Human Rights Watch har kommit ut med en ny och mkt omfattande rapport angående situationen i södra Thailand och de systematiska attackerna på utbildningsväsendet. Rapporten lanserades nyligen på en event på FCCT och en mkt intressant paneldiskussion följde med framstående thailändska akademiker. Det är absolut inte första gången jag bevittnar en sådan debatt men det var första gången jag hörde folk vara så rättframt kritiska mot regeringens och militärens agerande. Det i sig bådar iaf lite gott för framtiden.
Hela rapporten kan läsas här - http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/09/21/targets-both-sides
En inte alltför lng sammanfattningen för den som är lite intresserad.
Since separatist insurgents renewed regular attacks in 2004 in Thailand’s southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat, students, teachers, and schools have been caught up in violence by both the insurgents and government security forces.
The insurgents, who view the educational system as a symbol of Thai Buddhist state oppression, have burned and bombed government schools, harassed and killed teachers, and spread terror among students and their parents. The vast majority of teachers killed have been ethnic Thai Buddhists, and their deaths are often intended as a warning to others. Yet Muslim teachers have not been spared; insurgents have also targeted Muslim teachers at government schools, and Islamic school administrators who resist insurgents’ efforts to use classrooms for indoctrination and recruiting. In some areas, insurgents have also pressured Malay Muslim families not to send children to government schools.
The government faces the challenge of protecting children and teachers. Yet in some villages, government security forces have set up long-term military and paramilitary camps or bases in school buildings and on school grounds, interfering with education and student life and potentially attracting attacks as much as deterring them. When security forces have suspected that insurgents are using Islamic schools to hide or shelter, or that insurgents are seeking to indoctrinate school students into their separatist ideology and recruit new supporters and fighters, the government’s response has included raids on schools, involving mass arbitrary arrests of students. Some raids have turned violent, endangering students and teachers. Such heavy-handed tactics may succeed in only further alienating the Muslim Malay community from the government.
The result is that students, teachers, and schools are caught in the untenable position of facing a risk of violence from both insurgents and government security forces. As the principal of an Islamic school told Human Rights Watch: “It is very difficult to stay in my position—in the middle…. f you try and stay in the middle, you can become the targets of both sides.”
Violations by both sides in the conflict disrupt access to a quality education for hundreds of thousands of children in the southern border provinces—Thai Buddhist and Malay Muslim alike.
Insurgent Attacks on Schools
Attacks by separatist insurgents on government schools have become one of the most notorious aspects of the conflict in the southern border provinces. Between January 2004 and August 2010, arsonists made at least 327 attacks on government schools in the three provinces. Many insurgent attacks on schools are motivated by animosity toward the Thai educational system and the easy access to soft, high visibility targets. Some arson attacks on schools are also used to divert government forces into an ambush. In addition, at some schools, insurgents have set off bombs on school grounds to target security forces, damage infrastructure, or simply to generate fear.
Since mid-2007, the number of arson attacks on schools appears to have declined significantly, likely both because the government and local communities have improved their response and insurgents have simply shifted their target choice. However, in the absence of any public declaration by elders and commanders of the separatist movement that attacks on schools must cease entirely, some violence continues, to the great detriment of children seeking an education.
When Human Rights Watch visited Ban Ba Ngo Elementary School in Pattani’s Mayo district, where all the students are Muslim, a pile of books was still smoldering in the school library. Five days earlier, on the last day of the school term, a group of around 15 insurgents stormed the school, broke into classrooms and doused them with gasoline. The insurgents first set alight the library and the kindergarten room, using the books and the kindergarten’s sleeping mattresses to fuel the fire. The flames soon spread to adjacent classrooms. A teacher told Human Rights Watch: “I was at home and I heard two gunshots, and when I came out, I saw that the school building was on fire.… I called the fire brigade, the army, and the police. But nobody came. They feared there would be a secondary attack or a roadside ambush. It took about an hour to convince them to come.”
The loss of school buildings disrupts children’s access to a quality education, saps scarce school resources, and generates fear among teachers, children, and their parents. Students displaced from their classrooms often meet in crowded tents or other prefabricated units in the school playground. Teachers and students told Human Rights Watch that these temporary teaching conditions cause problems for the children, as they can be crowded and noisy, and in certain weather conditions, overly hot or wet. The impact is often felt beyond the targeted school, as neighboring schools are often temporarily shut down following an attack.
Insurgent Attacks on Teachers
Insurgents have attacked and frequently killed teachers and other education personnel ranging from janitors to school administrators. Between January 2004 and the first week of September 2010, 108 teachers and an additional 27 education personnel have been killed in the southern border provinces, and another 103 teachers and 19 education personnel have been injured. In the period between January and early September 2010 alone, 14 teachers—10 men and 4 women—were killed. While most of those attacked are ethnic Thai Buddhist, the insurgents have also attacked Malay Muslim teachers who work at government schools or who teach at Islamic schools but resist insurgents’ attempts to use the schools for indoctrination or recruitment of students.
A Thai Buddhist who was a former teacher at a government school in a Muslim village described to Human Rights Watch an insurgent attack on her and four colleagues as they left school one day in a pickup truck: “[Our] truck was stopped by a gunman.… I can’t remember how many rounds he shot at the truck. Four of the teachers inside the truck were hit by the bullets.” The attack left the teacher paralyzed from the waist down. “I can’t even sit up by myself now.… I can’t go to the bathroom by myself,” she said. And she missed being a teacher: “I love teaching the children…. I had been teaching for over 30 years in that village.”
