet Huamuang (Area of the Seven Provinces). Siamese administrators were appointed by the king to rule the Malay provinces directly from the royal capital of Krungtheep (Bangkok). In 1906 the seven Malay provinces were brought closer together under a single administrative unit called Monthon Patani.
But in 1909 the Malay kingdoms of Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and Perlis were taken over by the British colonial power with the signing of the Anglo-Siamese treaty.
Despite the division created by the Anglo-Siamese treaty, the Malay kingdoms of Patani were similar to their mainland counterparts in every respect: Patani society was Islamic and Malay in character.
Not surprisingly, the people of Greater Patani resented the Thai imperial yoke, and were soon up in revolt: Patani resistance to Siamese hegemony began almost as soon as Bangkok tried to re-establish its grip on the Malay kingdoms. In 1903 the Patani Malay aristocrat Tunku Abdul Kadir Kamaruddin revolted against Bangkok. He was defeated and imprisoned for three years. As soon as he was released he led another insurrection against Siamese rule. The Patani Malays were angry with Bangkok for trying to impose Thai laws on them and Bangkok’s refusal to recognize traditional Malay and Islamic laws in the region. After another failed revolt in 1915, Abdul Kadir Kamaruddin retreated to Kelantan (which was under British indirect rule) and attempted to regroup his forces with the help of the sultan of Kelantan, Sultan Muhammad IV.
In 1922, Abdul Kadir launched his biggest campaign against the Siamese government, in response to the new education policy introduced by Bangkok which made it compulsory for all Patani Malays to attend Thai government schools and learn the Siamese language. Abdul Kadir regarded this as a deliberate and calculated attempt to erase Patani-Malay identity and to convert the Patani Malays to Buddhism. The revolt failed, partly thanks to British military help for the Thais.
Throughout the 20th century successive Thai governments and rulers have sought to coopt and pacify the Patani-Malay communities of southern Thailand by the use of financial inducements as well as the threat of force and violence. More often than not, these policies were directed toward the goals of assimilation and absorption of the Malay community into the Thai-Buddhist mainstream.
When fascist ideas reached Thailand from Europe in the 1930s, the Malays were designated as the “enemy within” just as Jews had been under the Nazis.
After World War II the southern regions became the hotbed of militant anti-state and Communist activities, and by the 1970s was the hideout of the Malaysian Communist Party (MCP) that had been forced to go underground. Southern Thailand also became the base for a number of Malay separatist groups such as the Barisan Nasional Pembebasan Patani (BNPP— National Liberation Front of Patani) Pertubuhan Perpaduan Pembebasan Patani (PULO— Patani United Liberation Organization) and the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN— National Revolutionary Front).
For nearly a decade the Thai Army fought a major anti-guerrilla campaign against the Malays. With the Cold War at its height and American power on the ascendant, these groups were summarily labeled “terrorist” or “leftist”. The final defeat of left-wing, including Communist, parties and groups in the late 1970s opened the way for the emergence of radical Islamists among the Malays in southern Thailand. Since then the Malay national movement has been dominated by the Islamists.
The policies of the Thaksin government cannot but encourage that trend, especially by marginalizing democratic and liberal forces in the affected provinces. Thaksin may well think that he has the green light to go on with his policies in the south of Thailand. Indeed, with Thailand being declared a major ally of the US at the moment, the geopolitical winds seem to be blowing his way.
But the Thai government would be naïve to think that Washington’s endorsement of its policies is a fixed factor that will not shift in the future.
Thaksin’s talk of “war on terror” is both untrue and dangerous. The truth is that the majority of Thai Muslims, including the non-Malays in the north, are treated as second-class citizens. They have been excluded from the kingdom’s recent economic development while a wave of Thai nationalism has tried to overwhelm their cultural identity and religious traditions. Poverty, injustice and oppression are the lot of Thai Muslims. And these are not issues that can be addressed either by metallic bullets or paper cranes.
