Southern
Thailand: Beheading citizens,
Killing Teachers as the Trap of Violence
By
Chaiwat
Satha-Anand, TFF Associate
Bangkok, Thailand - July 17,
2005
Based on police record, there have
already been 808 victims of violence in Southern Thailand
during the first six months of 2005, with 607 people
injured and 207 other killed mostly in Yala, Pattani and
Narathiwat. Among those who lost their lives were 6
soldiers, 15 policemen, and 186 civilians. (Bangkok Post,
July 2, 2005).
Judging by both the growing number
of those fallen victims and the ways in which some of
them were killed from January 1 to June 20, 2005 ,
including 8 cases of beheading, the killings of three
religious teachers (ustazs) while praying in Pattani on
June 21, and the first case of a deliberate killing of a
woman who is also a teacher and a local school
administrator on June 24, it could be said that the
situation of violence in the South has worsened.
In light of the intensified
violence, amidst rumors about more terror on the seventh
of the seventh month, some military officers believe that
the peace-oriented reconciliation methods will not work.
Some maintain that only with "decisiveness" (kwam
ded-khad), will violence in the South subside. It leaves
little doubt what "decisiveness" means in this
context.(Daily News, June 22, 2005)
This article is an attempt to
suggest that to avoid the increasingly seductive force of
the violence trap, its reality must first be understood
through a critical appraisal of the act of beheadings in
the context of other killings in the South, especially
the recent taking of teachers' lives.
Beheading
Citizens
On June 29, 2005 at 1.30 p.m. in
Tambon Bongo, Rangae district, Narathiwat, Surin Somjit,
a 57 year-old Buddhist, went to build a waterworks
system. Two men came on a motorcycle, held Surin at
gunpoint in front of 10 of his fellow workers , shot him
in the head and then decapitated him with a machete. They
put his head in a fertilizer bag and left it some 2 km.
away. The murder of Surin is the eighth case of beheading
since the beginning of this year.
The question is why must someone be
beheaded? What is the difference between shooting a man
to death and cutting his head off?
Since in most of these eight cases,
the victims were shot first, in fact some might have
already been dead, the act of beheading as a form of
injury/killing could be seen as superfluous. True, the
act of beheading could certainly generate fear through
the bloody spectacle of severing a head from a body. But,
in addition to its meaning as a fear-generating activity,
it could also be seen as a form of punishment.
Beheading as a form of punishment
was widely used in Europe and Asia until the last
century. In Britain, it was first used during the reign
of William the Conqueror for the execution of the Earl of
Northumberland in 1076, and abolished in 1747. It was the
standard method of punishment in Denmark and the
Netherland until 1870, Norway until 1905 and Sweden until
1903. China replaced beheading with shooting only in
1950s. In Thailand, beheading as a form of punishment was
replaced by shooting in 1934.
This method of killing was
considered a less painful, and less dishonorable form of
execution. The Roman Empire, for example, used beheadings
only for its own citizens while others were crucified. In
16th century Germany, rather than hanging them, the
executioner of Nuremburg sometimes allowed condemned
women to be beheaded as a show of mercy. However, due to
the skill required for the act, otherwise it would have
to take more than one blows to remove a head as was the
case in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scotland in 1587,
and the extreme gory of the scene, this form of
punishment has been by and large abandoned. Presently,
decapitation is still used only in Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Yemen and Iran. In 2004, for example, Saudi Arabia
publicly beheaded 33 men and 1 woman for the crime of
murder, rape, sodomy and drug offences.
Seen in this light, the act of
beheading as a form of punishment means more than an
instrument of fear, because it connotes a sense of
directly challenging the sovereign power of the state to
punish its citizens, at times with death. To understand
the impact of such an act is to situate it in the context
of continued violence, especially the recent killings of
teachers in the South.
Killing
Teachers
From the beginning of 2005, there
have been 12 Thai school teachers killed in the three
provinces, including 5 school principals: 3 in Pattani
and 2 in Narathiwat. It goes without saying that apart
from their vulnerability, teachers have become targets of
violence because of they are seen as representing the
state in one of its most significant function: education.
On June 24, during lunch break, Kru Kobkul Runseva, 47,
rode her motorbike back to her home to feed her paralyzed
mother as she normally did everyday. Her life was taken
away by killers on motorcycles who must have known her
routine of returning home during lunchtime. Her death was
obviously a great loss to her students, her school and
the education community of the South. It also dealt a
heavy blow to her ailing mother and family. The case
received attentions from all sectors of Thai society.
Three days before Kru Kobkul's
murder, three religious teachers were killed in Pattani.
