World Muslim delegation probes south Thai unrest
Thu 2 Jun 2005
By Ed Cropley
BANGKOK, June 2 (Reuters) - An Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) delegation arrived in Thailand on Thursday on a fact-finding mission to the Muslim far south, where almost 700 people have been killed in 18 months of unrest.
Sayed El-Masri, a former Assistant Secretary General of the 57-nation Saudi-based group, said he would meet Muslim leaders in Thailand's three southernmost provinces, as well as relatives of victims of last October's incident in the village of Tak Bai, in which 78 Muslim men died in army custody.
Foreign Ministry officials would also brief him on the government's side of the trouble, which flared in January 2004 after guerrillas stormed an army barracks, killing four soldiers and stealing hundreds of assault rifles.
"After the end of the mission we will see what we can do together in order to address these problems that the Thai government itself was the first to realise," El-Masri said.
The government has imposed martial law in parts of the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which all border Malaysia, at the same time as offering lavish development aid and regional assistance.
However, neither the iron first or olive branch approach seems to have made any impact. Shootings, bombings and arson attacks mainly against official, Buddhist targets have become daily occurrences.
No group has claimed responsibility for the unrest, which appears to be purely anti-government, but security analysts fear it is only a matter of time before it attracts international militant groups such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Even though he said his was a purely investigative mission in the troubled Muslim-majority region, which has a century-long history of violent separatism from Bangkok, El-Masri held out the prospect of eventual OIC mediation.
His team kicked off its tour, which runs until June 13, with a visit to Sawas Sumalyasak, President of the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand, and one of the foremost figures in the country's six million strong Muslim community.
He refused to criticise the government in public for its handling of the unrest, especially Tak Bai and the storming of a mosque in April 2004.
However, Prasarn Sricharoen, a spokesman for Sawas, said the OIC was far from satisfied with official explanations and the government's failure to ensure officers in the army and police were punished.
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