Another teacher told Human Rights Watch that insurgents had repeatedly warned him that as a Muslim, he should not be teaching at a government school. Local government security forces had likewise told him to “be careful,” which he took as a threat. An insurgent who came to kill him shot him first in the mouth, shattering his jaw and mutilating his tongue, and then a second time, leaving a bullet lodged in his skull.
The principal of a traditional Islamic school told Human Rights Watch that separatist militants had pressured him to allow indoctrination at his school, and he had received a leaflet warning him not to cooperate with the authorities. At the same time, government officials had called on him to ensure that his school did not become “radicalized” and fall under the influence of separatists. Several months after Human Rights Watch interviewed this principal, insurgents shot him three times in the back, killing him. The principal’s replacement told Human Rights Watch that he had learned a lesson from the assassination: “[We] should not be seen to be too close to the authorities. We won’t turn our back to the state, but we will keep our distance.”
Beyond the tragic loss of life caused by attacks on teachers, children seeking an education also suffer. Schools often close for a period following an attack on teachers, and parents will transfer their children to other schools, often at great distance. The general insecurity causes frequent teacher turnover and leads to a generally distracted teaching staff, leading to poorer teaching quality for students.
Occupation of Schools by Government Security Forces
Government security forces—both the army and paramilitary Rangers —frequently establish bases or camps in school buildings or on school grounds, which disrupts children’s education. The security forces use these bases not as a short-term response to a direct threat on a specific school, but as accommodations and as a long-term presence in a convenient location in particularly unstable areas, often for many years. The result is that students—girls and boys—must try to get an education alongside large numbers of armed men.
At Ban Klong Chang School, in Pattani’s Mayo district, for example, about half of the school’s playing field had been occupied for two years by armed paramilitaries. A nine-year-old girl told Human Rights Watch: “I am scared.… What scares me is the thought that the school could be attacked because the soldiers are at the school, but that students and teachers would be the ones that get hurt.”
A 10-year-old girl at the same school said: “I am afraid of [the soldiers], because the soldiers are very touchy.… And I am not happy when the soldiers ask whether I have any older sisters and ask for their phone numbers.”
School occupations can be extremely disruptive to children’s education. When security forces arrive, a quick exodus of many students often follows, as children transfer elsewhere even at the cost of additional travel time or transportation expenses. Some leave because they are afraid of insurgent attacks, while others leave because they fear harassment.
Those students who remain in occupied schools often feel the quality of their education deteriorates. Parents and children complained to Human Rights Watch that teachers became distracted or neglected their duties because of increased tension from the military presence. Armed men can also create a destructive environment for education: Human Rights Watch received complaints from parents of soldiers drinking, gambling, and taking narcotics on school grounds.
Government Raids on Islamic Schools
The government faces a difficult challenge in responding to separatist indoctrination and recruitment that occurs at a small number of Islamic private schools and also in traditional Islamic schools, known as pondoks. In recent years, army and paramilitary Ranger forces have conducted numerous raids and searches for materials or individuals at a number of Islamic private schools and pondoks. On some occasions, the government forces have made mass arbitrary arrests of students, or the raids have turned violent, endangering students and teachers.
During a raid at the Saengtham Islam Wittaya pondok in October 2009, the security forces arrested around 40 students, including two as young as 10 years old, and took them to a local military camp for questioning. The school’s teachers were not allowed to accompany the students, and their parents were not notified of their detention. All of the students were eventually released, and the search failed to uncover anything illegal or linking the school to the insurgency. “Twenty years of good deeds were ruined by that day,” said the principal when asked about the raid’s impact on his school’s reputation.
Islamic schools are an enormous source of pride and cultural importance for the ethnic Malay Muslim community in Thailand. While some religious teachers have been involved in the insurgency and some Islamic schools have been used for indoctrination and occasionally recruitment, the vast majority of teachers and schools have no connection to the insurgents. Heavy-handed actions by the government, even to protect children from recruitment, may ultimately mainly serve to alienate young people and increase their resentment, which could eventually lead them to join the insurgency. Arrests, even when they do not lead to charges, can cast suspicion on students and can cause them problems at school or with members of their own communities who do not support the insurgents or their tactics.
Broader Context: The Conflict in Southern Thailand
Since the renewal of the separatist Malay Muslim insurgency in January 2004, more than 4,100 people have been killed, and more than 7,100 have been injured in the southern border provinces. The vast majority of these deaths have been civilians killed by the insurgents.
At the same time, the government’s response to the insurgency has included serious and widespread human rights violations against suspected militants and their supporters. State-sanctioned abuses have most clearly been evidenced by the Krue Se (April 28, 2004) and Tak Bai (October 25, 2004) killings. These incidents, along with numerous cases of arbitrary arrests, torture, “disappearances,” and extrajudicial killings, have served to fuel and spread the insurgency. Abusive officials in the southern border provinces have rarely been punished, even in well-documented and high-profile cases. This problem has worsened since the August 2005 enforcement of the Emergency Decree on Public Administration in Emergency Situations (“Emergency Decree”), which effectively provides security personnel and government officials with immunity from criminal, civil, and disciplinary liability.
While insurgent attacks have grown ever more powerful and deadly, the Thai government has become less and less engaged in seeking solutions to the conflict. The recurring political turmoil on the streets of Bangkok between the anti-government United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and the pro-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD)—unrest not specifically related to the conflict in the southern provinces—has divided the country and diverted both national and international attention away from the south. Moreover, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, which depends upon military support to maintain power, has little motivation to contest the strategy and practices of the armed forces in the southern border provinces. The result has been increased militarization and reduced civilian oversight and control.
