the murder case of tok imam... | siriworn kaewkan

the murder case of tok imam satorpa karde

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

2 Siriworn Kaewkan, born 1968, poet, novelist and free spirit

the murder case of tok imam satorpa karde TRANSLATED FROM THE THAI BY MARCEL BARANG

Glossary on last page

© SIRIWORN KAEWKAN © MARCEL BARANG for the translation Internet edition 2008 | All rights reserved Original Thai edition, Karanee Khatakam Toh Imam Satorpa Kardei, 2006

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

3 ‘O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! The noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware.’

Koran 49:13

Pracha Wongko-sin I, provincial governor Pracha Wongko-sin, wish to state in all truthfulness that my visit to Tanyong Baru this time was only to give moral support to the villagers and to the late Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’s family and had no other purpose whatsoever.

Even though as governor I am a representative of the state, I must admit truthfully that I didn’t come to win over or find fault with the people of Tanyong Baru in any way.

I entered the village as a simple citizen, as a friend, to extend justice and fairness after the demise of the old imam. Even though I am a Thai Buddhist, I consider myself one of his younger relatives.

Before this, I visited Tanyong Baru often enough to say that I am familiar with the area. But today I must confess frankly that Tanyong Baru has become a village that is foreign to me.

From the first step I took in Tanyong Baru, I felt oppressive forlornness and eeriness in every particle of the THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

4 air. Sunlight burned over the roofs of the houses and the dome of the mosque and almost every square inch of the village, so much so that I was afraid that from one minute to the next Tanyong Baru would die under the scorching light of the Malay peninsula.

I took a deep breath and released it slowly, raised my hand above my forehead as a visor, screwed up my eyes as I looked up at the sky and I was in for a surprise: hundreds of suns blazed over Tanyong Baru.

The next second, I looked down to the ground and blinked repeatedly. The suns remained stuck in my vision.

My eyes were swimming. I thought that something was wrong with them.

With the exception of Village Headman Karim Malateh and old teacher Madeng Yali, on my visit to Tanyong Baru this time around I didn’t encounter any other male villager, besides one skinny Muslim child.

The next moment, I became aware that there was something fishy. The whole village was silent. So silent it felt eerie, as if I had strayed into a graveyard.

All houses had their doors and windows shut tight.

Almost all of the diamond-shaped leaves of the bangsoon palms in the pots in front of the houses were withered.

Even the zebra doves in the cages lined up under the eaves of each house didn’t dare to coo.

But, strangely enough, the rose-mallow fences of almost all houses bloomed with bright red flowers as if to scoff at the scorching sunlight.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

5 There were some gusts of hot wind and then I saw some movement.

It was just women and young children. They were gathered quietly under one house by the only cement road of the village, some standing against the pillars of the house, some seated on the low bamboo platform, the children hidden behind the batik tube skirts of their mothers.

When they saw me and Hamid Mohammad walking with Headman Karim Malateh and old teacher Madeng Yali, they whispered among themselves.

Headman Karim Malateh greeted them in the local Malay dialect. I salaamed and smiled at everyone, but they all turned their eyes away from me.

Even though the shadow of the house and that of their headscarves concealed their faces, I managed to catch their expression but couldn’t understand its meaning.

I salaamed the women and children once again. The uneasy silence that greeted me made my blood run cold.

Headman Karim gave me the excuse that everybody was grieving after the demise of Mr Satorpa Karde, their old imam, who had been shot to death by terrorists in front of the village mosque.

As you know, Governor, Headman Karim said, the villagers are in mourning, so they don’t want to talk to anyone, especially strangers.

I told Headman Karim that I understood, but neither I nor Hamid Mohammad were strangers here.

What you are saying, Governor, is true, Headman THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

6 Karim told me, but as I said, when something like this happens, it’s normal for anyone to be aggrieved, suspicious and frightened.

Hamid Mohammad and old teacher Madeng Yali were walking behind us quietly.

As we walked past the kindergarten school, I saw a female teacher who stood hidden in the shade of the bullet wood tree in front of the school building. There was a gust of hot wind. I felt as if the faint perfume of some flower came into my breath, perhaps of the goldleaf flower or else the bullet wood flower.

I’m not sure.

Or perhaps it was my imagination.

I’m not sure.

So I told Headman Karim Malateh, old teacher Madeng Yali and Hamid Mohammad to go and wait at Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’s house and I’d shortly join them there.

Hamid Mohammad offered to stay to keep me company, but I told him not to worry. Even if she concealed her entire face so that I wouldn’t be sure of who she was, something told me that that female teacher should know me.

What if something happens, Hamid said.

I raised my black leather case to show him. Hamid nodded. He knew there was a fully loaded shotgun in there, but I realised he was still worried, so I whispered to caution him: had he already forgotten that outside of the village there were hundreds of our officials waiting, both military and police?

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

7 Hearing this, Hamid followed Headman Karim and old teacher Madeng to the old imam’s house, which was next to the mosque.

It’s rather bad, isn’t it, teacher, I said, as I knew there had been no teaching for several days.

I didn’t expect friendship from her, but then the female teacher of the kindergarten school talked to me through the hijab she drew purposefully across her mouth and nose.

Well, who is it that’s caused trouble like this, she said brusquely but with determination in her voice.

Behind her beautifully curved eyelashes I could see shrewd eyes the meaning of whose glint in the shadow of the hijab I couldn’t make out.

I understood how she felt, because no one knows what may happen in the next second.

Meanwhile, I saw a lanky Muslim boy walking up crestfallen with a white goat. It looked as though the goat suffered the same fate as the boy.

Sorrowful, hopeless, scared with the world and life.

And what made me wonder was that in one hand the boy held a birdcage, maybe one he had made himself. I couldn’t see clearly whether there was a bird in the cage but it looked like there was something flapping in there.

The boy walked along a rose-mallow fence towards us, but as soon as he saw us, he led the goat in another direction. I saw him walk out through a small gate at the back, heading towards the bridge over the canal.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

8 I complained that it was unusually hot today before I walked past the bullet wood tree, hoping to escape the heat under the eaves of the school building, which is a single storey wooden building.

Actually, I wanted her to leave the shade of the bullet wood as well; I don’t know why. Seeing that she stuck to the shade of that tree, I was all the more suspicious. That female teacher was silent and still, no part of her body moving at all except for her sharp eyes.

When I was sure there was no way she’d leave the shade of that tree, I turned round and walked back to her.

I meant to stare her in the eye, then found that there was some sort of haze barring the way between us, so I smiled at her while searching for some parting words.

Then I found a clutter of words, so I asked her how she felt that the media had announced that if the Tanyong Baru people had blockaded the village and prevented officials from doing their duty on the first day after the murder of the imam it was because there was a group of ill-intentioned people inciting them behind the scene.

The teacher shot a glance at me before she said that the noses of the Tanyong Baru villagers were still the same, nobody had pierced holes in them.

Hearing this, I laughed to cover my embarrassment before saying that wasn’t what I meant. I merely wanted to know how she felt about it.

There was silence between us for a while. While it lasted, I felt as though hundreds of pairs of eyes were SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

9 watching stealthily, lying in wait in the rubber plantation at the foot of the mountain behind the village as well as under the longkong trees, the fences of cat-tits creepers, the fences of hibiscus, the wild banana groves and every corner of the village.

And then she proffered that the reason why the villagers refused access to the officials that morning was because they feared for their own safety.

Whenever the state can’t help in anything – the teacher’s voice was harsh – we’ll close the village like this from now on. We’ll close the village and stay like this. We’ll stay by ourselves. Taking care of ourselves by our own lights is better.

I told her that the government was trying to find ways to be of help, so long as everybody was willing to cooperate.

Cooperate, she exclaimed in a high-pitched, nasal voice. What does that mean, cooperate?

So I told her that the government would protect, control and ensure safety in everything until— Until all of us in the village are killed, the teacher interjected.

The sun was even more scorching. I felt like I stood in a brazier.

I don’t know when classes can resume, I said, trying to control the heat of my feelings. She told me that the answer to that question didn’t depend only on the Tanyong Baru villagers.

The teacher insisted that everything would stay as it THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

10 was so long as the state didn’t provide clarifications about the case of the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, the religious leader that they all revered.

After that, I asked her whether she had heard the news about four hundred villagers having fled to Malaysia.

She said that she had heard about it but that it had nothing to do with the villagers here because all the Tanyong Baru people were still here, none of them had fled or migrated as the various newspapers and television channels had reported.

I nodded to acknowledge the point, but I couldn’t help remark to her that, besides Headman Karim and old teacher Madeng, I didn’t see any other man, not one.

This time she stared at me openly. So much so that I felt those eyes shouldn’t be the eyes of a teacher nurturing and providing knowledge to children.

You are no different from other state officials, Governor, she said, who consider and decide everything with their eyes and according to their moods only.

So I told her that I was merely wondering.

The teacher thus told me that all the men were at home, they shut themselves in their houses because they didn’t want to mess around outside, they didn’t want to meet, they didn’t want to answer the questions of state officials.

Upon hearing the last part of the sentence, I realised that this was the signal the teacher was trying to convey to me that I shouldn’t press her further.

That’s when I said goodbye and walked away.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

11 There was another gust of hot wind, bringing forth that faint fragrance of a flower of some sort like before.

Governor, if you want to know more of the truth, then…

The shout came through the heat from under the shade of the bullet wood tree. …You should ask Headman Karim Malateh.

Karim Malateh In the name of Allah, most merciful, may progress and peace be upon Prophet Muhammad and his followers.

I, Karim Malateh, village headman of Tanyong Baru sub-district, wish to say frankly that the reason why we closed the village and don’t want state officials, whether soldiers or policemen, to enter it is because we are dissatisfied with their behaviour. We have borne with it for a long time but this time, too much is too much, they treat us with too much disrespect.

More importantly, how can we be sure that when we open up the village, we won’t be abducted or murdered in cold blood like this again?

The state says they will take care of security for us. I don’t know how they can talk like this, given that they just killed our Tok Imam Satorpa Karde a few days ago.

About one week before our imam was killed, he came to see me at home and said that he felt some sort of premonition about safety in life. I listened to him express THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

12 his feelings and when he was through, I said who would dare do anything to him given that he had never done any harm to anyone of whatever side.

