Thai Muslims fearful of emergency security law
Tue 19 Jul 2005
By Sasithorn Simaporn KRONG PENANG, Thailand, July 19 (Reuters) - A new emergency security law which critics say smacks of dictatorship in Thailand's troubled Muslim south has left people confused and fearing it will inflame tensions, rather than calm them.
As the cabinet designated the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat "severe emergency zones" subject to special Prime Ministerial powers, Buddhists and Muslims wondered if the security revamp decreed at the weekend would do any good.
"Every time the government comes up with a new policy, things seem to get worse," said Pareesan Deelae, 25, a teacher at a Muslim religious school in Yala, a sleepy provincial town hit by coordinated bomb and arson attacks last week.
More than 800 people have been killed in the far south in 19 months of violence which is looking increasingly like a resurgent Muslim separatist insurgency.
Pareesan said authorities were too quick to accuse Muslims, 80 percent of the region's nearly 2 million people, of involvement in violence even when people such as a friend of hers caught up in the Yala chaos were just bystanders.
"He was frightened by an explosion, so he sped away on his motorcycle, but police were chasing him," she said, adding the man had not yet returned home for fear of being detained.
The "Emergency Powers Law", described as "martial law plus" by one Bangkok-based diplomat, gives Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra power to impose curfews, censor news, ban public meetings, tap phones and hold suspects without charge.
But after an outcry from the opposition, pro-democracy campaigners and the media, who likened it to Germany's Nazi-era Gestapo secret police, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said wiretaps and censors would not be enforced for now.
The decree would ensure better treatment for detainees, since court orders would be needed to hold them for a permitted 30 days, he said. Under the region's recently rescinded martial law, no court such order was required.
However, Muslim clerics in the far south, an independent sultanate until it was annexed by Bangkok a century ago, said the decree still gave excessive power to the police and army, raising fears of a repeat of atrocities such as the deaths of 78 Muslims in army custody at Tak Bai in October.
"We don't want to see another Tak Bai," said Narathiwat Islamic committee chief Abdulrahman Abdulsahad. "This law implies that the government would resort to violence again."
However, some businessmen said a policy of strength was probably needed given that various olive branches and promises of development aid had brought no positive results.
"This strong law might help. Attempts at reconciliation brought two or three killings a day," said Somboon Boonthamrongkit, the Buddhist head of Narathiwat Chamber of Commerce.
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