WUNRN
THAILAND
- INSURGENCY TURNS MALAY MUSLIM
WOMEN
INTO COURAGEOUS ACTIVISTS FOR JUSTICE
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
SONGKHLA, Thailand, Sep 23, 2010 (IPS) - When her husband
was arrested for links to an insurgency raging in this southern region, Pattama
Heemmima joined the ranks of Malay-Muslim women forced into the unfamiliar
routine of visiting police stations, military camps and courts to secure the
freedom of their imprisoned kin.
At the same time, there was no local organisation she could
turn to for help regarding her husband, Nawawee Daohumso, who was taken in by
the Thai police in March 2008 for his alleged role in a killing a civilian.
But by the time a court acquitted Nawawee in March 2010 --
enabling him and 34-year-old Pattama to rebuild a marriage that was only two
months old when police made the wrongful arrest -- Pattama had found an answer
to her search for a local helping hand.
She and her elder sister, Anchana Semmina, had resolved to
take on new roles as activists for justice. In mid-2009, the two sisters had
set up the Hearty Support Group in the southern Thai province of Songkhla to
help families struggling to secure the release of their jailed fathers,
husbands and sons.
"I wanted to help these women who were desperate after
their husbands or sons were arrested by the police, the military," says
Pattama. "I had learnt so much after my husband’s arrest that I wanted to
share it with the others in my community."
Currently, the ad-hoc help network that the two women run
includes helping the families of 16 men from a local mosque’s management
committee who were arrested in 2008 and are waiting for their day in court.
Visiting lawyers or meeting the police on behalf of the 50 families they are
helping now occupies a good part of her day, says Pattama.
The early achievements of the Hearty Support Group, however,
are not an exception. It is but one of a growing number of local civil society
groups that are steadily transforming the political landscape in the
insurgency-torn provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla, close to
the Thai-Malaysian border.
"This is a direct response to the conflict. The groups
taking on justice issues are largely led by women," says Angkhana
Neelapaijit, author of a study on the ‘Role and Challenges of Muslim Women in
the Restive Southern Border Provinces’. "They are the ones you will see
outside the prisons, military barracks or in the courts."
"The men are afraid of speaking out or confronting the
authorities," reveals Angkhana, whose lawyer husband was ‘disappeared’ in
March 2004 for exposing police brutality. "The women’s groups have become
very strong now. There are more of them now than four years ago."
But this transformation is facing stiff resistance from some
quarters of the very conservative Malay-Muslim community, where women are
expected to play domestic roles and have historically been deprived of
leadership roles in the social and political hierarchy. "The religious
fundamentalists try to discredit these women," Angkhana tells IPS.
The first signs of women coming to the fore was in 2004, the
year the current cycle of violence erupted following a raid on a military
barracks by shadowy Malay-Muslim rebels in January. In October that year, 78
Muslim protesters died from suffocation after being packed like logs into
military trucks and driven for hours to an army camp.
The women who lost their men – mostly from Tak Bai village
in Narathiwat province – took on pioneering roles to create an ad-hoc network
with support from Bangkok-based rights activists. "The men, even the imam,
have stayed away from our activity because they fear the army," recalls a
woman from Tak Bai who spoke on condition of anonymity. "(But) we want to
keep the memory of our dead husbands and fathers alive through regular
activity."
In the first radio programme broadcast early this year, the
Pattani-based Friends of the Victimised Family Group featured interviews with
women in the villages talking about impact the violence has had on them.
Others like the Yala-based We Peace conducts public
seminars, where women who have relatives in jail are invited to express their
concerns, at times even directly to military officers present.
A military officer who has been in such seminars concedes
that women in civil society groups show "courage and are determined"
in their encounters with officials. "They have become a noticeable
presence since 2005. They make more noise than the men," the combat
officer, on his second tour of duty in the south, says in an interview.
The fate of some 450 Malay-Muslim men in southern jails on
charges of terrorism remains the primary concern of the women activists.
Others, like the women from Tak Bai, have taken their own steps in response to
the killings in this conflict. Over 4,300 people have died and 11,000 people
have been injured over the past six-and-a-half years.
The current explosion of violence is the latest in a dispute
rooted in history, from the time Siam, as Thailand was then known, annexed the
three southern provinces in 1902. Until then, they had been part of the Malay
Muslim kingdom of Pattani.
Malay Muslims have, since the annexation, complained of
cultural, linguistic and economic marginalisation, giving rise to a separatist
struggle in the 1970s.
As the insurgency showing little signs of abating, Pattama
sees challenging days ahead. "People live in fear here and they need to be
helped if a father or husband is arrested," she says. "It has become
the women’s role to take the lead and get help."