If I spoke like that, it wasn’t to humour him. I didn’t exaggerate in any way, because everybody knows that our imam was a good man. He was a good servant of Allah. Everybody in Tanyong Baru knows that perfectly well. For all the seventy years of his life, he never strayed from the right path, he never strayed from the model of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

As soon as I was finished speaking, the imam objected that a great many of us had been shot down in teashops, on the roadside, in mosques, in rubber plantations, and yet he didn’t see that those dead had done anything wrong. All of those that had died were good men; they had never missed praying five times a day; they helped others; they had never shown any shortcomings, and yet they had been killed. More importantly, nobody knew who their killers were.

So I told the imam that in any case I was certain that nobody would dare to think of harming him, because if someone dared to think like that, it couldn’t be denied that they bore ill will towards all aspects of the faith in the one god Allah.

After that Tok Imam Satorpa was silent for a long while. Only Allah knows what he was thinking.

To this day, I don’t want to ask if there is a Muslim that understands the meaning of the entire Koran as SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

13 thoroughly as Tok Imam Satorpa Karde did. There isn’t.

Or if there is, it’s only a few, especially among our Muslim brothers in the three provinces or even among our Tanyong Baru villagers who are devout.

Before, I didn’t believe that any man in the world would dare to act so cruelly and barbarously with our imam, but I must admit that I misjudged the situation.

And then the old imam was killed as he sat resting in front of the mosque, which is next to his house. Even though I didn’t see with my own eyes who pulled the trigger, the great confusion of boot imprints on the sandy yard in front of the mosque and the striped green beret left behind where the event took place are enough to reveal which side the murderers belonged to.

Too bad that the beret is no longer to be found.

But the boot imprints!

I don’t want to say that some of those imprints are still visible on the wooden bridge across the canal and disappear into the opposite side. Everything I’ve just said, even all the women and children know, but the only thing we didn’t see and don’t know is who it was afterwards that destroyed the old wooden bridge.

Let me repeat once again that we don’t want officials to enter the village to ensure security because before those officials came in, my village was peaceful enough.

The sky above the village was warm with love and trust, but as soon as people from the state came in, apprehension spread throughout the village.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

14 Parents are fearful for their children, brothers for their brothers, relatives for their relatives, friends for their friends.

Many don’t dare go out to tap the rubber trees, go out to make a living. In almost all longkong orchards, dead ripe fruit are cluttering the ground as if they had sprung out of the earth underneath.

What’s even more saddening is that the children don’t dare to go to school and the teachers don’t dare to teach.

The village is split apart. Many men have been killed mysteriously by bullets on their way to prayer. Many men have disappeared from the community.

Even now, nobody knows where those that have disappeared have gone and how.

Apart from this, I insist that no one in this village is in cahoots with any terrorists whatsoever. Nobody is like what the state is trying to besmirch us with to create rifts among us.

Even though most of us can’t speak Thai, let me tell you that we are not stupid to the point of not knowing what officials are up to, and let me tell you that those people are all servants of Satan, who have never born good will towards our most exalted Allah, never born good will towards our Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him.

What’s important is that these people are doing everything to destroy our being Malays and are trying to force our new generations of children to be Siamese by having them learn the Thai language and speak in the Thai SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

15 language. They are trying to inveigle our children away from the ways of Islam, from the right path of our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

Actually, I’ve already talked to you and to Hamid Mohammad about this. I’ve already told the both of you.

I don’t like to repeat myself. I am too tired and too sad to talk about this again.

If you want to know more about the case of the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, the ins and outs of it and the inside story, I suggest you go and ask Muhammad Karde.

Muhammad Karde I, Muhammad Karde, son of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, will say briefly that we don’t want any succour from the state; we don’t want any money or riches whatsoever.

Even though we aren’t wealthy like you are, we have no less honour than you do.

Let me repeat that I don’t want any help whatsoever that isn’t sincere.

There’s no need to search for those who shot Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, because I already know who the author of this murder is.

The imam embodied the love and trust of all of us villagers of Tanyong Baru. He was a pillar of rectitude, someone all Muslims had long held in deep respect.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

16 This being so, how can the state claim that this murder is the work of the villagers themselves? How can the state claim that it results from a conflict of interest, if not about narcotics then about contraband goods from across the border, if not about local politics then about quarrels between individuals?

Not to mention separatist aspirations and what not.

I say that whoever speaks like that, it means those people don’t understand Islam, they don’t understand Muslim ways. Only unbelievers speak like that.

I wish to assert in all truthfulness that this murder was definitely not committed by a villager, because Islam forbids all manner of behaviour that lead to violence, Islam forbids all manner of behaviour that lead to the destruction of the land, Islam forbids all manner of behaviour that cut a swath of fear, and for any Muslim to behave like that is a capital sin.

Indeed, for any Muslim to behave like that is no different from committing a most evil crime.

As his son, I wish to say in all truthfulness that before he died my father told me that he remembered the face of the one who shot him and stood right before him. I asked him who it was, but unfortunately he breathed his last before he could answer.

After ul-isha that night, all of the Tanyong Baru villagers left to attend to their own affairs; some went back home, some went to chat further at the teashop in front of the village.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

17 How unfortunate that he chose to sit in front of the mosque!

At the time, it was just after eight or almost nine, something like that. Out of premonition or not I don’t know, I suddenly worried about my father, so I left the teashop and rode back home on my motorcycle. As I drove past the mosque, I saw someone’s indistinct shadow sitting there quietly. I slowed down and a voice greeted me out of the shadows, asking why I was coming back earlier that usual tonight.

That’s when I knew that the shadow was Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, my father.

I asked him why he still sat there; he should go back inside. My father told me that sitting in front of the mosque was no different from being in the house because our house is next to the mosque and more importantly, the mosque is the house of God, but I told him that he should go back in all the same.

You go ahead, he said. I want to sit and listen to the sounds of the village for a while.

I didn’t ask him what he meant by the sounds of the village.

And I decided to turn round and drive back to the teashop.

And just as I got off my motorcycle, gunshots resounded in the dark from the village.

My chest was icy cold. I don’t know if it was because of a sudden gust of wind or for some other reason. I THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

18 thought of my father, so I turned around to go back the way I’d come.

A shooting star tore the darkness. It vanished over Tanyong Baru. I jumped onto my motorcycle to return to the village. Everybody in the teashop shouted at me to stop, but I didn’t pay attention to their concern.

In all truthfulness, I raced back and reached the mosque before he breathed his last. My father told me there were altogether five criminals.

Three out of the five were dressed in camouflage suits like soldiers. If you don’t believe it, go to the mosque and see. There, besides boot marks all over the place, there are the impacts of some twenty bullets.

I’d like to ask where ordinary villagers like us would get war weapons from.

I, Muhammad Karde, state that my father died at the hands of state officials.

Therefore I don’t want the side that killed my father to come and trespass into our Tanyong Baru.

Many times those murderers have disguised themselves by wearing da’wah garb like us to mislead us, to create misunderstanding among us. Worse than that, that night, they deliberately left a kapiyoh behind, but I am well aware of their tricks. I know … I know who they are.

For this reason, I can never trust any state officials.

I can’t trust them, whether they are Buddhists or Muslims.

I can’t be close, not even to the one my father was very SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

19 friendly with. Of course, the one I mean is Lieutenant Colonel Phithak Cheutchoothai.

Phithak Cheutchoothai I, Lieutenant Colonel Phithak Cheutchoothai, commander of the 602nd company, am in charge of the Tanyong Baru area.

Allow me to say in all truthfulness that the news, as reported by the various media, that children and women came out and prevented officials from entering the village is totally untrue.

I know this perfectly well.

That day, the villagers were scared, confused and aggrieved. They didn’t know what to do, so they didn’t want anyone to enter their village. Especially strangers.

Because that day there were lots of people whom nobody knew who they were. But that was only at first, on the first day.

Besides, the gathering in front of the village was in order to check and make sure that there was no third hand hiding in the community to create further mischief.

But with the state officials that the villagers were familiar with, there was no problem.

For instance, the governor and Mr Hamid Mohammad: both were able to go into the village without any problem whatsoever.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

20 As for reports that the Tanyong Baru villagers were so harassed by the state that they fled to Malaysia, they must be the work of ill-intentioned people who want to create disunity and confusion in the area.

Because in truth not a single villager anywhere in the three provinces has fled to Malaysia as reported, besides the traders along the border and those who go to work in Malaysia, who shuttle between the two countries on a regular basis.

Except for a group of unknown origin – probably not Thais, I reckon – set up by terrorists intent on destroying the image of the government, intent on destroying the image of the country.

Soldiers are busy solving this case and hastening to come to an understanding with all sides, especially the Tanyong Baru villagers.

The reason why terrorists have chosen to operate in Tanyong Baru is because Tanyong Baru is far away from state supervision.

An important point is that it can’t be denied that Tanyong Baru is a red area which we must hurry to rehabilitate anyway.

I’ve been in this area for a long time. I know what’s going on. As soon as someone is killed in the village, the villagers take fright, are scared and confused. Many don’t know what to think, whom to believe, of the state or of their neighbours.

When the rumour spread by ill-intentioned people that SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

21 soldiers would be sent in to take over the village again, things blew out of proportion.

I know that this was set up and planned by the terrorist side.

Even while they set about killing Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, they dressed in camouflage outfits like soldiers and made to be seen by the villagers in order to harm the government, for the soldiers to be scapegoats.

In other words, they want to harm national security because they have never thought of themselves as Thais.

I’d like to ask this: when you are born in this land, when you hold an ID of this country, how can you consider yourself as belonging to another country?

Or as rumour has it, one villager has kept a soldier’s cap that fell where the event took place. That is not true.

All of this trickery, we know perfectly well whose group is behind it. Right now soldiers are trying to sort things out. We ask all sides to understand and sympathise with the officials for the difficulties they have in performing their tasks.

I, Lieutenant Colonel Phithak Cheutchoothai, wish to state in all truthfulness that only a few days before Tok Imam Satorpa Karde was murdered, I went to see him at home.

The imam confided that there were many things he didn’t feel happy about.

I listened quietly to all that choked him up and then said he could rest at ease. So long as we soldiers had THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

22 guns in hand, I could guarantee him that nothing would happen to him.

If I spoke like that, it wasn’t to humour him, but it was my duty, it was part of protecting and ensuring the security of the Thai kingdom.

I didn’t exaggerate in any way, because everybody knows that Tok Imam Satorpa Karde was a good man.

All Tanyong Baru village knew that. Many soldiers and policemen also knew. For all seventy years of his life, the imam never strayed from the path of Islam.

Even if he was the only Muslim who could understand the Tripitaka as much as he did the Koran.

