Daniel Pedersen

The Courier Mail

September 2004

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

five people, including two policemen, were killed in a bombing and separate shooting attacks early yesterday in the violence-plagued south of Thailand, police said.

A mobile phone-triggered device apparently targeted a unit of four police officers during a security inspection to prepare safe passage for teachers on their way to school, Colonel Term Intarasara of the local police said.

Two police died at the scene, and another was critically injured, while the fourth suffered minor injuries.

The bomb exploded about two kilometres from the school in Sungai Padi district of Narathiwat.

"The police were on foot clearing a path before allowing teachers to go through, and the bomb planted on the roadside exploded," Col. Term said.

Two days earlier two marines were killed by villagers in the Narathiwat district who had blamed them for an earlier shooting.

The execution of the two bound and gagged soldiers marked an ominous escalation in Thailand’s grinding civil conflict.

On Wednesday, Sub-lieutenant Vinai Nabut and Petty Officer Kamthon Thongeiat, were accused by an angry mob of involvement in a teashop shooting in which two people were killed and four wounded.

They were taken hostage and by midday on Thursday the first photos of their mutilated bodies, still hobbled, were widely available.

State forensic chief Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunan said the bodies displayed evidence of torture.

The villagers alleged the soldiers had opened fire on civilians at the teashop under the legal protection of an emergency decree over the area. The villagers’ claims have been met with harried denials among military and government spokesmen.

After the teashop shooting on Tuesday night, women and children encircled the village, saying nothing, but presenting a formidable human barrier to troops.

Their vigil was maintained and the two soldiers rounded up and accused of murder.

The fate of the two marines had hung in the balance as government negotiators and villagers met late into the night.

Eventually, by noon Wednesday, it was announced a deal had been struck and the soldiers would be released. But within 18 hours they were both dead.

Police described the soldiers’ deaths as brutal, involving machetes and sticks.

It is alleged young villagers killed the soldiers as Muslim elders took their midday prayers and the government negotiating team ate lunch.

Negotiators were first alerted to the news when called by a journalist reporting the stand-off.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has sworn to bring the killers of his soldiers to justice.

"I have instructed officials to do what they should do," the Prime Minister said during a press conference late on Thursday.

"Don’t be afraid of anything, otherwise they could die like the two marines. All blame, if any, should come directly to me."

The village in question, Ban Tanyonglimo, is in an area declared by the military as "red".

The military defines areas as green, yellow and red. Red indicates the most danger.

Narathiwat province is Thailand’s southern frontier territory bordering Malaysia.

There are 312 red zone villages, 129 green zones considered peaceful and 133 yellow zones, where everyone is considered a suspect.

The National Reconciliation Council set up by Mr Thaksin as a think-tank to lead state policy has been dealt a thankless task in the southern province.

One council member, Ahmedi-Somboon Bualuang, said this week’s killings were absolute proof that villagers in the south no longer trusted the Thai Government or Mr Thaksin’s rule.

ENDS

January 30, 2009

By Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sod

As night closes in on Noe Poh refugee camp, about five hours south of Mae Sot, the road that skirts its edge clears of people.

By 9pm, should anyone be reckless enough to light a candle, Karen National Liberation Army soldiers will quickly ensure it is extinguished.

By now though, after two weeks of bolstered security in the face of intrusions upon Thailand’s sovereignty by Burmese government-backed fighters, mostly no one would be foolish enough to dare light their surroundings.

No one moves from their ramshackle perches in the night, a strict curfew is policed by both Thai soldiers and KNLA foot patrols.

Two weeks ago the camp was shutting down at 8.45 sharp, but one inhabitant said the “situation has calmed down a lot now”.

Just weeks ago brazen sorties by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a force aligned with Burma’s brutal ruling military junta, had everyone on edge.

DKBA “spies”, Karens not part of the camp population, were intercepted creeping around in the darkness four nights in a row.

So paranoid were camp security officers that, at the height of tensions in the area around the camp, one accused spy was arrested and executed.

“I don’t think he had a trial,” said Carl Browne, one of two foreign teachers working at the camp.

