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SOUTHERN VIOLENCE: Govt must do more, Anand says
Published on July 07, 2005
NRC chief calls on PM to answer questions about abductions
Former prime minister Anand Panyarachun called on the government yesterday to pacify the seething deep South as soon as possible.
“If the government cannot halt daily atrocities in the region within a short period of time, it’ll be the government’s failure,” stressed Anand, who is chairman of the National Reconciliation Commission, an independent body working on solutions to tackle the southern unrest. “It’s the government’s job to keep peace in the country.”
“If a short-term solution cannot be found, a long-term solution will prove elusive as well,” Anand added.
He pointed out that the NRC had been set up because the government’s heavy-handed crackdown exacerbated roiling unrest over the past year, rather than alleviate it. “It’s the classic ‘one bandit is gunned down, only for another two to emerge’ scenario,” he said.
He urged the government to work on both prevention and suppression of violence.
Anand said violence in the deep South did not seem to be abating. He pointed out that a total of 2,000 attacks in the region had been reported over the past two years - more than the combined number of incidents in the previous decade.
He also noted that whereas security officials had generally failed to capture perpetrators of violent acts, many of those people captured later turn out to be innocent.
“Is the security officials’ failure to arrest wrongdoers because government officials and security officers had been involved? We have to find out the truth about that,” he said.
He added that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra needed to answer questions about alleged abductions of people by authorities if the public at large were not to begin suspecting that he had personally ordered them.
“The prime minister must take a stand and see investigations through,” he said. “None of the victims’ families we talked to were still harbouring grudges [against the government]. They just want the truth. If a society ceases to [be interested in] truths, that society ends up lacking in quality.”
He said Thaksin had already been given all the facts by the NRC pertaining to shootings and beheadings in the region, as well as information on the Kru Se Mosque and Tak Bai incidents.
The NRC found that 68 people at Tak Bai died while in government custody. Anand said officers had treated protesters “as if they were animals” as they were heaped in piles in the back of trucks.
“Locals are still waiting to be told who was responsible,” he added.
“I told the prime minister that locals do not believe government officials and even Thaksin himself due to a lack of sincerity on [the officials’] part, and also because some officials are involved in illegal activities,” Anand said.
He said that underlying the government’s flawed policy was a lack of understanding by officials about local cultural and religious traditions. He urged the government and its field officials to study the region’s history more closely.
Anand said solutions could be found if locals were afforded opportunities to voice their opinions and to participate in solving the problem, and authorities refrained from illegal methods such as abductions and killings. He also urged the government to accept the locals’ dignity and rights.
Suphon Thanukrit
The Nation |
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