When I was finished speaking, the imam mused aloud that the many villagers that had been shot dead in tea shops, at home, by the roadside, in mosques, in rubber plantations, he wasn’t sure that they had done anything wrong, because as far as he knew all of those that had died were good men, never missed any of the five daily prayers, were always willing to help their neighbours, were never found at fault, and yet they had come to harm. More important than that was that nobody knew for sure who the killers were.

So I told the imam that from then on we would try to protect, administer and take care of Tanyong Baru to the best of our abilities.

But then what nobody could have thought possible happened.

Let me stress in all truthfulness again that the death of SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

23 Tok Imam Satorpa Karde has nothing to do with our soldiers but is the work of evil people who want us to take the blame for it.

Those people want to nurture hatred for the soldiers in villagers’ hearts. They want to harm the security of the country. Those people are not Thai.

Let me say it again: those who think like this are definitely not Thai.

Besides this, we have found out that one Koranic school – I don’t want to utter its name. That Koranic school is in the Cho Airong district, by the Taway mountain range. It is a clandestine training centre in weapons handling and military tactics for young front sympathisers, and the leader of the training is an ustaz, the owner of the Koranic school, who is a graduate from Libya.

Apart from this, the said ustaz is the brother-in-law of Tanyong Baru Village Headman Karim Malateh, who we expect will soon flee to Kelantan state.

As for the troublesome ustaz owner of the Koranic school, if he hasn’t fled by now into the Taway mountain range, he must have fled to Kalmusang, in the Kelantan state of Malaysia. This ustaz is being prosecuted for stealing weapons from the Fourth Development Battalion, besides being accused of the bombing of the railway in Tha Nam along with Haji Sulong ten years ago.

Even though the problems in many areas are interconnected to some extent, I don’t want everyone to think that the case of the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde is a big THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

24 issue, because this is far from being the only case of its kind.

Therefore I daresay this is only a small problem in a small village, as happens once again, that’s all.

I wish to state in all truthfulness that the government should see through the ploy of terrorists who are trying to link this to international politics by dragging Malaysia and the United Nations into it, although everything that has happened, I insist, is only a local dispute, a domestic problem that has to do with national politics only.

Recently I met by chance an official from the intelligence unit for the security of the southern border provinces. We had an exchange of views over many topics and many stories. Especially about the terrorists trying to turn the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde into a religious matter and to link it to international politics.

That official is Sama-ae Cheutchoothai.

Sama-ae Cheutchoothai I, Sama-ae Cheutchoothai, official of the intelligence unit for the security of the southern border provinces, wish first to make it clear that, even though I share the same family name as Lieutenant Colonel Phithak Cheutchoothai, we are not related, even though many people don’t believe me when I tell them it’s a coincidence.

In Thailand, I am sure there are lots of people with the same family name, even though they may not be related SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

25 at all. This is actually a trivial matter. As I said, lots of people happen to have the same family name.

But in the case of the three southern border provinces, that someone has the same family name as someone else, many think it’s a different matter.

Besides, many still try to link together the various confusing problems because they mistrust family names.

That this is the case is beyond my control. Everyone is free to think what they wish.

And as an official of the intelligence unit for the security of the southern border provinces, I’d like to say that now the following of the insurgency movement has increased in strength, in terms of strategy and tactics, propaganda and psychological action to win over the masses.

To the point that now the people do not dare assist and cooperate in any way with state officials, especially in Tanyong Baru.

There is a most distressing situation there.

I’ve been informed that at present Ustaz Yali Korsem, the owner of the Koranic school in the Taway mountain range who is under prosecution for the bombing of a railway line in Yubo tambon and for security breach and arm robbery at the Fourth Development Battalion, is leading hundreds of youths from Cho Airong, Si Sakhon and Su-ngai Padi districts of Narathiwat province to join the front activities in Gua Musang, Kelantan, which is his hideout, to get ready to cross the border again to create major disturbances in the near future.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

26 Apart from this, our intelligence unit has received deep-background information that another group on the opposite side is preparing a major agitation campaign in town, such as arm robberies, undercover elimination of innocent citizens and raids on official premises, in cooperation with its networks in Malaysia, Indonesia and some Arab countries.

Our side has found out that all of their plans will be cancelled immediately if Thai officials stop abducting and killing innocent people, withdraw their military forces from the three provinces, lift the state of emergency decree and free Ustaz Raman Yusoh, who is in Thai custody.

And what’s more important, the opposite side demand that the Thai state admit without reservation that Tok Imam Satorpa Karde was killed by Thai soldiers.

Currently, the majority of the people in the three provinces are increasingly leaning towards the terrorist side.

I think that it is time for the state to come to a prompt understanding with the people.

Whatever was done wrong we should have the courage to admit was wrong. Whatever is unclear should urgently be clarified.

Apart from that, the state must make the international community understand that what happened has nothing to do with oppressing Muslims, has nothing to do with religion. The state must make this clear, especially with the Organization of the Islamic Conference and other Muslim countries.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

27 I’d like to ask the government to face the truth. Right now, the situation in the three southern border provinces isn’t improving in any way.

Because the front sympathisers of the terrorist movement still plan to create further havoc.

For instance by prevailing upon and inducing the people in many villages to come out en masse and prevent state officials from entering their communities, so that those villages are free from state power, just like the model village the terrorists have just clobbered into shape, and by this I mean of course Tanyong Baru.

But I believe as the prime minister has said, that there isn’t a single square inch of Thailand that state officials cannot enter.

In the name of the intelligence unit, I think that the best way at the moment is to ask for the cooperation of all sides.

Whether military, police or civilians, ask for cooperation with the state, especially village headmen, tambon officials, ustaz, teachers, imams, traders, wealthy people, people with influence.

Without forgetting the chairman of the Islamic central committee of Narathiwat province, Abdullah Saleh.

Abdullah Saleh I, Abdullah Saleh, chairman of the Islamic central committee of Narathiwat province, am just back from TanTHE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

28 yong Baru, a village boiling under a searing sun, but deep below that phenomenon Tanyong Baru is coiled on itself, soundless and shivering in the utter loneliness of the Malay peninsula.

I went there together with the chairman of the group of imams of Su-ngai Padi district and a group of journalists from the southern press centre.

On the way to Tanyong Baru, I must admit frankly that I felt sad and dismayed when I saw the remains of the schools and temples that were burned, including notice boards advertising for teachers in front of many schools.

I couldn’t quite tell myself why I had to feel like that. I think that if anyone saw what I saw and had their heart in the right place, they wouldn’t feel differently.

A few hundred metres before the entrance to Tanyong Baru, tanks, humvees and hundreds of soldiers blocked the road as if the country had gone to war.

After the soldiers was the police checkpoint. Both soldiers and police searched and questioned us as if every one of us was a terrorist.

But there were some soldiers and policemen that were polite and showed us respect when they knew who we were and what our purpose was.

As soon as we entered Tanyong Baru, a large white cloth banner hanging on the wall of one house proclaimed, ‘government murder tok imam’.

I knew at once that this small village was writhing in a SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

29 ring of flames. I couldn’t help worrying that from one moment to the next Tanyong Baru would be burned down to ashes.

The moment I saw the utter confusion in front of the village, I felt as if I was falling right in the middle of a war without end. I myself wondered. I hadn’t expected the villagers would still be mobilised, as the murder was several days old.

At the entrance to the village, a group of children and women rushed in and surrounded our vehicle. Besides wearing hijab, all of them had another layer of head cloth hiding their faces and eyes.

The head of the southern news centre lowered the car windows. I smiled and raised my hand in greeting at everybody before explaining to that group what our purpose coming to Tanyong Baru was.

I believe some of them knew who I was. They thus opened a way for us to proceed.

We left the car in front of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’s house, whose door and windows were shut tight. The chairman of the group of imams and I took a shortcut through a small cluster of houses to the house of Village Headman Karim Malateh. Aphichart Jamookkhrut and his fellow journalists spoke with a group of children in front of the village grocery store.

The door and windows of Headman Karim Malateh’s house were shut tight, the same as Tok Imam’s house and the other houses.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

30 But when I saw that the cages of zebra doves hanging under the eaves of houses were still full of rice and water, I knew at once that we were the targets of hundreds of pairs of eyes watching us stealthily from the various nooks and crannies of Tanyong Baru.

I thought of the press photograph on the morning of the first day after the murder showing Headman Karim Malateh talking on his mobile phone in the shade of the communal pavilion. Women of all ages deliberately hid their faces behind their hijab. The men pulled their kapiyoh and headscarves to hide their faces as well.

People had helped each other drag tree trunks across the entrance to the village to prevent police and military officers from entering. I don’t know if all of this was the work of the villagers themselves or whether it was prompted by people in the background. In this kind of situation, nobody knows what the real truth is.

I stood looking at the dove cages for a while before telling the imam group chairman that by now Headman Karin should no longer be in Tanyong Baru.

The chairman stared at me with a question in his eyes, but before he could say anything, we saw a lanky child leading a white goat by the nose walking across a longkong orchard whose almost every branch was golden brown with overripe fruit.

The two of them turned towards the canal. A small birdcage swung in one of the child’s hands. If my eyes didn’t betray me, what was in that cage was a paper SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

31 bird, from the one hundred and twenty million paper birds the government dropped from the sky last year.

As I was about to call out to the child, Teacher Madeng Yali suddenly appeared from I don’t know where and came and salaamed the chairman and me. So I asked him who the child with the goat was.

Then I asked him about Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’s wife and children.

I don’t know… Teacher Madeng answered with a dry voice. I truly don’t know where they have gone.

What about Headman Karim Malateh, I asked.

Teacher Madeng told me he hadn’t seen Headman Karin attending the prayers at the mosque for a couple of days.

So I asked what exactly had happened to Tanyong Baru.

I myself don’t know for sure what’s happened to Tanyong Baru, Teacher Madeng told me. Whatever I’d say would be like lying, Mr Chairman. I don’t know how it could have happened. As for the children and women, Mr Chairman, you must have seen that they went to gather in front of the village once again.

Hearing this, I asked him whether he knew who it was that had started to induce the villagers to gather there again even though the body of Tok Imam Satorpa was already buried.

Mr Chairman, I don’t know… Teacher Madeng said. I really don’t know what happened. Even if I did I couldn’t say. Hard to tell. I don’t know who is who. I don’t know how everything happened. But if I heard rightly, this very THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

32 morning there was a rumour that the soldiers were about to invade the village again.

I stared at Teacher Madeng to search for the truth that may be hidden behind his words, but I found nothing besides eyes clouded with age and sorrow.

Mr Chairman, think about it, the old teacher said. The villagers may well be gathering together without anyone prompting them, but I’m not sure that what I say is correct, because since the imam was killed, there have been rumours all over the place almost every hour and even I am totally confused, I don’t know what’s what.