“They’ve caught nine or 10 so far,” he said, adding that a committee member of the school at which he teaches, the ESC (for English Speaking Course), came across three in one night.

The word “course” in the school’s name replaces college, because Thai authorities do not allow colleges, which would suggest permanency.

Serious fighting has come as close as 10 kilometres to Noe Poh camp.

The DKBA is pursuing remnants of the KNLA’s 103 Special Battalion, which early this year lost its base camp further north.

As the KNLA unit pulls back into ever-higher mountains in the south it lays landmines, creating a constant stream of DKBA casualties, the most serious of which are admitted to Umphang Hospital, run by the Thai government.

The base camp of 103 was one of the last two KNLA Sixth Brigade footprints in Karen State.

Its loss means only Wah Lay Kee, further north, remains.

A foreign donor who helps fund the Karen struggle for recognition said he felt KNLA commanders now accepted Wah Lay Kee would also be lost.

“I think, just strategically, because they’re so outnumbered, they figure it is better to keep the soldiers safe by keeping them on the move,” he said.

DKBA and SPDC troops have been poised to take Wah Lay Kee at their liberty for weeks now, but have not yet launched a final push.

But the Thais know Wah Lay Kee is bound to fall and vigilant patrols have sealed the border, waiting to deter any combatants or civilians fleeing the fighting from limping into Thai territory.

The foreign donor explained the apparent reticence of DKBA and SPDC troops thus: “They’re not keen to go in because they know the place will be booby-trapped and there won’t be anyone there.

“And they know they will take casualties.”

Benedict Rogers, author of “A Land Without Evil” lamented 103’s loss over coffee in Mae Sot.

“You know I come here two, maybe three times a year and every visit another bit of land is lost.

“I see that they [KNU/KNLA] are being ground further and further down,” he said, shaking his head.

On this visit Mr Rogers will meet with the Karen National Union’s new leadership, filled with hope the KNU can revitalise its struggle against Burma’s State Peace and Development Council.

“You know since Mahn Sha’s death (the former KNU secretary-general who was assassinated at his home near Mae Sot on February 14, 2008) there’s not been any real leadership.

“He was a unifying figure who drew together different strands of opinion, religion and he maintained links with the various democracy groups. He saw the big picture.”

Mr Rogers said the SPDC’s latest offensives, which began in Karen State but have now pushed into Shan and Karenni States, are part of an outright bid to force armed insurgencies into submission before the 2010 elections.

Burman dissidents in Mae Sot agreed, saying the SPDC would pressure insurgents weakened by the current extreme military offensives to sign ceasefire deals before next year’s poll.

Mr Rogers said he feared the international community, irritated and embarrassed by the junta’s violent and belligerent excesses, might be willing to accept a veneer of calm, no matter how artificial it might be.

“That’s particularly the case with Asian countries, they’re tired of it” he said.

The “official” population of Noe Poh camp is about 14,000, but each week new arrivals bolster that figure, as Thai brokers deliver their quarry hidden in cars or trucks.

People living in the camp, which is largely forgotten by the constant stream of foreign volunteer teachers, Christian groups and non-governmental organisations that pour into more accessible camps during the dry season, say passage from Mae Sot to Noe Poh costs about 5000 baht.

A teacher working at the camp says once fugitives make it to Noe Poh, they’re safe.

“The real issue is getting in,” he said.

“But because we’re so far away from Mae Sot, we sort of get forgotten, or left alone – we have internet cafes, we have shops.

“There’s more and more activists seeking refuge at Noe Poh, from Rangoon, former political prisoners, there’s more than in Mae La even.

“That’s why Noe Poh is really under pressure, the junta wants to clean up before next year,” he said.

People living at Noe Poh know full well the junta wants to destroy the camp.

“Hell, the DKBA even contacted the Thai camp commander and said ‘get your people out, we’re coming in to burn it down’,” the teacher said.

“The camp commander said no.”

ENDS

The Courier Mail

March 5, 2005

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THERE are deaths almost daily in the dirt-poor Muslim-dominated south of the country that borders Malaysia.

The Government blames Muslim separatists and terrorists for the conflict gripping the region, as the body count grinds its way towards 1000 in little more than a year.

