MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Is one Myanmarese lady more important in ASEAN than 4 million Thai Malays?

THE ASEAN SUMMIT IS OVER. It is held every year now, instead of occasionally as it was agreed in the past. The next one will be in the Philippines. The most important decision it has taken is to fine- tune the East Asian Summit, in which is invited the United States's Sheriff in the region, Australia, and New Zealand, which though has taken an independent stance in the past is always on the side of the West where it matters. ASEAN was once an economic grouping, in which the foreign ministers met annually. It was effective then. Now it is another talking shop, more of interest to the Western academics than its members. It was founded in 1967 in Bangkok to stop Indonesia and Malaysia going to war with each other again. It met annually to discuss common issues. ASEAN was accused then of not pulling its weight, but as more nations became members, it lost its raison d'etre. Indonesia and Malaysia, and therefore Islam, was sideline as the Buddist nations - Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar - joined Thailand to dominate the grouping. It means nothing now. It is more like the European Union now. The presence of 2,000 journalists, and this did not include the 200 that came with the Indian prime minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, and the 300 was in the party of the Japanese prime minister, Mr Junizuro Koizumi, and the academics joined to make this meeting irrelevant.

The Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, hosted this year's meeting, adding the ASEAN Summit chairmanship to that he already holds, of the Organisation of Islamic Conference and of the Non-Aligned Summit. He did not object when the ASEAN Summit decided that the fate of one Myanmarese woman was more than that of 4 million Malays. He hopes that the 4 million Malays will go away, because he does not think them important. But having said on taking office as Malaysian prime minister two years ago that they would not be, he had suddenly ignored them. But is not the Thai Malays any more different from Timor Leste? One was a Malay minority fighting with Buddlist Bangkok and the other a Roman Catholic minority fighting with Muslim Djakarta. But Timor Leste became independent by UN supervision, and Malaysia helped, while the Thai Malays are left to their own devises. They are now told that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom the United States want to lead Myanmar, is more important than the Thai Malays. Pak Lah handed the Thai Malays over to the Islamic nations, and forgot about it. Recently, the head of PULO, now living in Europe, was persuaded to come to Malaysia for medical treatment, rather than in Europe, in May this year, and he was ordered out of the country last week in a stretcher, untreated. One in Malaysia, he was kept in a room with hardly any space to move about, and ignored. Meanwhile, Malaysia has sent back to Thailand Thai Malays who came to Malaysia. He was ignored by Malaysian officials.

But Pak Lah, as chairman of the ASEAN Summit could not do otherwise. He is a prisoner of the United States, not for what he has done but for what his son had done. The Pakistani nuclear chief, Dr. A.Q. Khan, had asked his son's company, SCOMI, to manufacture the centrifugal rods, which was sent out to Iran on ten shipments of 1,500 rods each. The United States followed each shipment, but stopped the last one. SCOMI then tried to wash itself of the affair by explaining to the Malaysian media journalists that it is innocent. But it tried too hard. Senior US officials landed in Malaysia, in secret because the local media did not report it by linking them to the shipment. The head of the FBI paid a courtesy call on Pak Lah. But he also met the Inspector General of Police, Dato' Bakri Omar. What was discussed is not known, but Dato' Bakri has had extensions beyond the normal, after he had retired from the service. Pak Lah was not his own man after that. He is less so now, and that he did not object to ASEAN giving Daw Aung San Suu Kyi more importance than the 4 million Thai Muslims is indicative of that. The United States do not like the Thai Malays, and so he discarded them. More than 200 Thai Malays do not want to go back to lthe village they came from in southern Thailand, but want to take up arms instead and join the guerrillas. This has caught the Malaysian Government unawares. But the younger elements within the Thai Malay do not trust the Malaysian government any more, especially after the treatment the PULO leader got.

The Thai Malays, which once included Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trenggau, had been under Thai suzerainty since before the 17th century. In 1905, the British negotiated a treaty with Thailand to hand over these four states into Malaya, as it then was. But the Thai Malays, principally from the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, Songkla and Narathiwat fought to be separate from the Thai nation, as East Timor (now Timor Leste) wanted to from Djakarta. But Southern Thailand had been part of the Thai nation for more than 300 years. Now the attitudes have hardeded in Bangkok. The Moslems in Thailand's north disagree with their southern Thai counterparts. The Thais I spoke to seem to think that the rise of the Islamic world has caused it to revolt. The positions have hardenedd, with the average Thai refusing to accept even self-rule for the Thai Malays. They have to be a minority of the Thai Nation, or they would be forcibly made to. The other alternative is war which the Thai Malays cannot win.

But is the Malaysian government's support for the Thai Malays to do with PAS's governance of Kelantan state? The National Front government also wants the National Front to rule Kelantan. Its policy in southern Thailand - the former foreign minister Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen is a prince from the Pattani sultanate, and his sister is the King's mother - is dictated in recent years by its electoral effort to unseat PAS in Kelantan. Tun Mahathir Mohamed, the former Prime Minister, believed that the southern Thai Malays should be part of Malaysia, and he was single minded about it, but in secret. He was open to having his mind changed. It was he who passed on the Malaysian government's views on the Thai Malays to the Thai Prime Minister, Mr Thaksin Shinawatra. He also saw the King of Thailand. Although he believed southern Thai should be part of Malaysia, he was respected in Thailand. He stepped down in 2003 because he was forced to. He was too independent a man to be Prime Minister, in the US's eyes. His wife, with whom he discussed major matters of personal important, was surprised that he did. The event is noted by the minister for international trade and industry, Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz, crying on stage and rushed to his side. But she is his intractable enemy now.

ASEAN as a body is of no interest now. There is much discussion of what the East Asian Sumiit is or would be in papers of the West. But that is also a dead letter, because the Australians and New Zealand is brought in. This makes it impossible for those countries that has an independent point of view from making it known when a Westerner is present. Nothing serious would now be discussed by either body, but it would further draw a wedge between the rulers and the ruled in all the member countries. There was an excessive secrecy about this conference in Malaysia. Pak Lah will meet the correspondents Malaysia invited to a question-and-answer session today. But this will not hide the fact that ASEAN is now a dead letter. The fate of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is important, but is that of 4 million Thai Malays. But Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is not leading the only opposition in Myanmar. Malaysia should hark back to the past, when she recognised the Afghanistan government when Gulbudeen Hikmatiyar was prime minister in circumstances that made it impossible to recognise any other government in that country.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com