Published on September 12, 2005 - The Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) has dismissed allegations by the Thai government that it hatched a plot for 131 Thai Muslims to flee to Malaysia and to smear Thailand’s reputation by drawing international attention to the incident.

In a statement delivered to The Nation last weekend from the exiled outlawed Muslim

militant organisation’s headquarters in Europe, Pulo said the 131 Thai nationals were ordinary villagers who fled their homes in southern Thailand because “they cannot live under Thai harassment.”

Pulo officials also dismissed accusations that the Pattani Malay Human Rights Organisation was their political “front” organisation.

The Pulo statement said the Malay human rights organisation had been formed shortly after the Tak Bai demonstration last October when 78 Muslim demonstrators died in the custody of Thai security forces.

The organisation is an independent organisation with no link to Pulo, and that it helps “displaced people who need shelter and basic needs for survival”, according to Pulo.

The 131 Thai Muslims seeking asylum in Malaysia are residents of Narathiwat’s border districts and appear to have crossed into Malaysia simultaneously before taking refuge in two mosques in the state of Kelantan. They have since been relocated to a shelter and are being interviewed by officials working for a UN refugee agency.

The incident took on a bitter diplomatic note when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra accused some of the purported refugees of being insurgents.

The Malaysian government responded by inviting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to interview the Thai Muslims to determine their status.

Outspoken former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad ratcheted up the controversy when he suggested the 131 Thai Muslims be given asylum once their status as refugees was established.

Muslim residents in Narathiwat said they believed the asylum-seekers had fled because of a misunderstanding with security officials who ordered locals to report to provincial offices to undergo a week-long “re-education programme” aimed instilling a heightened sense of patriotism.

Residents said a recently passed controversial emergency decree, described by critics as “a license to kill”, may also have been a factor in further alarming local Muslims fearing abuse at the hands of security forces.

Pulo surfaced in the 1970s at the height of the armed struggle by ethnic Malays seeking independence from Thailand.

Hostilities died down in the previous decade before they resurfaced again in January 2004 with a raid on an army arsenal.

Since then nearly 900 people have been killed in the South. “As you may have notice, we are back,” the exiled organisation’s statement read.

Pulo also accused the Thai government of misleading the Organisation of Islamic Conference in order to enhance relations with Muslim countries. The statement by Pulo asserted that it was police and army “brutality” that had led to the renewed insurgency.

The statement stated that Thai security forces had carried out extra-judicial killings of at least 17 Muslims prior to the assassination of Imam Stopa Yusoh in Lahar village in Narathiwat. It said these incidents had fostered resentment against the state, particularly after the killings were not properly investigated.

“We are engaged in defending and protecting local people who, as you know, are confronting Thai security men,” the statement said.

In another statement issued by the organisation, exiled deputy president Abae Kamae dismissed recent news reports that Pulo was holding talks with government officials.

He also dismissed a statement by an unnamed “spokesman” that the organisation was planning attacks in Phuket, Bangkok, and Pattaya.

“It is not our policy” to stage such attacks, he said.