I nodded. Maybe what the old teacher said was true, but what made me wonder and even feel that there was something fishy was why everybody deliberately assembled in front of the village even though it was so hot the asphalt on the road was melting.

It didn’t seem to be different from the first morning after Tok Imam Satorpa was killed. It was said that a herd of goats was bleating like mad in panic, because their hooves were sunk into the road.

Actually, the old teacher said, you know how sorry I am not to be able to control anything at all. From the very first day when that terrible event took place, as you know, at first the villagers didn’t want anyone to enter Tanyong Baru, but after that they softened, they were willing to negotiate with the governor and they let him and Hamid Mohammad in. Besides, maybe you don’t know this yet, but as soon as news of the death of the imam spread out SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

33 of the village and reached the other side of the Su-ngai Kolok river, Tanyong Baru swarmed with Muslim brothers and sisters from everywhere, all of them with their faces veiled, even the men, there was no knowing who they were, where they came from, all sexes and ages in great confusion. Mr Chairman, maybe you don’t know that of all the people gathered in front of the village that day, only a few were Tanyong Baru villagers.

No one knows to what extent Teacher Madeng told the truth, but I think like him that there were few Tanyong Baru villagers in that crowd that day, even though it was impossible to figure out who was who, because the women hid their faces behind their hijab and the men hid their faces behind their headgear and their kapiyoh.

From my conversation with Teacher Madeng, I found out that he was now in charge of leading the prayers instead of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, as well as seeing to peace and order in Tanyong Baru, but it must be like the old teacher said: in this kind of situation, nobody can control anything.

Mr Chairman, the old teacher said, you know that before this, it couldn’t be said that this sort of thing had never happened in the three provinces, but as soon as Tok Imam Satorpa Karde was shot dead, the villagers who were already passably troubled from before were all the more confused and panicky, so that nobody could do anything right. And when they stood up and closed the village, everything took another dimension altogether. As THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

34 I said, sir, before that the villagers were already scared of officials and when that happened they were all the more scared of them, especially of security officials. So they didn’t want anyone to enter their village, they didn’t want to answer questions from any side. Even I was confused.

Teacher Madeng Yali kept talking back and forth so that I felt bad about asking too many questions, interfering too much, so I told him that all problems had their solutions sooner or later.

The old teacher nodded.

I tell you frankly, the old teacher said, after the arm robbery almost two years ago I’ve been praying every week. In all frankness, Mr Chairmen, for almost two years I’ve been praying every Friday without fail with the hope that peace will return to Tanyong Baru, to the three southern provinces and everywhere else as well.

After the other chairman and I joined the villagers in prayer, we left behind Tanyong Baru’s mistrust in the fury of the brazier of the Malay peninsula.

On the way back, as I thought of Teacher Madeng saying ‘I’ve been praying every Friday without fail with the hope that peace will return’, I quietly asked Allah’s mercy for Tanyong Baru and the three southern border provinces to soon be safe from the flames of all kinds He had created.

In any case I firmly believe that all problems can be solved, so long as all sides stop using the people as puppets for themselves, be it the government side or the insurgent side.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

35 One more point: I’d like to ask provincial authorities to talk, exchange opinions and consult with the Islamic committee to look for ways and means to make villagers understand, trust and be certain that the arrival of officials is for the purpose of taking care and helping, not to bring hatred or evil in their communities as has happened in the past.

As for state officials wondering why I suddenly went to Tanyong Baru even though I hadn’t been so instructed by any working unit and how come my going to Tanyong Baru didn’t create any problems with the villagers, this is one more case that shows that the state doesn’t understand Muslim ways.

In my capacity as a religious leader and upon the loss of life of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde or anyone else, especially when that loss of life is in the same manner as the imam’s, it is necessary for me and the members of the Islamic committee to go and visit, give heart and cheer up the villagers so that they all come to a correct understanding.

Most importantly, I decided to go there in order to be fair to all sides and also to lower the tensions over Tanyong Baru.

Someone who understands my intention over this well is Police Colonel Somchai Masulong.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

36 Somchai Masulong I, Police Colonel Somchai Masulong, superintendent of the Su-ngai Padi provincial police station, am informed that kamnan, village headmen, local leaders, religious leaders and employees of the peace-building unit of the three southern border provinces have received threats by mail.

After investigation, it was found that those letters originate from Su-ngai Kolok district and the central district of Narathiwat. The content of the letters is that those that work for Siam, whether Buddhists or Muslims, must resign immediately and those that don’t should find themselves a piece of land to accommodate their coffins.

One day later, I received a letter of threats sent directly to the police station. It said that if any police officer interfered with the tomb of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, he should find himself a piece of land for his own burial just like the other representatives of the state.

Let me say frankly that I’m not sure which group is at the origin of such letters. But whatever belief or faith motivates them, let it be known that they undermine the peacefulness of the people in the three southern border provinces and of all our compatriots.

Before this, I received a report that quite a number of terrorist sympathisers had infiltrated various state units.

Some of them posed as owners of photograph and photocopy shops in the provinces to have access to secret official information when officials that are terrorist SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

37 agents and officials that have nothing to do with the terrorists bring documents to be photocopied. But I think that there is nothing to worry about, because these people are now under close surveillance.

As is well known, those people have never thought of themselves as Thais, so they try in every way to harm the security of the country. That’s not all: some religious leaders only fill children’s heads with the hatred of unbelievers, of Buddhist monks, fill their heads even with the idea that Chinese and Thais do nothing but oppress the Muslims.

Those religious leaders try to brainwash the children, saying that the Chinks and Siyae or Siamese in the three provinces came to stay in their territory. Therefore all those non-believers should be expelled from the land of God by any means.

So far as I know, the Koran teaches Muslims to live in peace with other religionists; the Koran has never taught to segregate or expel those who differ from Muslim society, as some religious leaders in the three provinces claim who try to distort the holy book bestowed by God himself.

As I said, when children are taught to hate the Thais, of course they refuse to speak or read Thai, and this gives rise to a thousand and one problems, for which selfserving religious leaders raise a hue and cry as to how the Thai state oppresses Muslims.

And religion is put forward.

Next, the politicians, academics, businessmen and THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

38 wealthy men who are hand in glove with those maverick leaders raise issues to demand everything from the state while hiding their own interests behind those demands.

When things don’t go their way, those people will use those children that have been mislead as their operational tools, and few will see that hidden connection.

Few will believe that the root of the trouble is the distortion of the teachings of the holy book by some selfish groups.

What I’m saying is that the holy teachings are distorted for the benefit of certain groups. Even though many are aware of such a fishy practice, who will dare to speak up, as even Muslims among themselves don’t dare to?

If I do speak up it’s because I can no longer stand this, and of course I believe that many people consider that if I speak like that it’s because I am prejudiced against Islam, not to mention those that think that if I speak like that it’s because I’m on the government side.

Of course I’m not saying that the state is always right, because there are many groups in it who use power to truly oppress the people.

Let me ask this: is it only the Muslims in the three provinces that are victims of such abuse of power from the state? Have citizens in the other parts of the country never been mistreated by the state in the same way or what? If the people in the rest of the country are similarly mistreated, why is it that they react differently from the way Muslims in the three southern border provinces currently do?

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

39 I know these are questions of little weight as they don’t consider the context or the other characteristics of the troubled area.

As I said, in the end, religion is put forward; in the end, history and race are invoked, but they wouldn’t create any problems at all if the teachings of religion weren’t interpreted or distorted for self-serving interests or weren’t used as political tools.

At this point, many might object that if I speak like that it means that I don’t know Islam truly, because the teachings of Islam cover every dimension, every aspect of life, from food, sleep, wake, bowel movements to legal, social, economic, political, administrative matters and whatever else.

Therefore, given that Muslim culture cannot be separated from political culture, given that Muslim culture cannot be separated from everything else, from every dimension, from every aspect of life, then why can’t I say that the problems in the three southern provinces are inextricably linked to religion?

Having said this, some might object again that individuals that distort religion or misinterpret the holy book for their own purposes are not true Muslims, because true Muslims do not allow the use of any method that is dangerous or that degrades humanity. True Islam does not allow hassling or molesting innocent people in their lives or their properties. Therefore those who behave like that cannot be considered as Muslims.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

40 I know that that is the proof, that is the behaviour, that is the teaching of the holy book, but the reality is that people in the three southern border provinces are being slaughtered daily, with bombs, with bullets, with decapitations, and those who do it mostly claim they do it in the name of Islam, they do it as warriors of God. Some groups of people come out to deny that such behaviour is truly Muslim but is the behaviour of unbelievers. Those who argue like that, I say, are people trying to pass the buck. Why? Because if true Muslims let the teachings of the holy Koran be distorted often by unbelievers and don’t think of protecting the true teachings, then it is no different from joining in the murder of God they themselves have given their lives and souls to.

More importantly, besides misusing and distorting the holy teachings, which might harm Islam itself, these people are also a danger threatening the international community of peaceful Muslims.

At this point I am reminded of the sentence that says that not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. Even if it sounds like a play on words, I say that there is much truth in that sentence.

That sentence makes me wonder to what extent the culture, beliefs and faith that turned into a religion which cannot be separated from a form of administration or which refuses to compromise with the rules and regulations of a modern state, including refusing to compromise with different civilisations and beliefs, isn’t SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

41 the source of the clash between two worlds whose end no one can foresee.

Of course I know that looking at the problem from this angle, besides being considered as not understanding Islam, will be claimed as looking at the problem with the eyes of America or of the European superpowers that want to create a clash between two civilisations.

But is America truly evil? Are Muslims truly immaculate?

Not a few people are trying to ask the world to come to an understanding with Muslim culture and civilisation, but I have never heard the world ask the Muslims to open their hearts to understand other cultures and civilisations.

I know that no civilisation in the world has ever developed on its own without contacts with other civilisations, but the problem is that, when a civilisation has taken roots and grown to the point of establishing a strong identity for itself, that civilisation seeks for ways to invade, smother, drive away or swallow up other civilisations or doesn’t try to come to an understanding or compromise with other civilisations.

That’s the problem that I can see.

What I hear often from the mouths of Muslims is the sentence, the world doesn’t understand Muslim principles, or put another way, you are not a Muslim therefore there’s no way you can understand Islam.

Can it be that these sentences are a problem in themselves and from there the problem extends to other civilisations?

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

42 Especially western civilisation or civilisations that are representatives of western civilisation.

In everything I have said, I am not siding with the western world. At the same time I am not siding with the Thai government, which we know is a loyal friend of America and America stands in confrontation with Islamic civilisation.

