From what started off as an immigration technicality that could have been handled by agencies at the local level, the 131 Thai Muslims taking shelter in northern Malaysia have effectively become an international issue putting Thailand and Malaysia, once again, at loggerheads.

The United Nations refugee agency began interviewing the 131 Thai Muslims this week and yesterday former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammed weighed in, suggesting they should be given asylum.

In spite of Thailand’s objection to “internationalising” the incident, Kuala Lumpur decided earlier this week to broaden the issue by bringing the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) into the picture.

Bangkok was dumbstruck, left with nothing much to say other saying that these 131 people, who no longer trust government security forces to treat them fairly, were not refugees.

From the onset, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was quick to brand the 131 as troublemakers. He said some in the group were suspected insurgents involved in the ongoing violence in the region. Moreover, he suggested that locals were to blame for the unrest, which he said could be stopped if they would cooperate with authorities by pointing out the insurgents.

Thaksin and his crew are likely prejudging Muslims in the restive South as usually harbouring insurgents and cooperating with militants to make trouble for the government. None of the concerned agencies have ever scrutinised the incident in Narathiwat’s Ban Rahan to get a clear picture about what really happened those statements were made.

According to the villagers’ account, after the murder of an imam in the village on August 29 local residents lost faith in the state’s justice system and barred security officials from entering their village. They believed government officials were involved in the murder because the iman, Satohpa Yusoh, had told witnesses before he was shot dead that he was being followed by officials who thought he was one of the key insurgents in the strife-torn region.

He gave instructions not to allow any local government official to perform an autopsy on his dead body as they could distort the evidence.

As 100 villagers, including women and children, blocked the road to obstruct security officials from inspecting the murder scene, the government threatened to use the new emergency decree to punish them. Shortly thereafter, the Muslims fled across the border.

The intelligence mill fed sketchy information to upper government levels, including Narathiwat Governor Pracha Therat who later told The Nation that the refugee stunt was just propaganda by the insurgents who wanted to paint a bad impression of the government. They used women and children to invoke sympathy from the international community. As Thaksin put it, the insurgents tried to “internationalise” the issue.

In fact, it was Thaksin himself who internationalised the issue when he sent a blurred signal to Kuala Lumpur that the group of 131 included militants. As the issue grew heated, Malaysia stepped back and left the task to the UNHCR.

Now that the UN is involved the issue could snowball into a much bigger controversy. The worst scenario is that the group establishes a case for political asylum on the grounds that as minority Muslims they are being oppressed by a Buddhist-dominated government.

This would be the first time for Thailand to suffer the same bitter feelings as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma did in the 1970s and 1980s when their populations sought safety in neighbouring countries – mostly in Thailand.

Thaksin and his foreign minister, Kantathi Suphamongkhon, need to learn more about how to deal with Malaysia. A simple phone call to cannot end bilateral problems at a time when politicians in Malaysia want to raise their profiles in internationally and the Islamic world. Malaysia is now the chairman of Asean and the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

Bangkok’s missteps will only turn into international credit for Kuala Lumpur.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation