Global IssuesTHAILAND: Malaysian PM Heads to Thailand for Groundbreaking Visit
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak will pen a new chapter in his country’s relationship with Thailand during an upcoming visit. He will be the first Malaysian leader to venture into Thailand’s southern provinces, where an insurgency has been raging for nearly six years.
Najib’s six-hour foray into the province of Narathiwat, on Dec. 9, illustrates the significance of the troubled region in the ties that bind the two countries. For one, Narathiwat and its neighbouring provinces of Pattani and Yala are home to the Malay-Muslims, the largest minority in predominantly Buddhist Thailand.
Beyond that is an acknowledgment among some within Thailand’s political establishment that a solution to the unrest in the provinces close to the Thai-Malaysian border requires help from Kuala Lumpur.
The latest cycle of violence, pitting a shadowy network of Malay-Muslim rebels against the heavily armed Thai military, has seen close to 4,000 deaths since early January 2004.
And the insurgency shows no sign of easing. On Friday, two soldiers and two civilians were injured when a motorcycle bomb exploded near an open market in Pattani. Such attacks — including roadside bombs and gunmen on motorcycles — have been the favoured choice of the rebels in targeting their enemies.
Thai authorities are not unduly worried, adding that Najib’s willingness to visit Narathiwat is a measure of his faith in the Thai military to ensure adequate security. 'It is proof of (his) confidence in the security arrangements,' says a Thai foreign ministry official.
Najib, who began his term in April, will be leading a high-powered delegation that will include nine ministers during his first official visit to Thailand, from Dec. 7 to 9. His visit to the south will include a stop at the Arkiah Islamiah Institute, which has over 4,000 students and offers a curriculum in secular and Islamic studies.
Najib’s visit comes at a particularly sensitive time for the Thai government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. The latter has kept the Malay-Muslim minority guessing about what exactly his policies are to solve unrest and to act on his preferred solutions.
When Abhisit was the leader of the opposition and soon after he began his term as premier a year ago, he placed his faith in a political response — instead of a military one — to ensure a lasting peace. He has also offered an olive branch to the Muslim minority by declaring, in November, that counter insurgency operations would be balanced with greater respect for justice to address continuing human rights violations.
But the moment a former prime minister and the leader of the opposition party suggested a form of self-rule in the three southern provinces as an apt political solution to the violence, Abhisit’s coalition government did another of its policy flip-flops. Chavalit Yongchaiyud’s proposal was rejected by the Abhisit administration, which labelled the idea of limited autonomy as 'traitorous.'
'People have begun to question Abhisit’s sincerity and his statements on the south,' says Sunai Phasuk, Thai researcher for the global rights lobby Human Rights Watch. 'He was a supporter of some form of autonomy in the south till Chavalit made his proposal. Then he changed his mind and shot it down.'
The government’s policy flip-flops on the south mirror a wider problem in Thailand. 'The Thai public don’t have a sympathy and understanding of the desire by the Malay-Muslims for greater participation in politics,' Sunai tells IPS. 'The same is also the case for human rights violations in the south, so the government gets away saying the right things but not following through with actions.'
Najib, himself, has weighed into this discussion. He told two of Thailand’s English-language dailies in October that the Thai government should consider a form of autonomy to the three southern provinces. The reaction in Thailand was mixed.
It was a different scenario in 2005, when the relationship between the two countries hit a low point. Thailand’s prime minister at the time, the abrasive and increasingly authoritarian Thaksin Shinawatra, did not take too kindly to Malaysia opening its borders for 131 Malay-Muslims to flee the violence in the southern provinces.
That act of mercy by Malaysia came after its former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, went public in 2004 urging Thailand to consider some form of autonomy for the three border provinces.
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who was the Malaysian premier between the Mahathir administration and Najib’s, took a different approach towards solutions for Thailand’s minority. He pursued a track of quiet diplomacy through his 'Three Es' policy, offering Kuala Lumpur’s help through education, employment and entrepreneurship for the Malay-Muslims.
Malaysian interest in Thailand’s south stems from the many Malay-Muslims having family and economic ties on both sides of the border. The many access points and the porous stretches have enabled easy movement of people.
Such links are rooted in history, when the provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani belonged to the Pattani kingdom, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known. Since then the Malay-Muslims — who have a different language and culture from the majority Thais — have complained of cultural, economic and political marginalisation.
In the 1960s, a previous generation of Malay-Muslim militants launched a separatist campaign that lasted through the 1980s. Some of those leaders took refuge in Malaysia.
No wonder civilians from the region welcome Najib’s visit to the south. 'He should have talks with the Thai government in order to solve the political and human rights problems,' says Abdul Aziz Tade-in, advisor to the Yala branch of the Young Muslim Association of Thailand. 'Malaysia has a role to play.'
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service