On June 21, 2005 , a group of killers entered the home of
three young Islamic teachers (ustazs), shot them in their
heads, killing them instantly. In the South, some
religious teachers believed to be involved with violence,
have become suspects in the eyes of the state security
community. What is important in this case is the news
report that they were killed while performing their
nightly prayers (Isha).(Bangkok Post, June 21, 2005)
In my view, the deaths of these
teachers are important for three reasons. First, Kru
Kobkul was killed while trying to perform an act of a
daughter's filial duty to her mother. The moral outrage
which was triggered by her murder was therefore
comprehensible. Second, her targeted killing was unique
in the history of violence in Southern Thailand when a
woman teacher was deliberately chosen for a kill. Third,
the killings of the three young ustazs could be seen
differently by the killers and families of those killed
as well as ordinary Muslims.
For the killers, killing a Muslim
while he/she is performing his/her prayers could be seen
as a determined sacrilegious act that God is unable to
protect them even while they were praying. But for a
Muslim, since death is predetermined by God , to die
while praying could be seen as a good death. Al-Qur'an
says: "those whose lives the angels take in a state of
goodness, saying to them, 'Peace be upon you. Enter the
Garden as a reward for what you have
done."(16(Al-Nahl):32)
These recent violence could be seen
as violations of religious injunctions considered sacred
by both Buddhists and Muslims. From an Islamic
perspective, a mother's importance to her children is
second only to God. Al-Qur'an says: "We have commanded
people to be good to their parents. Their mothers carried
them, with strain upon strain, and it takes two years to
wean them. Give thanks to Me and to your parents &endash;
all will return to Me." (31(Luqman): 14)
In this sense, the killer(s) of Kru
Kobkul had violated one of God's sacred commands. From a
Buddhist perspective, Buddhaghosa pointed out that while
the taking of lives of living/breathing being is clearly
an unwholesome act, the killing of those with "many good
qualities" is particularly perverse and of greater fault.
(Majjhima Nikaya 1.198). By extension, this would mean
that killing someone while he/she is performing his/her
religious duty is "particularly perverse and of greater
fault."
The Violence
Trap?
When citizens have been beheaded by
an unknown force, and beheading is seen as a form of
punishment for unspecified crimes, the state power has
been directly challenged. When people were killed while
performing good deeds and taboos which set a limit to
violence, which used to protect them, have been violated,
moral outrage could be expected. If the authority to
punish with violence and the ability to control violence
in a given territory mark the functioning of a modern
state, then those representing state power must try their
utmost to put a stop to these violent incidents because
to allow them to continue is to corrode the state power
further. With a structural fear of losing control over
parts of its sovereign territory, armed with the public
moral outrage, it is not difficult to see how a society
could fall into the violence trap.
The violence trap is set up from an
intricate link of various acts of violence to lure a
society at stake into using a violent approach to solve a
problem of violence instead of using a problem solving
approach. There is one basic problem with the use of the
violence approach. It does not solve the problem.
For example, some believed that the
conflict in Angola ended on February 22, 2002 when UNITA
leader Jonas Savimbi was killed and the Angolan
government presented a peace proposal. The rebels,
however, dismissed the proposal and accused the
government of double dealing. In Chad, when the leader of
MDJT (Mouvement pour la democratie et la justice au
Tchad), Youssouf Toigoimi was killed in September 2002,
the movement broke up and some decided to sign a
ceasefire agreement with the government. But the accord
was rejected by the mainstream MDJT. In both cases,
though the level of armed conflicts have reduced, they
continue.
More importantly, the use of
violence approach does not solve the problem because as a
trap it lures those who walk into it to sink deeper into
its own logic, practices and consequences. Its logic is
retributive, and therefore the use of violence becomes
the primary means of handling deadly conflicts. Its
practices tolerate "collateral damage", and therefore
innocent victims take the fall. Its consequences lock the
whole society in a mental prison that fiercely refuses to
acknowledge the possibilities of political alternatives
necessary for a problem solving approach. It is therefore
important to understand that the best companions of the
violence trap, and the worst foes of careful strategic
thinking for sustained peace, are fear and anger.
Perhaps, by overcoming both fear and anger with a
critical understanding of the workings of the violence
trap can the road to peace and reconciliation in Southern
Thailand be cautiously charted.
This piece was
published in the Bangkok Post, July 5, 2005 at the
Op-Ed page.
Other articles about
nonviolence and the situation in Southern Thailand by
Satha-Anand here.
Get
free articles &
updates
©
TFF & the author 2005
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
|