Posted on 01/29/2004 6:48:29 PM PST by JimSEA
In the present situation in southern Thailand, where an assailant can look into the eyes of his victim as he slays him, delegitimising violence with peace cultures alone may not be sufficient.
On Jan 22, two men on a motorcycle used a long knife to slit the throat of a 64-year-old Buddhist monk. The monk had just returned from his early morning alms round. Then, on Jan 24, three more monks were attacked, leaving two dead. A young novice aged only 13 died in hospital after being struck about the head by a youth on a motorcycle wielding a machete, while a 65-year-old monk was killed in the same manner. A third machete attack put another 25-year-old monk in hospital with serious injuries.
The Jan 22 incident occurred in the Narathiwat district of Bacho, while those of Jan 24 took place in Yala and Pattani. Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat are among Thailand's southernmost provinces.
On Jan 24, there were other killings in Yala using knives or machetes. Two of the victims were non-Muslims, while the third was a Muslim policeman.
Rumours of all sorts have been spread, including whispers that there have been more attacks and some of the victims were just children.
In the context of the continuing violence against state authorities, mostly policemen, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra aptly described the visible absence of popular support for state authorities in the Muslim South as a symptom of "accumulated weakness" suffered by the Thai state. On the other hand, Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh remarked that cold-blooded attacks on Buddhist monks were too unusual to be the work of locally trained rebels.
While the prime minister's opinion reflects a keen understanding of failures of state machinery, the latter expressed a disbelief in local capabilities for such extreme and explosive violence, and thus relegated it to foreign influence.
I believe these recent incidents need to be construed critically by taking into account the cultural politics at work. The question I am interested in is not who committed these horrendous acts and why. The culprits' identity and their motivations, though important, are mainly of interest to the police. I am more interested in understanding the damage done to the body politic of Thai society and how the impending destructive effects can be mitigated.
To understand this extreme violence means, among other things, to be able to "read" the cultural meanings of these brutal attacks on the monks. To mitigate their destructive effects means finding an alternative, such as peace cultures, sufficiently comprehensive to ensure a sustainable peace and security understood as the creation of a political society which people with diverse cultural and historical backgrounds can proudly call their home.
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF MONK KILLINGS
The lexicon of killings as events in southern Thailand has changed. Two decades ago, there were incidents such as bus robberies in which Thai Buddhist passengers were separated from the Muslims and then shot. In 2003, the main targets of killings were policemen, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Then in the first week of 2004, soldiers became targets.
While violence in the South has recurred, what has transpired this month has been glaringly unusual, beginning with the well organised attack on an army camp in Narathiwat, where 100, if not more than 300, weapons were taken and four soldiers were killed. Obviously the work of at least a highly organised 40-50 men, the attack was carried out in a secrecy that seems to loudly echo the lack of trust which exists between the state and local people.
But the most dangerous development is the killing of Buddhist monks in provinces where Muslims make up the majority.
This weekend the Muslim world will celebrate Eid-ul Adha, the conclusion of the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. In Pattani province there will also be an important local festival of the Chinese goddess Lim Kaw Niew, whose dominant mythical story intertwines with the unfinished Kru-ze mosque, which gave rise to a huge protest in the late 1980s. The festival is normally celebrated 14 days after the Chinese New Year.
The following facts about violence in the South need to be carefully registered. First, Buddhist monks have been killed and injured, the youngest being 13-years-old and the oldest 65 years. Second, these monks were killed while returning from or going about their daily alms round in the morning. Third, the weapons used by the attackers on motorcycles were either knives or machetes.
Though shocking in the Thai context, it is not difficult to see that the attacks signify, in the eyes of the killers, that neither religious robes nor age can offer cultural protection to their victims, as might have been thought. In addition, the timing of the killings shows the attackers have no regard for the sacred duties the monks were performing.
The most culturally brutal aspect of these killings was the choice of weapons involved. In addition to their availability, the ease with which they can be concealed, and the silence which accompanies their use, knives and machetes reproduce another chilling quality: the proximity between the victims and the perpetrators.
When using knives or machetes, the killers/attackers have to be close to their victims. It has been demonstrated that even in war, killing with a knife is extremely rare. Most knife killings appear to be of a commando nature, and killing from behind is less traumatic than killing from the front, since the face and all its messages and contortions cannot be seen by the killer. The use of modern weapons is dangerous precisely because they create a physical distance between the user and the victim such that the former can be shielded morally from the act of killing.