The one-party Government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra considers the kingdom’s three southernmost provinces, far and away Thailand’s poorest, as hotbeds of separatism and has announced his determination to quash any uprising.

This is a spectacular turnaround from July 23, 2002, when Mr Thaksin downplayed any suggestion of ideological conflict in the south, claiming bandits, not separatists, were behind the violence.

This was shortly after two heads were found in a bag in Yala province with a note promising more to come.

On February 17 this year, in the wake of a car bomb explosion that killed five people and injured 40 others, Mr Thaksin declared that not an inch of Thailand would be ceded to separatists even if blood covered the land.

His emotional statement was made hours after an explosives-laden pickup truck was remotely detonated outside a restaurant strip a few minutes after 7pm on a Thursday.

Mr Thaksin has just won another four years in office with the country’s largest election victory. But only one of his candidates managed victory in the south. Political commentators have suggested the country is divided as never before.

Bolstered by his landslide, Mr Thaksin has vowed to get tough.

He proposed cutting development funding to 350 villages considered hostile to the Government.

But he backtracked after howls of protest and the proposal has been shelved.

Mr Thaksin’s recent dispatch of another 12,000 troops to the south does not inspire confidence among any observers that hostilities will cease soon.

A squad trained in psychological warfare is included in the fresh contingent.

On Tuesday, the US State Department, in its annual human rights report, drew attention to the southern violence.
The report referred to what has become known as the Tak Bai massacre.

On October 25 last year, at least 85 unarmed Muslims died in custody. Seven were shot dead and another 78 died of suffocation after 1300 people were piled in the back of military trucks, face-down with their hands tied behind their backs.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Asia division executive director Brad Adams said the Thaksin administration was turning the clock back on human rights.

He cited the case of a human rights lawyer, Somchai Neelaphaijit, who disappeared almost a year ago and is presumed dead.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

April 20, 2005

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THAILAND’S top security officials have asked mobile telephone service providers to demand identification from pre-paid card users in a bid to stop remote detonation of bombs.

Insurgents in the country’s three southernmost provinces have been using pre-paid mobile telephones, cards for which are available for as little as 50 baht (64 cents), to detonate explosive devices.

Should the new regulations be introduced, which seems almost certain, Thai citizens will have to provide their 13-digit national identification numbers before buying a card.

Foreigners will have to give their passport number.

There are about 22 million pre-paid cards in circulation at any one time in this country of 62 million people.

Mobile telephone companies have said they are willing to implement the measures.

But they say that cancelling services to those individuals who refuse to show ID for cards already in use may prove a legal stumbling block.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said a balance would have to be found between convenience and national security.

The defence heavyweights proposing the measures are looking to close a loophole in security laws that has allowed Muslim insurgents in the deep south to direct a campaign of terror.

Similar to tactics employed in Iraq, the separatists have been setting off a bomb, luring police and military bomb squads to the scene, only to remotely detonate more explosive devices, often causing fatalities and devastating injuries.

But the targets for such bombings have now broadened, and defence officials have undoubtedly been spurred into action by the triple bombing on Sunday, April 3, that killed two people and wounded scores.

The lounge area of Hat Yai International Airport, the main air terminal of the restive south, was targeted with a bomb detonated by mobile telephone.

The airport, a department store and a hotel were targeted.

Critically injured at the airport was four-year-old boy Patcharapol Charoensil, or Hong Te, and his plight captured the hearts of a nation.

Yesterday Hong Te had regained consciousness and taken a few shaky steps before preparing to leave Hat Yai Hospital’s intensive care unit.

"He is out of danger," said Deputy Public Health Minister Anuthin Charnveerakul.

"His doctors plan to keep him under close medical observation for another week, after which he will be released from ICU."

One of the first questions Hong Te asked his mother was the whereabouts of his dad.

His father, Nattapol Charoensil, 39, was killed trying to shield his son from the blast.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

April 29, 2005

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THAI security forces are using "blacklists" to identify suspected insurgents in their campaign to crush a stubborn Muslim insurgency in the country’s south.

But villagers from the region say people named on the lists are being hunted down and summarily executed by government forces.

Some have fled to neighbouring Malaysia seeking asylum, claiming Thai Government soldiers have targeted their villages in seek-and-destroy raids.

Thousands of innocent civilians have died in the conflict, which the Government says began in January 2004. Many of those killed were gunned down on lonely back roads in the early hours of the morning by assailants never identified.

Army chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin this week admitted blacklists were being used and questioned the process by which people were named on those lists.

He suggested personal grudges might be involved in some cases.

People on the lists are divided into four categories: suspects with arrest warrants, militant leaders, cell members and militant sympathisers.

General Sonthi’s revelations confirmed allegations that blacklists existed, claims that first surfaced in mid-2004, about six months after the situation in the south spiralled out of control.

Drive-by shootings, bombings and even beheadings are now common throughout the territory.

Under a law passed in September last year known as the "emergency decree", security forces have been granted virtual immunity in the face of human rights abuses, much to the dismay of groups such as Amnesty International.

Former prime minister and National Reconciliation Council chairman Anand Panyarachun has criticised the decree as a "licence to kill".

The NRC was formed in a bid to halt the killing and ease tensions between the region’s Muslims and Buddhists.

The Government won widespread praise for selecting Mr Anand — a man held in high esteem. But he has since become a vocal critic of the Government and its tactics.

On Thursday, the army conceded a review of the blacklists was necessary, pledging to open the way for Muslim leaders to review the names. Many people on the lists are "ustatz", or religious teachers.

So commonplace has the murder of teachers become in the region that thousands have requested transfers.

Admitting the existence of blacklists will do nothing for the Government’s standing in the south, which could hardly be worse.

ENDS

CITY EXTRA LATE

Thailand’s top administrative court last night suspended a by-election scheduled this weekend in what could be a first step towards annulling this month’s general election.

The Supreme Administrative Court ordered the Election Commission to cancel its plans to hold a third by-election today in an effort to fill the 500 seats in the lower house of parliament, on the grounds that the court was investigating whether the April 2 snap election had been conducted in an inappropriate manner.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

September 10, 2005

Thailand

Muslims caught up in the violence of Thailand’s south say they are being forced to leave by security forces, reports Daniel Pedersen

MORE than 130 people have fled southern Thailand, claiming security forces are hunting down suspected insurgents under new laws granting government officials virtual impunity in the face of human rights abuses.

The group of Muslim villagers seeking asylum in Malaysia constitutes the first refugees of an escalating armed conflict in the kingdom’s south.

Malaysia fears this could be the beginning of an exodus of Muslims from the south.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has dismissed the matter as a case of dirty tactics employed by Muslim insurgents.

He claims the appearance of asylum seekers is a ploy to internationalise the conflict.

The Muslim villagers have claimed they fled security forces hunting suspected insurgents.

They were being interviewed by the UN, and if the UN High Commissioner for Refugees rules they have a case for refuge, Malaysia would almost certainly grant them visas.

It was Malaysia, against strong opposition from Thailand, that invited the UNHCR to interview the group.

At this point Malaysia considers them illegal aliens, but the UNHCR has asked they not be repatriated until its investigation is complete.

One thing is sure: The people have left an area of Thailand rife with armed clashes.

Daily images from the conflict are increasingly gruesome; headless corpses fly-blown in the tropical heat, the aftermath of fatal car-bombings, the splintered remains of restaurants and police gathering body parts from streets.

On Wednesday, the feisty elder statesman of Malaysian politics, Mahathir Mohamad, weighed in to the refugee debate, saying: "I think if these people are real refugees then we need to give them asylum." Similar sentiment is emanating from Kuala Lumpur.

The Thai foreign ministry maintains the episode is nothing more than a bid by insurgents to smear Thailand’s name for its treatment of its Muslim minority.

The Government is also adamant most of the violence is not related to Muslim insurgents.

In calling on police to clear a backlog and expedite their investigations, Justice Minister Chidchai Vansathidya said last week there had to be division among criminal acts and the insurgency.

"Of all the murders that have happened in the deep south, I think no more than a third are related to the unrest," he said.

That percentage would mean since January last year only about 300 people had been killed as a result of insurgent-related violence, and 600 or more were executed as a result of ruthless criminal vendettas.

