THAILAND
The Nation-Mar 4
Army commander Piyawat’s actions undermine battle for hearts and minds.
The latest detention may come across as a minor incident, considering the fact that about 7,000 people have been killed since January 2004, most of whom were Malay Muslims in the three southernmost provinces.
But the week-long incommunicado military detention of prominent ethnic Malay Muslim human-rights activist Aiman Hadeng, says more about Lt-General Piyawat Nakwanich, the army commander of the restive region, than does the conflict itself.
It also explains why, after more than 14 years of separatist violence, the army has not been able to win many of the local people’s hearts and minds in their counter-insurgency operation.
Aiman, chair of the Justice for Peace Network, a group of ex-detainees who have been taken in and detained over the years for various reasons, was placed in a military camp in Thailand’s Yala province on February 23.
It was not clear why he was originally detained, but sources in the government said the answer has much to do with Fourth Army Area commander Piyawat’s attempts to rake up brownie points to impress his superiors in Bangkok and antagonize his critics, namely members of civil society organizations in the far South.
For example, when Piyawat gave the order to the troops to conduct a mop-up operation that netted 50 people in Bannang Sata district in retaliation for insurgents’ arson attack on a passenger bus, insurgents hit back with a vicious motorbike bomb in Yala’s open market, killing three and injuring nearly 20 people.
The military is well aware of this kind of tit-for-tat attack between the security forces and the separatists, but Piyawat chose to ignore that part of the textbook that says counter-insurgency is overwhelmingly political in nature and only a small fraction of it is military.
Similarly, the decision to go after Aiman for no obvious reason was also opposed by other military officers and civilians who knew exactly of the consequences – that his detention would push the local civil society organizations (CSOs) and residents further away from the government agencies.
But Piyawat wanted to teach the CSOs a lesson for questioning his approach in the far South and so he started with a leader of a group of former detainees.
Known as Justice of Peace (JOP), these detainees came together a few years back because an alarming number of people who went through detention and were later released were being shot by gunmen, some of whom use silencers.
For most of these former detainees, their lives would change forever upon release. Some neighbors see them as victims of military harassment, while others keep their distance for fear that associating with these former detainees could mean trouble with the authorities.
The fact that they are scared and vulnerable could very well be the reason why Aiman was targeted.
“The Thai military’s incommunicado detention of a well-known rights activist should set off alarm bells given the army’s long history of abuse in southern Thailand,” said Human Right Watch’s Brad Adams while Aiman was under detention.
According to HRW, the risk of enforced disappearance, torture, and other ill-treatment significantly increases when detainees are held incommunicado in informal places of detention, such as military camps.
Like many Thais, Piyawat might not care about reconciliation between the Malays of Patani and the Thai State. He knows that his questionable tactics and gimmicks, like the half-baked amnesty Bring People Home Project, will not be scrutinized by the rest of the country or the senior policymakers in Bangkok.
It is a sad predicament, indeed, when a military commander thinks he is in a popularity contest, rather than trying to carry out a mission that is supposed to reconcile differences between the state and a member of its minority population.
(first published in The Nation – http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/opinion/30340111)
