Bangkok, Thailand - The visit to Thailand by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference delegation has provided focus to the violence in the South. Unfortunately, however, it has done nothing to stop it. All during the tour by the OIC members, the killing and fears continued, leading delegation head Sayed Gasim Al-Masri to condemn the ``terror against innocent civilians''. The OIC officials correctly concluded religion cannot justify the southern violence. But the day Ambassador Al-Masri gave that public conclusion, a southern gang once again committed the worst atrocity, with yet another horrific beheading incident.
The separatists and violent groups have long tried to exploit religious tension in the South for their own purposes. Clearly, they did not grasp the importance of Mr Al-Masri's conclusions after his tour of the region. Even while the OIC delegation chief was still in the South, militants in Yaha district of Yala province killed and decapitated a 59-year-old rubber tapper in his hut. It is a clear aim of the various insurgent groups to build and to inflame hatred between the two main religions of the South. The groups have long exploited Islam in their appeals for support. In the 1970s, leaders of the Pattani United Liberation Organisation went to live in Libya, both to receive training in terrorism and to try to claim legitimacy as a formal opposition group. In the 1980s, Pulo leaders took refuge in Iran, playing dishonestly on the sympathies of the new, idealistic but naive Islamic regime in Teheran by claiming the government discriminated against Muslims in Thailand, and endangered the religion.
There have been four beheadings in southern Thailand during the past year, as rebels have tried continuously to step up the amount of violence. Notes left at the gruesome murder scenes all have claimed the murderers killed innocent Buddhists in revenge for, variously, the deaths or arrests of innocent Muslims. Two of the beheadings, last November, were supposedly payback for the deaths of 85 Muslims outside the Tak Bai police station in Narathiwat. But both the random selection of victims and the terrible form of murder by beheading seemed to show the gangs responsible are merely trying to intimidate the religious communities of the South, and spread the violence.
Beheadings began in both Thailand and the southern Philippines after massive publicity and worldwide shock at videotaped decapitations in Iraq. Although public outrage and shock ended the grisly spectacle, the terroristic beheadings have continued in that war zone. The new Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights recently discovered fresh graves with 32 decapitated and partly decomposed bodies disposed of by rebel or terrorist forces in Iraq _ and almost immediately another mass grave with 15 headless bodies. There seems little doubt the Thai and Philippine insurgents have tried to take advantage of the horror of Iraqis to such murders, to try to intimidate southern residents while inflaming Buddhists and Christians against the Muslims.
The tactic has clearly failed. Indeed, there are increasing reports from the South that Muslims and Buddhists have positively decided to work against the violent insurgents. Mr Al-Masri only helped this decision with his statement, after the OIC tour, that the roots of the southern conflicts and violence ``could be anything but religion''. Indeed, the South is a troubled region, with many local concerns and complaints. But as the OIC noted, there is no religious oppression. Mr Al-Masri specifically praised the religious tolerance of Thailand.
This is a 180-degree reversal of the statement by OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu last March, when the group intimated Thailand was somehow treating Muslims as second-class citizens. At that time, the OIC called on the government to ``ensure that Muslims are treated on an equal footing with other citizens''. The OIC concedes this already happens. Now it is up to the government to deal with the many legitimate problems in the South. Local communities must reject the religious hatred of the insurgents, condemn beheadings, bombings and drive-by killings as illegal and unwarranted, and try to bring together all Thais, as the National Reconciliation Commission recommends.