Seen from this perspective, the choice of knives and machetes indicates that the killers did not want to be morally shielded. This can therefore be seen as an amoral act or, much more dangerously, a moral act in a world torn asunder by cultural prejudice. Either way, the cultural significance of killing monks with knives or machetes lies in the situation that the killer can look right into the eyes of his victim, young or old, and see nothing that could deter his violence.
In his most fascinating account of war, genocide and modern identity, Mirrors of Destruction (Oxford University Press, 2000), Omer Bartov describes the chilling experience of a former Nazi concentration camp inmate, Elie Wiesel, looking into a mirror for the first time after he was liberated from the concentration camp. He could not reconcile the dead face that stared back at him with his self-awareness. Yehiel Dinur recounted the moment when he stared into the eyes of the SS man responsible for sending him to the gas chamber and realised that, had their roles been reversed, the universe would not have been any different.
This phenomenon could perhaps be called "the vampirisation of humanity". Like vampires in folktales who look into the mirror and see no reflection, "we are deprived of our humanity when it is no longer reflected in the eyes of the beholder".
If this is indeed the cultural connotation of such violence, the knives did more than kill Buddhist monks. They cut deep into the cultural ties that bind a community of differences together.
Conflicts in southern Thailand, at times violent, have mainly been vertical _ between state authorities and the local people, both Muslim and non-Muslim. In communities, workplaces, markets and other public spaces, though prejudices among different peoples naturally exist, violent conflicts have been rare. This is perhaps due to the fact that Muslims and non-Muslims alike in the South possess a sufficiently high degree of cultural sensitivity necessary for living together in just such a context. But in times like this that sense of community is seriously tested.
This begs the question: In order to ensure peace and security in southern Thailand, how can this sense of community be strengthened?
RELYING ON PEACE CULTURES TO FIGHT THE DEMON WITHIN?
As an attempt to shatter a sense of community among different peoples, the most devastating consequences of violence against Buddhist monks is primarily cultural. Therefore, to respond with state violence, given the past history of injustice in the South, the present level of abject poverty and the tide of global Islamic resurgence in some forms, might contribute to furthering the existing cultural rift.
Peace cultures, on the other hand, could serve as an alternative that would be conducive to the restoration of a sense of community among the Muslims and non-Muslims in the South.
According to the eminent peace researcher Elise Boulding, culture is a mosaic, made up of varied ingredients which include historical memories of peaceful peoplehood, the teachings and practice of communities of faith on gentleness, compassion, forgiveness and the inward disciplines of reflection and prayer, and, most relevant here, forms of governance that ensure justice and means of dealing with conflicts, differences, strangers in problem solving and reconciling manners.
From a Muslim's perspective, strengthening peace cultures means finding religious injunctions that delegitimise such senseless violence. In Islamic tradition, the companion of the Prophet Muhammad and the first caliph, Abu Bakr, laid down 10 rules as guidance in the battlefield. He said: "You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services, leave them alone."
This would mean that, in Islam, the killing of those who are innocent, unrelated to the war, even trees and animals, and especially monks or priests or clergy is unacceptable.
But in the present situation in southern Thailand, delegitimising violence with peace cultures alone may not be sufficient. More innovative cultural actions are needed.
It is therefore important to underscore the cultural elements that foster and legitimise the working together of Muslims and non-Muslims in a collaborative effort to defend local cultures against violence, especially places of worship and all types of religious personnel, Buddhist monks as well as Islamic teachers, among others. The initiative and the action should be carried out from within the existing civil society since there is a world of difference between a Buddhist temple in Pattani protected by the guns of state authorities and the joining of hands of members of different communities of faith.
Once the cultural meaning of such killings is understood adequately, the use of violence as a solution to political problems is delegitimised culturally, and cultural elements conducive to the strengthening of civil society working together to defend local cultures is fostered, then perhaps the demon within that enables some of us to look into the eyes of our victims and see nothing can be exorcised and the devastating effects of violence in the South mitigated.
- Chaiwat Satha-Anand is the director of the Peace Information Centre, Foundation for Democracy and Development Studies with the Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University.
This violence is all about Muslim extremists killing non-believers, especially representatives of an opposing religion.. Buddhist Monks.
Until the government of Thailand recognizes that they are in the midst of a religious war and takes serious steps to quash it, the killings will continue..
So this is one of Muhammed's vaunted 'peaceful' sayings. What does it mean? You can kill anyone, just don't mutilate them, but don't burn their stuff because you are going to want to steal that.
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