Thailand - The Fourth Army, responsible for combating Islamic militants/Malay separatists and restoring peace in the predominantly Muslim deep South, has adopted a change of tactics in recent months. Going on the offensive, security forces have begun conducting more searches in areas known to have been infiltrated by insurgents. Suspected insurgents have been taken into custody and their caches of weapons confiscated in many of the towns and villages where raids have taken place. A number of insurgents have been killed or captured when resisting arrest. Thanks to military discipline, civilian casualties have so far been kept to a minimum.
More than 300 people, most believed to be insurgent sympathisers, have been rounded up and held for questioning by authorities under the martial law provisions. Active insurgents who have been involved in attacks on government security forces and innocent civilians are believed to have gone into hiding.
Perhaps this change in military strategy was designed to separate insurgents from the civilian population. Insurgents have been known to live among civilians in urban and rural communities in Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat.
Security forces say they are trying to flush out insurgents from the communities they have infiltrated in order to end their reign of terror, diminish the influence of the militants, and re-establish some semblance of law and order. They also claim that the military offensive will keep insurgents on the run and thereby limit their capacity to launch attacks against military targets or commit acts of terror against civilians. It remains to be seen whether the new military offensive will deliver the expected outcomes.
Being heavily scrutinised by both the media and civil society groups, military and police investigators have made sure prisoners are treated humanely. In cases where authorities have enough evidence to prosecute suspected insurgents, their rights to the due process of law and a fair trial in the courts will be fully respected.
Many of those being held by authorities will eventually be released and allowed to go back to their communities, either because there is not enough evidence to nail them for their crimes, and they are therefore presumed innocent, or because they are actually innocent.
But families of some of the prisoners now in the custody of the Fourth Army have lodged complaints stating that their relatives and loved ones should not have been rounded up in the first place as they had nothing to do with the insurgency. They said that some of the security forces‘ lists of suspects were based on bad intelligence or false information provided by informants who held grudges against them and wanted to get them into trouble with authorities.
Such complaints should be seriously investigated by the Fourth Army, not only because it would make its job of separating insurgents and their sympathisers from innocent civilians easier, but also because the security forces should avoid any actions that unnecessarily hamper the livelihood or disrupt the everyday lives of the people whom they are supposed to befriend and protect.
Many people couldn‘t help but be sceptical when they heard the announcement made by the Fourth Army yesterday that about 300 Muslim men who had been in custody under the state of emergency provisions - which allow authorities to hold them without charge for 30 days for questioning - had volunteered to undergo a specially-designed, religious education/skills-training programme that would last another four months.
The Fourth Army insisted that none of the 300-plus prisoners were coerced into taking part in the programme. Under the course, they will be divided into three groups of 100 and attend religious lessons given by Muslim leaders and scholars. At the same time they will undertake skills training courses to learn trades such as electrical wire installation and hair cutting, among others.
There is no doubt that such programmes were designed with the noble intention to promote understanding of a peaceful Islam and to give the inmates useful skills so that they can make a decent living. The key is for officials to make absolutely sure that inmates who don‘t want to take part in the programme can say no without fear of consequences.
Source: nationmultimedia.com (16 Agustus 2007)