What I mean to say is that I don’t side with anyone whatsoever, whether western civilisation led by America or Islamic civilisation.

Because in my view both civilisations are utopias, but they are utopias resting on different concepts, utopias that inhabit different worlds.

The American utopia wants to dissolve the differences between civilisations by explaining civilisation through its own discourse. As for Islamic civilisation, it wants to retain the purity of its identity by refusing to compromise with the civilisations it is in contact with or considers other civilisations as fakes that must be destroyed, which not only contradicts the teachings of the Koran but also is no different from the American discourse.

Therefore, when these two utopian worlds derived from different concepts come into contact, our planet turns instantly into a giant brazier.

There is a story I want to tell you briefly.

A long time ago, there was a tribe living in prehistoric jungle. That tribe believed that whoever among them died, especially of old age or the leader of the tribe, they SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

43 had to eat the dead; everyone must eat without letting any flesh or blood fall on the ground, otherwise the tribe would lose its strength, its blood would weaken, they would be invaded by other tribes and eventually become extinct.

Now, one anthropologist reached that primitive tribe.

He witnessed their practice of eating their own dead and then he publicised his observations in the outside world, saying that that primitive tribe was evil, barbaric, given to eating human flesh, especially that of their own dead.

From then on, the world knew a new tribe of primitive, barbaric and fierce cannibals.

That took place in a past century.

I wonder what the two worlds at loggerhead would make of it in this century.

Would that tribe stick to their way of telling the story according to their old custom of eating their ancestors or would they adopt some of the norms and meanings of the anthropologist’s story to adapt it to the new world?

Would the anthropologist still stick to his story or would he alter it in some ways in deference to the tribe’s version and, most important, for the sake of coexistence in this new century?

Now, let’s come back to the small territory of the Malay peninsula. Whether the story I’ve just told is relevant to it or not, I don’t know.

But I know I have strayed away from the topic too much already. So, let me go back to the case of the threat letters.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

44 Because of them, I’ve been informed, several village headmen have already resigned, such as the headman of Bara-ngae Village 3 of Tok Teng tambon, Su-ngai Padi district, while other headmen have yet to reach a decision.

That is not as embarrassing as the fact that several officers under my command are panic-stricken.

After investigation, I can say that all the letters were written on a computer and then further photocopied.

We have now collected those letters and we are awaiting the results of the forensic analysis to find the senders and punish them according to due legal process.

Besides, we have also sent the contents of the letters to the head of the southern news centre, Aphichart Jamookkhrut.

Aphichart Jamookkhrut After Tok Imam Satorpa Karde died, I, Aphichart Jamookkhrut and my journalist friends of the southern news centre went to Tanyong Baru village again to gather information about the murder of the imam.

Tanyong Baru is a small village located along a canal which is fed by the Chattrawarin waterfall on the Sungai Padi mountain range. The other side of the canal is a Thai Buddhist village.

It can be said that the two villages have been enjoying brotherly relations since ancient times. Besides being linked by an old wooden bridge over the canal, the abSIRIWORN KAEWKAN

45 bot of the village temple who was shot dead by terrorists a few days earlier was the true blood brother of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, who also lost his life to mysterious bullets a few days later.

The people in both villages all know that the abbot who died at the hand of no one knows who was Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’ elder twin brother, but only a few months after they were born, the younger twin, that is Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, fell ill and nobody knew what the matter with him was and after only three days he breathed his last amid the sorrow of his parents and relatives on both sides of the canal.

Right then, one-hundred-year-old Tok Yee of Tanyong Baru village walked across the old wooden bridge to visit his friend the abbot but the cries and moans of the dead infant’s relatives made him stop short and watch. When he knew what had happened, he told the child’s parents that their son was still alive, except that now his soul had left his body and couldn’t find its way back, that’s all.

And then one-hundred-year-old Tok Yee asked the parents whether they would let him raise the child if he was able to bring him back to life.

When it was duly agreed, Tok Yee told someone to fetch him a length of cloth to cover the child with and for everybody to step back from around the body and not to make any noise while he performed a ceremony.

After that, Tok Yee entered the circle, sat down and muttered Arabic words. A few minutes later, all BudTHE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

46 dhist present were astounded when the infant started to whine increasingly loud.

And soon the whine turned into laughter.

From that moment on, the younger twin became a new member of the village redolent of praises to God while the older twin grew up amid Pali-language prayers.

For all that, the two boys were constantly running and playing on both sides of the canal until they grew into young men and the older twin turned to the Tripitaka while the younger studied the Koran from dawn to dusk.

Even then, the two of them kept crossing the canal back and forth to talk and exchange knowledge and understanding of Allah and the Buddha ceaselessly, and they did so all their lives right into old age.

Until not so many days ago the older twin was shot dead as he prayed inside the temple, and only days later, Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, the younger twin, was shot dead in turn as he sat resting in front of the mosque.

This resulted in the old wooden bridge, which had linked the two villages for hundreds of years, to be blown up into two segments by some mysterious hand, shortly after the murder of the imam.

Such is in a nutshell the history and local lore of the two villages across the canal and of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde.

We reporters went into Tanyong Baru in company of Abdullah Saleh, chairman of the Narathiwat Islamic committee, and Yusof Jediromae, chairman of the imam group of Su-ngai Padi district.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

47 I knew that if we hadn’t come with the two chairmen, we might not have been allowed to enter Tanyong Baru, even though that wasn’t the first time I had gone there.

As soon as we entered the Tanyong Baru area, we saw a white cloth banner bearing the Thai words in vivid red, ‘government murder tok imam’. I wondered who it was that had written that slogan.

Villagers, doped-up youngsters, front sympathisers, terrorists, teachers, imams, the military, the police, wealthy merchants, local or national politicians, businessmen… I think no one knows.

But then again, maybe the villagers do know who wrote it.

As our car made to enter the village, a group of Muslim children and women rushed in and surrounded our car, all hiding their faces and their eyes behind their headscarves.

It made me think of the burka of Muslim women in Afghanistan when the Taliban were in power, except that Afghan women were forced to wear it, whereas in Tanyong Baru it’s the Muslim women who hold power.

Or is it that actually Muslim women in Tanyong Baru are under some power at another level? I don’t know. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. I came only to report the news, to gather information, I didn’t come to find out the truth.

I pushed the button to lower the windows. A gust of hot wind came in. I sort of felt the faint fragrance of THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

48 some flower, maybe bullet wood or else gold-leaf flower.

Abdullah Saleh smiled and greeted everybody in the local Malay dialect before explaining the purpose of our visit to Tanyong Baru for everyone to know, and then that group let us through.

Other people in small groups around there looked at our car almost without blinking.

All houses had their doors and windows shut tight. The bangsoon palms in the flower pots in front of almost all the houses had withered and faded. Even the tiger doves in the cages hung under the eaves didn’t dare to coo.

But, strangely enough, the rose-mallow fences of almost all the houses bloomed in vivid red flowers as if to defy the scalding heat.

I noticed a group of boys stealthily following our car from the entrance to the village. When they saw us park the car by the cement road in front of Tok Imam’s house, which is next to the village mosque, they exchanged some message gesturing with their hands.

The next moment, some twenty children huddled together whispering in front of the grocery store, about twenty metres away from us.

I wondered why, even though there was clearly fear in their eyes, that group of children didn’t choose to hide somewhere else.

Furthermore, I could see toughness mixed with their diffidence. When they saw that the first person to step out of the car wore a headscarf, a sarong and an upper SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

49 garment that denoted an Islamic religious leader, the children’s toughness subsided.

And when we greeted them in the local Malay dialect, the glints in their eyes became friendlier. I gave them a copy of a newspaper with pictures and reports of the day the villagers blocked off state officials.

They all looked at it with interest, even though I knew only a few of them could read Thai.

I left my fellow reporters with the children to go over to a skinny, swarthy child with very sad eyes standing with his goat in a corner of a wall at the back of the mosque, both of them looking downcast as if they belonged to another world altogether.

As soon as they realised I was walking up to them, they both swiftly woke up from that other world and then cut through the small grass patch at the back of the mosque, heading for the bridge across the canal. That’s when I saw the small birdcage in the child’s hand.

I walked up to the foot of the bridge, which had been blown up, and stopped there. The Muslim boy and his white goat stood by the bank of the canal, both looking at the village on the other side. The birdcage in the boy’s hand shook a little. There was an old, faded paper bird flapping in there.

I tried to get the boy to talk, but didn’t succeed, until a fat boy sidled up to me.

Ali speaks to no one, the fat boy said, except Adam.

So I asked him who Adam was. The fat boy burst out THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

50 laughing before he told me, That one, that goat there, that’s Adam.

Your goat is called Adam, is it, I asked its owner.

You’d be better off talking to his goat, the fat boy said, laughing.

After spending quite some time there and when I was sure I couldn’t prise the boy’s mouth open, I went back the way I came together with the fat boy. I tried to get him to talk in general before I cautiously steered the conversation to the death of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde.

Before the imam died, I saw a plane flying over the village going north, the fat boy said with a very earnest voice, adding that his religious leader had been killed by state officials.

I pointed out that the death of the imam should have nothing to do with that plane, but the child insisted that it did, because that plane was full of soldiers.

I wondered if the fat boy had really seen the plane or if he had just imagined the whole thing, or else he might have been told so by people in the village.

So I asked him how come he had seen the plane, given that when the imam was shot it was already dark. The boy insisted that he had really heard the plane flying over the village.

Everybody heard it, the fat boy asserted.

We stood talking on the cement road in front of the mosque for a while. A sad-looking village woman walked by. She must have heard what we were talking about, SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

51 for she said that the old imam was respected by everybody, so I told her I was aware of that.

She told me that even though they didn’t see who fired, the villagers believed that the imam must have, otherwise before dying he wouldn’t have forbidden them to take him to hospital, let any official come and look at his body, or report his death, as reporting it would be useless.

I know that he was killed by soldiers, the Muslim woman said as she peered at the inside of the mosque. They shot him to take revenge in the name of Thai Buddhists for the murder of their abbot before that.

So I asked her how she could be sure. She turned to stare at me briefly before shifting her eyes to the fat boy.

Even the children know who killed their imam, the village woman said.

Do you know where the imam was shot, I asked her.

The fat boy interjected that he was shot in the head. I laughed softly before telling him that I meant the location, not the part of the body shot.

After a while, other village women one by one slowly came out of the dark corners of Tanyong Baru when they knew we hadn’t come as representatives of officialdom. At the very least, we had come on our own, out of our own decision.

