“The violence [at Narathiwat’s Ban Tanyonglimo] was apparently aimed at provoking the government and public anger, thus leading to tough suppression [measures],” commission deputy chairman Prawase Wasi said.

But the commission strongly urged the government and security officials not to react with violence or use illegal methods in its response in order to minimise further confrontation, he said.

The NRC decided to go public with its appeal in response to the hostage drama at Tanyonglimo last Wednesday. Two marines were tortured and beaten to death because it was believed they were involved in a shooting the previous day at a village teashop in which two villagers died and four others were injured.

Authorities believe the two marines were not involved in the shooting but instead were lured into a trap set by militants.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shina-watra set the tone for the authorities reaction to the murders in his weekly radio programme on Saturday.

Thaksin called the militants “wild animals”. He said the two marines would not die for nothing, and instructed officials to take tough action against militants. The PM said he would take the blame for any “mistakes” made by the authorities.

NRC chairman Anand Panya-rachun said it was acceptable for the premier to take responsibility. In fact, he should have taken responsibility when the violence erupted nearly two years ago.

The NRC expressed regret for the two incidents and condemned the violence and the people behind the brutality. It urged concerned agencies to speed up investigation and bring those involved to justice.

Narathiwat Provincial Court has issued 22 arrest warrants and four suspects have been de-tained in connection with the murder of the two marines. But no progress has been made on the teashop killings.

Prawase demanded the government treat both cases with equal sincerity.

The commission has suggested the government and residents in the deep South should set up joint community peace committees to provide channels of communication to help to build trust between the government and local people.

“We are in a situation where local people and the government do not trust each other, so we need this mechanism to reduce the mistrust,” Prawase said.

The NRC deputy suggested government officials work closely with religious leaders during the fasting month of Ramadan, which begins next Tuesday.

In the last 10 days of the holy month, he noted, officials on the ground should know that Muslims would be spending most of their time in mosques praying, not plotting any violence.

To Prawes, the government’s handling of the hostage drama was a political victory as officials resisted a military crackdown to free the two marines.

The militants, however, lost creditability, he said, because the torture and murder of the hostages was not justified. The government should take advantage of this to win hearts and minds.

“Victory in guerrilla warfare like [at] this time is judged by the support of the local people,” he said. “If the government wins the hearts and minds of the people, it will win the war.”

Prawes urged the government to call a national workshop to boost unity among all parties, including the media, and to map out a strategy to end the troubles.

The NRC is now working on its own master plan for the government to solve the violence. The comprehensive plan will be submitted to the government by February, Anand said.

The commission, created in March, is tasked with peace and reconciliation in the troubled region where vast majority of people are Malay Muslims descended from the Pattani sultanate before it was annexed by Siam in 1909.

But separatism is unacceptable to most Thais. Anand has said he does not agree with a division, and lashed out at state-run media for distorting his opinion over the issue.

“I have never said the three southernmost provinces belong to Malaysia as reported by some state media,” Anand said. The region was recognised by the international community, including the United Nations 96 years ago, he said.

Anand said he trusted all senior Malaysian politicians not to intervene in Thailand’s domestic affairs. As a neighbouring country, many had raised concerns over the violence in the same way some Thai officials had raised concerns over problems in Burma, he said.

The government insisted yesterday the problem was a domestic affair and should not be brought before Asean.

Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said his government would not consider a suggestion by Malaysian Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein to ask Asean to help find a solution to end the 20 month-old conflict.

“We are ready to discuss it with any country who shares our concern, but the issue should not be put onto the Asean agenda,” he said.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation

When the villagers of Ban Tanyonglimo last week demanded that Malaysian journalists cover the 19-hour hostage drama in the remote Narathiwat hamlet, it should have been a wake-up call for local media and government officials.

The attitude of the villagers added a new dimension to the ongoing violence in the deep South, it was not just a delay tactic in the negotiations to free the two kidnapped marines.

The villagers showed the world that Thai reporters were not reliable enough to cover such a critical situation because they are too close to state agencies.

One woman at the scene said the Thai media was too cosy with the military and many journalists have personal relationships with soldiers.

The woman’s assessment was not completely wrong as local media usually rely on security officials as sources of information for their reports of violence in the deep South. They routinely quote officials and rarely seek the opinions of local residents.

Reports of the aftermath of the Tanyonglimo hostage drama was a good example of this, because more than 80 per cent of the coverage was devoted to stories of the two marines being beaten to death.

The media filed few stories about the fatal shooting incident at the village teashop, which sparked the hostage drama in the first place.

Two villagers were killed and four others were injured at the teashop on Tuesday night. The villagers subsequently took the marines hostage because they thought the soldiers were behind the attack.

Journalists interviewed everybody connected with the two marines, including their families. But only a few paragraphs in some newspapers were dedicated to the casualties at the teashop.

Media outlets gave full coverage to reports that warrants were issued for the arrest of nearly 20 suspects in connection with the death of the two marines, but little was reported about the progress of the shooting at the teashop.Unbalanced reporting on the deep South was first seen after the Tak Bai incident in October last year, when the Thai media failed to tell the whole story and the local Muslim residents had to rely on the Malaysian media.

It is little wonder that the residents of the Muslim-dominated region feel that the Thai media, particularly the electronic media, are nothing more than mouthpiece for the state. In reality, the government and the military have used state-run media, mainly television and radio stations, to air public relations news items.

The demand by the villagers of Tanyonglimo to have the Malaysian media report the hostage drama is an indication that they wanted balanced reporting to counter what they consider to be Bangkok’s distortion of information. The demand to control information has raised another concern that local residents – or perhaps the militants, if the assumption that the militants manipulated the incident is correct – have started a new game that the government is not keen to play.

The militants, who have apparently won the hearts of the local Muslims, have shown several times that they are more able than the government to control the different dimensions of the battle. They know that they can use the people as a shield.

During his weekly radio programme on Saturday, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra rejected the idea that Tanyonglimo is a “liberated zone” and said not a single square inch of land would be “liberated” as long as he is in power. Thaksin might be right in terms of his ability to send troops to occupy every square inch of the territory, but he might also have misunderstood the concept of a “liberated zone”.

Because the militants manipulated the incidents at Tanyonglimo, controlled the direction of the news and captured the hearts of the local people, they managed to liberate the local residents under the noses of the government troops.

Your comments are welcomed. E-mail to poldesk@nationgroup.com.

Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation