Thai leader's response to brewing violence worries Asian allies 
International Herald Tribune
November 18, 2004
Nick Cumming-Bruce 

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's tough and "unrepentant" response to violence in mainly Muslim provinces in the south of Thailand, although appealing to voters in other regions of the country, is causing growing unease among Thailand's main diplomatic and trading partners in Southeast Asia, according to officials and analysts in those countries.

"We can see Asean governments are getting more concerned," said S.P. Harish, a specialist on southern Thailand at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

"They are taking a supportive line, but they want the Thai government not to take the military option," Harish said of Asean, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Thaksin, who prides himself on a decisive, corporate-chief-executive style of leadership, has made few concessions to calls for a softer approach to the south since Oct. 25, when troops broke up a riot in the southern town of Tak Bai. At least 78 Muslims detained in the operation died in military custody, mainly from suffocation. Thaksin said afterward that the government regretted the deaths but had done nothing wrong.

Since then, the southern provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, which border Malaysia and include many Malay-speaking people, have suffered from a wave of killings of Buddhists attributed to separatist militants.

On Wednesday, Queen Sirikit made an appeal for an end to the killings, the second intervention by Thailand's monarchy in two weeks seeking to defuse the situation.

Thaksin has relied on the military and the police to enforce government policy in general. He has blamed separatists and criminals for the violence and said that the law must be applied.

In the meantime, the government is planning to set up a national reconciliation council and Thaksin, normally impatient with public criticism or advice, met a group of academics last week hear their views.

Taking up a suggestion from that meeting, he called for Thais on Tuesday to fold more than 60 million origami birds that military aircraft would drop over the three provinces as a symbol of peace and to promote reconciliation.

But Thaksin, who faces a general election in February, dismissed as "nonsense" suggestions that he should apologize for the deaths of detainees. The government has yet to spell out details on the reconciliation council and other measures that it intends to pursue.

Despite calls for a new government approach by respected national figures, including a former prime minister and a former army commander, Thai political commentators say Thaksin's political party, Thai Rak Thai, or Thais Love Thais, believes that Thaksin's tough line will win votes in other, strongly nationalist parts of the country that regard southerners as habitual troublemakers.

The government's failure to describe details of any new initiatives or strategy, however, is a source of growing apprehension and tension with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Thailand's relations with Malaysia in particular have cooled since Mahathir bin Mohamad, the former Malaysian prime minister, urged Thailand to give the provinces more autonomy, while his former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, called Thaksin "arrogant."

Mohamed Jawhar, director general of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur, said that "we are highly concerned by possible spillover" of violence across the border into Malaysia, and that "the Thai government has only been inviting trouble due to its neglect" in the southern provinces.

Briefings that Thaksin and the government have provided for some governments on the situation, far from allaying concerns, have created doubts as to how much he understands the issues at stake.

"Very disconcerting" is how a senior Asean official summed up Thaksin's assessment of the trouble.

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