Furthermore, I had come as a reporter, to seek information, not necessarily the truth.

Before our imam died, an old village woman said, soldiers brought him medicine, because he wasn’t well, THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

52 and that same group of soldiers came to see him often.

The old woman said that after the imam was shot dead, that group of soldiers disappeared. I didn’t know if the villagers believed this by their own lights or whether they had heard rumours to that effect, but I didn’t want to interrupt, I wanted to listen to what they had to say, so I kept silent.

I asked everybody how long they would keep Tanyong Baru out of bounds. Another village woman said that she couldn’t say how long they would need to keep it closed.

At that point, I felt like there was some faint fragrance from some flower wafting in the sunlight that broiled over Tanyong Baru, and then a brusque voice came out of the door of the mosque.

Until the officials have caught those who killed the imam!

I turned to look at the owner of that voice with a smile.

Incredibly, it was the voice of a young woman.

That’s not a bad bargaining stance, I teased.

But that made her even less satisfied. The atmosphere around us began to be oppressive. The air was even more sweltering. I caught myself thinking that in the next minute or so, Tanyong Baru might well die under the scorching sunlight of the Malay peninsula.

The young woman swept her eyes over the village women and rested them on the fat boy. They all lowered their heads, looking nervous. The fat boy raised one hand and started to bite his fingernails.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

53 Even though her face was hidden by the hijab, her tall and slender silhouette, her beautiful thick eyebrows over her sharp eyes attested that she was a beautiful woman.

If it isn’t too much to ask, the young woman turned to me, her voice as brusque as before, please tell us what the code of ethics of a newsman is.

I smiled, staring at her deliberately.

I had a feeling that I had met this woman somewhere before, but the cloth around her head impeded my memory.

I lowered my eyes to her beautiful tapering fingers.

One of her hands held a small white flower. I thought it might be a gold-leaf flower from the Buto national park, but I wasn’t sure.

Sunlight blazed everywhere. I screwed up my eyes to look towards the bridge on the canal. The scrawny boy with his small birdcage and his goat Adam stood there, looking distraught.

From where I stood, those two lives seemed to stand precariously at the far end of the destroyed bridge.

The desolate Buddhist village spread in front of the boy. The temple’s stupa, roof finials and gable edges sparkled in the strong sunlight.

The young woman pulled me out of my reverie by saying that journalists like me liked to make up the news. I told her that was not the way I worked. Besides, there were all kinds of Thai newspapers.

It was then that I realised that the village women and the fat boy had absconded into Tanyong Baru’s dark corners.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

54 Several Thai newspapers wrote that our imam went secretly to Kelantan for treatment. The young woman was staring at me. Whereas actually he is lying in the kubur.

I listened quietly, because I knew what I had come here for and at the same time I was trying to remember if I had met her before.

The young woman went on pouring forth about Thai newspapers reporting that villagers had fled to take refuge in Malaysia so that Tanyong Baru was practically deserted.

I told her that Malaysian newspapers such as Utusan Melayu and The Straits Times had reported the same.

But Thai newspapers like to besmirch us Malay Muslims, she said, whereas Malaysian newspapers report the news truthfully.

I asked her which Thai newspapers did as she said, but before I could finish my sentence, the young woman furiously accused me, claiming that people like me stood on the government’s side.

I am not sure whether she was provoking me to make me angry or if she really felt like that, so I tried to swallow my irritation and keep it under wraps. I knew why I had gone there.

Or isn’t it true? She lowered her tone when she saw me silent. Or will you deny that all Thai journalists are government mouthpieces?

I let her ramble on.

As for the story of four hundred Malay Muslims seeking SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

55 refuge in Malaysia… She deliberately let silence disrupt the flow of words for a while. Maybe she wanted to find out whether I was listening. That’s when I felt that her voice was no longer brusque and unyielding as it was at first. …If really this did happen, she went on, if really this did happen, believe me, it had nothing to do with the people in this village.

I nodded and smiled at her.

In the split second when our eyes met, I don’t want to say that the young woman was smiling at me similarly.

I tried to warn myself that I had come here to look for information, not the truth, because in the middle of such a place and situation nobody knew what the truth was.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling that the young woman in front of me was smiling at me or was it that she was the pretty kindergarten schoolteacher that I had met before?

The young woman went on speaking to the effect that she didn’t know where those newsmen had found their information claiming that those refugees had created a situation to undermine the country’s image, whereas in truth they had fled harassment by the Thai state power.

From the level of her voice, I thought that she was chatting with me rather than asking a question.

As a representative of the Tanyong Baru people, the young woman said, I wish to stress again that, apart from Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, all Tanyong Baru people are still here, except those that went to work in Malaysia THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

56 before that. There is a former member of parliament who is very well aware of this and can vouch for it.

I nodded and smiled at her again before asking her who that MP was.

As I waited for her answer, I felt I saw a flicker of a smile in her sharp eyes once again.

That’s right! She was the kindergarten schoolteacher.

And then she uttered the name of Hamid Mohammad.

Hamid Mohammad I, Hamid Mohammad, former Member of Parliament for Narathiwat province elected three times, wish to say in all truthfulness that the government must come to an understanding with the villagers and find the culprits urgently.

I know this is difficult to achieve in a situation like this, and yet the government must try, the government must do it, otherwise the gap between the state and the people will widen further.

I don’t want the two sides to mistrust each other. I don’t want each side to speak in its own corner; otherwise the confusion that will ensue will never end.

What is more worrying than that is that the matter will become increasingly complicated and if that’s the case, what used to be an internal problem of the country will flare out and become an international issue, which SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

57 would suit the troublemakers, who try to discredit the Thai government by claiming that it oppresses Muslims.

I strongly believe that if each side turns towards the other, eventually there will be a way out, because everybody lives together in Thailand, even of different races, different languages and different religions, but it mustn’t be forgotten that we all have the same king.

May I say in all truthfulness that most villagers in Tanyong Baru are good people. They are good servants of Allah, they are not involved with any subversive movement; they have never had anything to do with illegal activities of any kind.

But how sad that most of these good villagers are terrorists in the eyes of the government!

Actually the situation in Tanyong Baru village is a test case which challenges the government and Thai people in the whole country. All sides must cooperate, must come to an understanding, free of prejudice against each other, because we have just had dire lessons from Krue Se, from Tak Bai and innumerable other lesser tragedies. Are we going to stand watching our Muslims brothers seek refuge in a neighbouring country until none are left in the provinces, even though this land is where they were born, where their ancestors have lived for generations?

I believe that if officials are not sincere in solving the problem or if officials still let villagers feel threatened by state power, I strongly believe that many other people from Tanyong Baru will seek refuge in Malaysia for THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

58 sure. I don’t want innocent villagers to have to flee the country of their birth, such as Tanyong Baru Village Headman Karim Malateh, whom officials claim was the one who murdered Tok Imam Satorpa Karde.

Whereas in reality the imam was someone he and all the villagers had always respected. Even the Thai Buddhists in the village across the canal respected him.

If I speak like this, it is not to protect Headman Karim Malateh; it is not because he used to be my electoral agent; but I speak in the name of justice.

I know perfectly well that Headman Karim is a good man. He had always prayed five times a day without fail; he has always observed Ramadan without fail.

Most importantly, on the night the event happened, he was still in Malaysia, the best evidence of this being his passport. Thus how could he be the one that pulled the trigger and killed Tok Imam Satorpa Karde?

I, Hamid Mohammad, ask for fairness for Headman Karim Malateh.

Karim Malateh In the name of Allah, most merciful, may progress and peace be upon Prophet Muhammad and his followers.

I, Karim Malateh, headman of Tanyong Baru village, wish to say frankly that if I had to flee and take refuge in Kelantan it was because after the death of Tok Imam SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

59 Satorpa Karde, state officials – soldiers, policemen and civil servants – came into the village almost every day, even though in truth no one wanted them to come.

They summoned all heads of families, questioned them about the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa and questioned them about troublemakers and their sympathisers.

After that the behaviour of people in the village was monitored in permanence so that no one dared to step out of their houses, afraid of being under surveillance, afraid of doing something wrong, even though before then they had told the complete truth to the governor and Mr Hamid Mohammad.

But after the day the governor and Mr Hamid left the village, both military and police poured into Tanyong Baru as if my village was a lair of bandits.

I and the other villagers believed that if we persisted in staying in the village, no one could guarantee our security.

Before this, fellow villagers had disappeared without trace almost every day, whether it was reported or not, both children and adults, both religious leaders and local leaders.

Many other villages had suffered the same fate. Those who had acted like that, I say, were no ordinary villagers like us for sure.

When a village is no longer a village – let me ask you this: who would want to stay in it? Let me ask you this: who would bear to stay when there’s no way to know when a bullet will stop us from breathing?

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

60 Let me say frankly that I’m not the one who killed the imam, as officials claim. How could I do that, given that Islamic ways forbid all manner of violence, because Islam is a religion fostering peace, the substance of Islam is peace?

Don’t even mention the destruction of our fellow man.

Even in times of war, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, warned his soldiers not to destroy buildings and houses, not to plunder, not to harm weaker people such as children, women and the old, not even trees and grass of all kinds.

Let me say frankly that the night the event happened I was in Malaysia, as my passport will confirm. If I knew of the murder, it was because Hamid Mohammad made a long-distance call to inform me, may Allah protect him.

Something else: let me say frankly that I do not know Ustaz Tasyali Kosem, the owner of the Koranic school that is claimed to be a military training centre for young front volunteers in the Taway mountain range.

Even though I do not know him, the Thai state is trying to link me to that ustaz by saying that we are close relatives, so there’s nothing strange that my taking refuge in Malaysia is being seen as being masterminded by someone else behind the scene.

Let me stress again that no one has enticed or ordered me and the other villagers to travel to Kelantan, but if we’ve had to wander away from home, away from our beloved families, it’s because we’ve been bullied by the Thai state.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

61 I will not go back until the situation has returned to normal or else until we are certain that Thailand is safe enough for us to live there.

May I stress again that I will not return to Thailand until the situation is peaceful or until I’m certain that no state official will come and disturb my village again.

All of us who have taken refuge in Kelantan are ordinary villagers and earn our living honestly. None of us is a sympathiser; there’s no group of terrorists manipulating us behind the scene as the Thai state claims.

Let me say frankly that if we fled from Thailand it’s because we were afraid of dying, may Allah protect us.

All that I’ve told you my wife can confirm. Her name is Siti Malateh.

Siti Malateh I, Siti Malateh, have been in charge of supervising border trade for many years.

