Civil war escalating -- Europe must work for peace!

The civilian population in southern Thailand is suffering increasingly from the escalating civil war. This was pointed out by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) on Friday. "In the past ten days alone twelve peoples have been killed and 114 injured in attacks by liberation movements or by soldiers”, said the GfbV Asia consultant, Ulrich Delius. "Only 150 km from the beautiful beaches of Phuket there is arbitrary rule, terror and violence.” The European Union (EU) must no longer ignore the civil war in southern Thailand, which is steadily becoming worse, threatening other regions of south-east Asia, warned the GfbV in a letter to the present chair of the EU Council, the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt. The possibility cannot be ruled out that radical Islamists from other states will try to use the domestic Thai conflict for their own purposes.

The people of the south, for the most part Moslem Malayans, see themselves discriminated by Buddhist Thailand and want to regain their autonomy as the Sultanate of Patani, which was theirs for centuries. Neither the liberation movements working for an independent Patani nor the Thai security forces show any consideration for the civilian population. Since January 2004 more than 9,000 violent attacks were registered in Patani, in which at least 3,532 people died and 5,930 were injured.

"Since eleven believers were killed in a gun-attack on a mosque in June 2009 the violence has been escalating”, said Delius. As each month goes by more than 100 attacks, politically motivated murders, massacres and other attacks on civilians have been registered. While the Thai media report above all on murders committed on the Buddhist majority, the fact is that 55 percent of all victims of the violence belong to the Moslem minority. The "Association of Moslem Lawyers” has information on more than 1000 attacks by the 66,000 soldiers and police stationed in the region, but only in a few cases have prosecution proceedings been instituted by the authorities. Court cases normally end in the soldiers being acquitted.

"The violence is being stirred up by the arming of "village guards”, who usually belong to the Buddhist majority”, reported Delius. 102,000 civilians have now been organised as village guards in three militia forces. The government wants to see local militia set up in all 1,580 villages of southern Thailand. "In this way hatred is being sown between Buddhists and Moslems”, criticised Delius. Tens of thousands of guns are being supplied without any control in Patani, which is making the prospects of peace ever more remote. The dangers arising from the setting up of these militia units are made clear in the violent deaths of eleven Moslem believers. The authorities have come to the conclusion that militiamen are responsible for the bloodbath.