In the first week of this month, casualty figures paint a bleak picture. On September 1, 10 people were wounded when two hotels and a market were bombed. The same day, a worker was gunned down in a rubber plantation, a teacher wounded in a drive-by shooting and two rubber-tappers, a husband and wife, were shot dead on their way to work.

On September 2, a spate of 20 bomb blasts killed three and wounded 26 in a 24-hour period, a police officer was also shot dead and a teacher gunned down.

At dawn on September 3, a monk gathering alms escorted by two police officers and a passing cyclist were wounded in a bomb blast. That afternoon another two men were shot dead in separate attacks, one while picking up his daughter from school and another having dinner at home. Also that day, a villager was shot dead in front of his house, and another while tending his cattle.

On the same day, suspected insurgents killed four people. One was shot four times, then doused with petrol, torched and left to die.

He was not the first to die in such a manner.

Another point-blank shooting came the next day.

Later in the week two people were gunned down in separate incidents, a woman was killed and three seriously injured by a car bomb. Then a Thai Muslim villager and a Buddhist truck driver were killed in separate attacks.

Amid the carnage, Thai Muslims detained in Malaysia claim their village leader was executed by government forces.

The Government has denied this, and on Thursday accused Islamic separatist group the Pattani United Liberation Organisation of orchestrating their flight to stir trouble.

ENDS

The Courier Mail

November 12, 2005

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THAILAND has confronted the spectre of ethnic cleansing this week as civil conflict escalated in its Muslim-dominated southern provinces.

Interior Vice-Minister Kosin Ketthong suggested starting a program of transmigration within the kingdom to stack the south with Buddhists.

It was his first proposal since being put to work to try and quell a revolt that has killed more than 1000 people since January last year.

Mr Kosin floated the idea on Wednesday, suggesting Buddhists from the country’s poor northeast could assimilate with the equally-poor Muslim majority in the south to reduce extremism in the region.

By Thursday night the Government had moved to distance itself from Mr Kosin’s statements, claiming the proposal had never really been seriously considered.

The Vice-Minister’s suggestion came the same day the powerful former deputy prime minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh proposed rewriting history books.

His suggestion was a reaction to insurgents who claimed a Muslim-dominated south, once known as Pattani Darussalam, had existed for 600 years before Thailand. Disputing this, Mr Chavalit told an audience at Kasetsart University: "Hence we need to revise history for better understanding."

He said Culture Minister Uraiwan Thienthong should commission a panel to revise historical accounts.

The Islamic militant group, the Pattani United Liberation Organisation, which in the past has fought for a separate state in the south, just days ago warned this latest conflict could degenerate into war between religions unless Bangkok granted the south self-government.

The PULO was active in the 1970s, but had splintered and largely disintegrated by the mid-1990s. Some of its remaining leaders live in exile in Europe.

The group has begun issuing statements about the insurgency and there have been persistent allegations it is involved in conflict.

Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon was this week quick to dismiss self-rule. "We are not a federal system," he said. "We don’t have the concept of autonomy within our constitution."

The night before Mr Kosin floated his idea for a transmigration program, 15-year-old Chakri Songpimai found himself in the most dire of circumstances.

While driving through Narathiwat’s Rangae district with his father Chaovalit, 41, the owner of Pornchai Enterprise Company, six gunmen fired on their pickup.

Mr Chaovalit’s body was riddled with bullets and he died instantly. Chakri was badly wounded, taking hits to the right leg and left hand, but managed to drive 3km, his dead father alongside, to a roadside security checkpoint.

Mr Chaovalit’s death was one among more than a dozen in the south this week, while government infrastructure, already creaking from almost two years of bombings, shootings and arson attacks again took heavy hits.

Two car bombings on Tuesday targeted a provincial education office and the Yala City Hall. The driver of one of the vehicles blown up miraculously escaped.

Fourteen vehicles were destroyed in the two attacks and five people wounded.

The bombings came less than 24 hours after militants launched 20 co-ordinated attacks against government targets.

Five people, including two militants, were killed and two injured in ensuing gun battles.

ENDS