I don’t want to talk about my husband who is now in detention in Kelantan as an illegal refugee from Thailand.

May I say in all truthfulness that my husband is a good man, but he has been provoked, he has been falsely accused of killing Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, even though that night my husband wasn’t in Tanyong Baru.

The truth is that my husband had left Thailand to visit THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

62 some relatives in Malaysia before that terrible event took place in the village.

Actually I don’t want to talk about this. I’m tired. I’m dejected and bored. I’ve thought many times of changing my nationality to Malaysian once and for all to have no problems any longer.

I don’t want to talk about this again.

But I want to talk about what directly affects my work, which is that Governor Pracha ordered the Phetcharawut special unit and the Border Patrol Police which are responsible for the border area from Sukhirin District to Tak Bai District to increase their patrolling along the Sungai Kolok river and to close down sixteen trading points to prevent Thai Muslims to escape to Malaysia and also prevent commuting nationals from both countries to foment trouble in the three provinces.

Concerning those trading points, these are checkpoints where people along the border take goods from the Thai side, such as rice and vegetables, to sell in Malaysia and take goods from there to sell on the Thai side, such as electrical appliances, palm oil, diesel oil, sugar, dates and many other kinds of goods.

I want everybody to know that closing down those trading points affects me and other traders along the border negatively very much. I and all the other border traders would like the government to review the measure closing those checkpoints and I ask Thai authorities to solve this problem as soon as possible.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

63 If I mention this it’s because it’s necessary. It is a problem for people of both countries. So I must speak out and ask the Thai authorities to solve this problem urgently, or else we’ll get together to protest against Governor Pracha Wongko-sin.

Pracha Wongko-sin I, provincial governor Pracha Wongko-sin, wish to point out in all truthfulness that the order to close down the trading points was taken several months ago. As for the permanent customs checkpoints they are still open as usual.

In this respect, three or four months ago our officials closed down the trading points once to prevent bad elements from sneaking in from Malaysia to create disturbances, especially those that have IDs of both nations, because those people are particularly tricky.

They apply to go abroad, but afterwards they steal back to create havoc in the three provinces before stealing out again. Then they travel back to Thailand, have their date of return stamped in their passport as evidence that, when an evil deed was done, whether murder or sabotage, they were not in Thailand.

But as soon as we closed down those checkpoints, they were blown up by insurgents, resulting in destroyed property and death or injuries to officials. It was always like this.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

64 When we saw that closing down those checkpoints didn’t solve the problem permanently, we had to reopen them.

But then came the problem of four hundred people fleeing to take refuge in Malaysia, so we had to close down those checkpoints once again.

Even though I know that each closure disturbs the border trade flow, it is necessary for us to close them down.

As for the people with problems in this case or many other cases before, whose enticement should I understand it is if not those whose interests in the border trade are threatened?

And something else too: let me say in all truthfulness that now many villages in Narathiwat province have no tambon administrative council members and no village headman, because in the last election to the council there were no candidates.

For instance Village 4 of Aibatu of Tok Deng tambon has neither representatives to the tambon council nor village head, because the last two village headmen were shot dead one after the other.

There are villages with neither tambon council members nor village heads in almost all districts of Narathiwat province, especially in Cho Airong, Si Sakhon and Chanae districts.

This is a truth few outsiders know and this is a truth many people don’t want to talk about.

I myself have long tried to solve those various problems but I admit it takes time, the various sides must join hands SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

65 because the roots of those problems are deeply buried, too deep for anyone’s eyesight to see them clearly, especially, it goes without saying, those of outsiders.

On the day I went to Tanyong Baru, may I say in all truthfulness that I myself was mystified that I didn’t find any trace of blood at the mosque at all.

That day, Headman Karim Malateh came out of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’s house in a hurry and came straight at me when he saw that I was inspecting the traces of bullets on the cement walls and some marks on the ground in front of the mosque. He was speechless for a while before saying, You know, don’t you, Governor, that the mosque is the house of God and the house of God should always be clean. I told him that I knew.

You must be wondering why there are no traces of blood, Headman Karim said. I was a bit startled, wondering if Headman Karim could read my thoughts.

All the people of Tanyong Baru have helped wash and scrape all traces of blood from the first day, Headman Karim said.

Hearing this, I nodded to signify that I understood, but I still wondered if anyone had seen the body of the imam, especially state officials. So far as I know, not a single person had seen the body of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde.

As you know, Governor, the village headman said, reading my thoughts yet again, Tok Imam Satorpa Karde’s death wasn’t an ordinary death, so we had to bury him as soon as possible.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

66 After the ’asr, we buried him without washing him because we hold he was a shahid, it was a death in the fight for Allah.

I know that the imam’s death was not an ordinary death, but I couldn’t help wondering if a death like that could be called shahid or not.

Another important point is whether the body lying in the grave or kubur was really that of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde or someone else’s or maybe there was no body at all in the kubur.

In a situation like this, who would know what the truth is?

If a death actually happened in Tanyong Baru, how come the police had no evidence of it whatsoever, whether fingerprints of the dead or a medical post mortem? I thought I would ask again the headman if he had actually seen the body of the imam with his own eyes or not, but I kept quiet, because an investigation or the exhumation of a body should be the duty of the police, who would have to ask permission from the court to carry out an exhumation in order to do a post mortem, after which they would inform me as the governor.

And then all of a sudden Headman Karim said again that if they didn’t report to the police or send the imam to the hospital it was because the imam had forbidden them, thus everybody had to proceed according to the wishes of the imam they respected.

I’m not sure whether Headman Karim truly read my SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

67 thoughts or if it was just a coincidence.

After walking around the mosque inspecting, I craned my neck to look at the blown-up old wooden bridge and observe the Thai village across the canal. The temple’s roof finials and gable edges and the top of the stupa sparkled in the strong sunlight. Headman Karim said that Mr Hamid and the wife of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde were waiting for me.

Hearing that, I followed the headman to a two-storey wooden house that stood only a few feet from the mosque.

As soon as I appeared in the house, a pair of eyes hidden behind a hijab avoided my eyes.

The owner of those eyes, a middle-aged Muslim woman, was clearly apprehensive, even though on previous occasions she had never been like this.

I tried to talk to her.

But she was mostly silent and still. If she answered, she answered briefly, without elaborating, making as if she and I had never known each other before.

As soon as I asked to take her picture, the wife of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde drew her hijab to veil her face and eyes entirely, even though before that, whenever I took the liberty to photograph her and showed the picture to someone, no one recognised who was on it.

I tried to think of a way to ease the tense atmosphere.

It struck me that I should speak to her on our own, but my rudimentary knowledge of Malay didn’t allow for this, so I told Teacher Madeng Yali to keep us company THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

68 and Hamid and Headman Karim to go and look at the blown-up bridge to see if there was a way to get it repaired soon or not.

For all that, that day I didn’t get any further answer or evidence regarding the death of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde.

Nevertheless, I would ask all sides to join hands and hearts.

Try not to be prejudiced.

Don’t hide any self-interest into your acts, for the sake of reconciliation, for the sake of peace and happiness of the country.

As for the problem of the four hundred refugees, we are coordinating with local officials of the state of Kelantan.

A local official of Kelantan state I, a local official of Kelantan state who wishes to remain anonymous, have learned that there is a high possibility that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or UNHCR will extend help to the four hundred Thai Muslims from the southern border provinces that have now absconded to our country.

I am not sure what is the real reason why those Muslims chose to flee and come here, but from what I can figure from the news on Channel 1 and Channel 3 and from several newspapers, all reports state that the four hundred ran away from sweep-up and arrest operations by the Thai SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

69 government, which uses discretionary powers in an emergency situation without humanitarian concern.

I don’t want to think that the problem is actually more complicated than this.

I am aware that even the administrative officials of Narathiwat province are concerned that every day increasing numbers of Muslims from the three Thai southern border provinces are clandestinely entering our country.

They come to be employed in rubber plantations, in palm plantations, in rice fields, they open food shops or transport contraband goods.

Most of these Thais have no passport. Some have IDs of the two nationalities.

Here and now, I shall speak only about Kelantan state.

Along the border to a depth of ten kilometres from the Thai side, some fifty to sixty thousand Thai labourers come to work, especially in Gua Musang, where they number up to twenty thousand.

All people concerned know this well, because the problem of Muslims from the three southern border provinces of Thailand who come to work in Kelantan isn’t something that has happened in the past few days, and those overall numbers don’t include those that travel to visit relatives on our side of the border, which probably number just as many.

I’ll only say that the movements of those people are well known to the relevant authorities, especially immigration officials, both Thai and Malaysian.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

70 I once heard a friend of mine who is an immigration official complain about this and many other problems I can’t talk about, some of which because I don’t want to, for the reason that I am not sure what’s true or true to what extent.

But what I can talk about is that a few days ago the Bernama press agency and The New Straits Times reported that our Kelantan state police had arrested several dozen more Thai Muslims that were headed south to Kuala Lumpur, and in the same vehicles there were Burmese Muslims, Khmer Muslims and Indonesian Muslims as well.

I am not sure whether this reported arrest is linked to the earlier case of the four hundred Thai refugees. I don’t know, so I don’t want to talk about it. Even if I did, I am not sure what the truth is.

This is a delicate matter, because it has to do with international relations, social relations worldwide.

I think a friend of mine should know the details of this, as he is an immigration official. His name is Abu Ahmad.

Abu Ahmad I, Abu Ahmad, immigration official at Rantu Panyang, Kelantan state, Malaysia, won’t mention other matters that may affect international relations. I won’t mention the illegal labour force of Thai Muslims from the three southern border provinces of Thailand that have come to SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

71 work in Kelantan before this.

But I will talk about the four hundred refugees and a new wave of refugees of 173 women, men and children we have been able to intercept.

Our officials arrested them all in one mosque of Gua Tinggi, Rantu Panyang, Kelantan state, only one kilometre away from the Thai border at the level of Su-ngai Kolok district.

Our investigation revealed that almost all of the new refugees are villagers from Tanyong Baru, Su-ngai Padi district, Narathiwat province.

They said they had been threatened by Thai officials and they all intended to join the four hundred that had taken refuge here previously for the same reason.

We have now taken this new group of refugees to a detention centre in another part of Kelantan to make it easy for our security officials to investigate their claims.

As for the initial four hundred Thai Muslim refugees who have been detained in the internment camp of Tanah Merah, Kelantan, under questioning by UNHCR officials and our own security officials, they said they all came from various villages of Su-ngai Padi and Si Sakhon districts and from some villages of Cho Airong district.

