Article

2010-12-01 Southeast Asia

TIME: Does Thailand torture Muslim detainees?

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Posted by ryuge 2010-12-01 10:11|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top
File under: Thai Insurgency

#1 "The army has not called these allegations isolated incidents, or blamed rotten apples. It has flat-out denied them. "We have never committed torture," Lt.-Gen. Udomchai Thamsarorat, the current regional commander, told me. Blanket denials don't impress the experts. "The security forces continue to use torture even though senior commanders claim to have prohibited it," the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in November. In the two months leading up to Sulaiman's death, Amnesty International received eight reports of torture six from Ingkhayutthabariharn."

It's part of the terrorist training process to learn to claim torture if captured, and no doubt Amnesia International would be a prime contact.

"Denials don't fool the locals either. In Pattani, I know a teacher of Malay who, as an exercise, asked his students all Muslims to write a newspaper-style report. A dozen of them turned in stories about relatives or friends who had been detained or tortured. When I asked a Muslim paralegal why more people don't speak out about such abuses, he replied: "We hate the army but we fear them also. The fear is stronger than the hate." Such views seemed barely to register with the officers I spoke to. Lt.-Gen. Udomchai said he was "100% confident" his troops were winning Muslim hearts and minds. A civil affairs officer told me that local people "trust us more and more," before explaining that Thailand was one big loving family in which Muslims were "naughty teenagers.

It will be interesting to see Michael Yon's take on this story. I have no way to judge the truth of it myself - it doesn't seem impossible, but then again, we KNOW a lot of such prisoners DO lie, in just this way.

Posted by Glenmore 2010-12-01 11:29|| 2010-12-01 11:29|| Front Page Top

#2 Whadda they do, put the detainees in a waiting room filled with time magazines?

Posted by swksvolFF 2010-12-01 11:59|| 2010-12-01 11:59|| Front Page Top

#3 "put the detainees in a waiting room filled with time magazines?"

Now THAT would be torture!

Posted by Glenmore 2010-12-01 13:22|| 2010-12-01 13:22|| Front Page Top

#4 Who cares Time?

Posted by Water Modem 2010-12-01 13:24|| 2010-12-01 13:24|| Front Page Top

In Pattani, I know a teacher of Malay who, as an exercise, asked his students -- all Muslims -- to write a newspaper-style report. A dozen of them turned in stories about relatives or friends who had been detained or tortured.

Huh. Muslims making up accusations of torture during a creative writing exercise.

Whodatunk.

Posted by Rob Crawford 2010-12-01 14:17|| 2010-12-01 14:17|| Front Page Top

#6 Culturally the Thai are different from most other southern Asian people. A lot of it has to do with the difference between a "conquered people" and an "unconquered people". The Thai are of the latter group.

Historical Thai rulers often had the appellation of "The Great", which they earned, and Thailand was never colonized, while playing the British and the French off of each other with both diplomacy and ferocity. Then they went from absolute monarchy to democracy in one fell swoop.

They went head to head with the Japanese in a pitched, eight hour battle, against a much superior force, before negotiating an armistice. Even that was crafty, as on one hand they worked with the Japanese to get their French and British taken territory back, and on the other hand conducted an anti-Japanese resistance movement.

Even today, unlike most of south Asia, whose illegals drugs of choice are hashish and opiates, the Thai, despite producing world class marijuana, have developed a liking to a high test methamphetamine, which appeals to their more militaristic and violent side.

Unfortunately, those that take it tend to go berserker, so the police generally just kill them.

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-12-01 14:35|| 2010-12-01 14:35|| Front Page Top

#7 On the other hand, police and military have no tradition of torture and I never heard of any while I was there.

Posted by Fred 2010-12-01 14:53|| 2010-12-01 14:53|| Front Page Top

#8 Why is it never asked:

Does { Iran | Saudi Arabia | Pakistan | Indonesia | any-muslim-majority-country } torture non-muslim?

I think the reason is that we all already know the answer.

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-12-01 15:06|| 2010-12-01 15:06|| Front Page Top

#9 Fred: In Thailand, I suspect torture happens for the same reasons it would happen in the western nations. It begins when they catch some real fiend who has done something truly horrific. However, these are individual cases.

If it starts to become institutional, this is usually a sign of poor morale. In this case, the Thai government has been unstable for so long that it is starting to wear on both the police and military. And they start taking it out on the usual suspects.

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-12-01 15:48|| 2010-12-01 15:48|| Front Page Top

#10 The Thai military has at times been rather medieval in its dealings with Southern separatists. The worst abuses were under the Thaksin administration - a good report is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk_ZEuE-70M. You can learn more by searching "Tak Bai Incident" or "Krue Sae Mosque Incident".

But - misconduct is not at all one-sided. The worst abusers of Southern Thai Muslims - by far - is other Thai Muslim. The separatist elements murder countless Muslim villagers - often village leaders - if those Muslims do not exhibit adequate enthusiasms against the government.

Since I came to live in Thailand in 2000, I have seen:

1. A Thai Muslim (Wan Muhammad Nor Matha) serving as Chairman of Parliament, and then as Interior Minister.

2. A Thai Muslim (Sonthi Boonyaratglin) as Army Chief.

3. The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) sent an inspection team to Southern Thailand, back in 2005, and report that there was little religious or economic basis for violence in the South.

At its most fundamental, the real issue is a very deliberate policy of ethnic cleaning - by the Muslim separatists, against Buddhist residents in the South. The core strategy has been to send Muslim children to madras schools, and to then seek to make it impossible for Buddhist parents to send their children to school. This is accomplished by murdering school teachers, school administrators, and school children - often at random. More than 135 schoolteachers have been brutally murdered - sometimes in front of their students - by Muslim separatists. The goal: if parents are too frightened for the safety of their children, to allow them to attend school, then the parents will move away from the South - because they will not allow their children to grow up without an education.

This is a very insidious method of driving away one ethnic group. The separatists ignore Buddhists without children - because they know that when these individuals die, they will leave behind no Buddhist legacy.

Muslim separatists have killed more people in the deep South of Thailand - by far - than have Thai security forces. I suspect that more Thai Muslims (peaceful, non-activist Muslims) have died at Muslim separatist hands, than at the hands of Thai security forces.

Posted by Lone Ranger 2010-12-01 20:27|| 2010-12-01 20:27|| Front Page Top

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