| Submit your comments on this article |
| Southeast Asia |
| Thai PM |
| 2006-11-08 |
| Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, in another significant gesture to Muslim insurgents in the far south, said Tuesday that Islamic law should be given a bigger role there. He also said the only condition his post-coup government would impose for talks with the insurgents was that there should be no discussion of separation. Mr. Surayud told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand that Shariah, or Islamic law, should be allowed in the area, where 80 percent of the people are ethnic Malay and Muslim. “They should have the Islamic law in practice, Shariah, 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. Last week Mr. Surayud went south to make a public apology for past hard-line government policies blamed for stoking unrest in a region that was an Islamic sultanate until it was annexed by Thailand 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 in army custody. The gestures and the statements on Tuesday were a striking contrast with those of his predecessor, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup by the military on Sept. 19 and who opposed any form of talks with insurgents. Mr. 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,” he said. “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.” In another show of good will in hopes of ending nearly three years of violence in which more than 1,700 people have been killed, the government agreed Tuesday to pay families of the Muslims who died in army custody, their lawyer said. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #4 Wrong move. Muslims never give up shariah and when they get it in a federal state - like India - federal power takes a secondary role. Malays will take advantage of this indulgence. |
| Posted by: Sneaze Shaiting3550 2006-11-08 02:30 |
| #3 Bye-bye Thailand. Following in the footsteps of France. Who is next? |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2006-11-08 01:39 |
| #2 That is what the king wants. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2006-11-08 01:35 |
| #1 This asshole has got to go. Thailand is going to die the death of a thousand cuts. Sharia law is just the camel's nose. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-11-08 01:26 |