The reason why they had to flee and take refuge here is because they were threatened by the Thai state power.

On the same day, I was informed by the relevant Thai officials that half of the four hundred refugees are front elements of the terrorist movement and it is that group THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

72 that had been agitating and spreading rumours that scared the villagers to the point of deserting their houses to flee and ask for refuge in our country.

For the time being, all sides are waiting for the conclusions as to the status of those refugees from the UNHCR regional representative, Mr Thomas Pagonis.

Thomas Pagonis I, Mr Thomas Pagonis, regional representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or UNHCR, have sent fifteen of our officials from Kuala Lumpur to interview the four hundred refugees to find out the real reasons of their recent flight from Thailand.

I, Mr Thomas Pagonis, UNHCR regional representative, wish to point out that for a United Nations taskforce to interview that group of individuals is part of our standard operational procedure and I, in my capacity as UNHCR regional representative, would like to request from the governments of the two countries permission for UNHCR to have access to the group of individuals who have followed them.

In the name of UNHCR, I wish to say that when ordinary citizens of a country leave their country and ask to take refuge in another country, it is standard procedure for us to interview them in order to assess the condition SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

73 of those individuals and see whether or not they should benefit from UNHCR protection.

In the case of the four hundred people that have fled to Malaysia, I wish to say that Thai authorities should have no worry at all that our international agency taskforce assessing the status of those persons would turn the case into an international political issue.

I, Mr Thomas Pagonis, wish to reiterate that the Thai government shouldn’t be unduly worried, because we will be fair to all sides.

But for the time being we must consider several factors such as the problems and real reasons for the flight, level of violence or situation on the ground, and we must consider the feelings of all the refugees, how scared they are of Thai state officials and many other details relevant to this case.

As a UNHCR regional representative, I wish to certify that it is standard procedure for us to investigate in situ and do our duty to our best ability by holding the middle ground between Thai authorities and a group of alleged terrorists.

A group of alleged terrorists I, Hamid Mohammad, former member of parliament for Narathiwat province, wish to speak in all truthfulness that I have nothing to do, as an accomplice or behind the THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

74 scene, with what happened in Tanyong Baru village, despite the suspicions of many groups and individuals, in any way whatsoever.

Governor Pracha Wongko-sin can vouch for this, because on the night of the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde, I was with the governor all the time.

But I know that whatever I say these days doesn’t have much weight, whatever I say makes people suspicious, even though everything that I say is the truth. Maybe it’s because I am still being accused of arm robbery, because I am a defendant in a security case, because Village Headman Karim Malateh, a former electoral agent of mine, is accused of having masterminded the murder of the imam together with me, so that the opposite side doesn’t believe in my innocence. Those people want to harm my honour, my reputation and my ancestry.

The case of Tanyong Baru villagers fleeing to take refuge in Malaysia, may I say in all truthfulness that it was in part for the safety of the villagers themselves as they do not trust the state.

If you ask me if there are terrorist leaders involved behind the scene or not, I cannot answer. Whether there are or whether there aren’t, I don’t know. The government should find out by itself. But about villagers crossing over to Malaysia, I must insist that they come and go between the two countries all the time and it’s something normal for them.

As to whether there is a leadership, a supporting SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

75 group or a group holding double nationality involved as well, that I don’t know.

At the moment several sides are investigating whether there are suspicious characters among those four hundred refugees.

As to how long it will take for Malaysia to let those people return to Thailand, this will depend on their laws. Besides, the UNHCR is also carrying out its investigation. It won’t be long before the truth behind the flight of those people is known.

To tell the truth, I am just an ordinary person, a person who wishes well for the land where he lives.

I have prayed for Allah’s help ever since the day a thousand rifles were stolen from a military camp. I would like the insecurity situation in the three southern border provinces to come to an end at long last.

But when I heard the news of the murder of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde of Tanyong Baru, I told myself that the disturbances by groups hostile to the nation would not end easily and rapidly.

Whatever the truth is, I wish to say that those who did that this time are indifferent to the attempts to solve the problem by the various sides concerned.

As an ordinary person, I condemn activities of all kinds by groups of agitators.

As for the cases of abduction and murder, I, Hamid Mohammad, wish to state in all truthfulness that abduction and murder of innocent people is a real problem in THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

76 the three provinces.

Before, the prime minister kept saying that all problems would be solved peacefully, in conformity with the use of the law of the land, and he even said that abducting and killing or harming innocent people would no longer take place. But then shortly thereafter, the imam loved and revered by the people of Tanyong Baru was murdered in front of the house of God. This being so, how can the government deny that in these three border provinces human rights are being violated? Not to mention the hundreds of anonymous bodies buried in one kubur, which even now no one on whatever side has sought to identify.

I think the government should bring all these cases to light as soon as possible to show its innocence and ask for the return of trust in the government.

I, Hamid Mohammad, in all truthfulness assure you that the problem of insecurity, whether it is the bombing of shops and buildings, the burning down of official premises, of Buddhist temples, the murder of innocent people, both villagers and officials, both Buddhists and Muslims, whether monks, teachers, imams, children, women or the old, will keep growing from day to day.

For one part this is due to state officials fudging issues, not performing according to the law and bringing harm to innocent people. For another, this is because of race and religion. It’s no different from me, who am being accused right now of being part of the masterminding of SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

77 an arm robbery and being involved in the death of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde.

When the state behaves as I have just said, how can it call for cooperation from the local people to be its eyes and ears? If the state behaves as an enemy of the people, when the bandits flee and hide in the village among the people, at best the people decide to remain passive for the sake of their lives and property.

This is a war without end!

Passivity in front of evil is extremely dangerous for the nation. It is no different from being prejudiced, not understanding, not trusting one another.

It is an obstacle to the solution of the various problems.

And of course this leads to endangering the security of the nation to the utmost.

But what is happening to me, the security trial against me, I still don’t know how much the provincial governor will help me.

Sometimes I don’t quite trust the governor’s attitude, for example when he sat talking with the wife of Tok Imam Satorpa Karde at their house on the day he went to visit Tanyong Baru. Why did he tell me and Headman Karim Malateh to go out and assess the state of the bridge on the canal that was destroyed by a bomb to see whether it could be repaired rapidly?

I must confess frankly that I don’t understand. I don’t understand what the governor was thinking about. I really don’t understand.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

78 That day, I remember the sun over Tanyong Baru was so hot it was like molten fire, so that I couldn’t help thinking that maybe Tanyong Baru might go up in flames from one minute to the next.

And yet Headman Karim insisted that it was a lot less hot than on the first day after the murder of the imam.

For whatever reason that I can’t fathom, Headman Karim decided to tell me about the heat and the goats on the road in front of the village.

He said that that day a herd of goats stood rocking together in rhythm because their hooves were stuck in the asphalt molten by the sun.

While everybody was tense and busy blocking off the entrance to the village, suddenly the whole herd started bleating in distress.

As soon as they did, all the people who stood around there threw themselves flat on the ground.

Whenever I think of that scene, I can’t help laughing.

At that time, we were going past the corner of the mosque heading towards the bridge on the canal. Just then Headman Karim said that he didn’t understand what the governor was thinking.

Hearing that, I stared at my former electoral agent before telling that I was thinking the same thing. That’s when I saw some movement at the foot of the bridge.

Headman Karim asked me if I had seen the child with a small birdcage and a goat that had just disappeared under the bridge in front of us.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

79 I asked him which child he was talking about.

Headman Karim Malateh stared at me and asked me if I was pulling his leg or if I really didn’t remember.

I told him I didn’t see clearly because the sunlight was too bright. So Headman Karim told me that child was Ali Tok-Ilcha.

Ali Tok-Ilcha I am Ali Tok-Ilcha, and my friend is named Adam.

For me Adam is much more than a goat. You could say Adam is everything in my life. I don’t have to say why I feel like that with Adam, because it’s something between Adam and me, which I think is of no interest to others.

I am twelve years old and it’s been almost two years that I decided to speak to no one but Adam, with the exception of Teacher Madeng only at times.

Before that, everybody said I was a talkative child who liked to talk with all kinds of grownups, old teachers, the imam, the ustaz, the abbot, the monks, the novices, and the teacher in my school. Many criticised me for asking no end of questions.

That’s because I wondered about just about everything.

Some said I was too mature for my age.

Some said that all the books in Teacher Madeng’s house made me forget how to live like a child.

Some said that because I liked to mix with Buddhists, I THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

80 liked to read the Tripitaka, Allah would punish me for not respecting Him. Several grownups criticised me, saying I should speak like a twelve-year-old so that I wouldn’t turn bad.

I don’t know how I should’ve behaved but I was never angry with those people, because I understood why they looked at me like that.

A twelve-year-old child, according to them, should be very stupid and unable to think by himself.

Actually they’re partly right, because many children of my age are like that, but the trouble with most adults is to consider that all children are dumb.

I think that grownups that think like this are no brighter than the children according to their definition.

After Tok Imam Satorpa Karde was shot dead, actually even if I didn’t speak, everybody knows that all of the Tanyong Baru people became scared and tense all the time, not knowing who was who, not knowing how to behave, whom to be wary of, not knowing who was a sympathiser, who was an evil person, the villagers themselves, strangers from other places or state officials.

They couldn’t rely on anyone at all, besides waiting to become preys. The same fate befell me. Luckily, I still have Adam.

Before the imam was shot dead, even though I didn’t feel safe, even though I felt uneasy, it was in no way as much as now, for instance when my teacher was shot dead in front of his lodgings, when my school was burned down, when SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

81 the abbot of the temple on the other side of the canal was killed. Even though I knew those were portents of disaster, when Tok Imam Satorpa was shot dead and the bridge on the canal was blown up, I knew that the evil that had taken place actually was only the foreword.

Teacher Madeng Yali once told me that nobody knew how all that had happened had begun and nobody knew either when it would end, because that was in the hands of God. Men like us had no way of knowing the truth.

For instance, even the villagers don’t know that some teachers in the Koranic schools don’t teach the basic beliefs and the basic faith of Islam as found in the Koran but nurture terrorism in the hearts of the children instead, even though Koranic schools are places fostering knowledge, faith, morality and ethical conduct to lead the children to the light.

Many villagers have never had an inkling that their teenage progeny disappeared somewhere, whether in the daytime or at night.

They learned about it afterwards when officials arrested those youngsters for creating insecurity and that’s what led to the crux of the problem between villagers and state officials.

Then the villagers would gather to protest, claiming that the officials slandered and harassed their children and grandchildren, claiming that state officials oppressed the Muslims and didn’t respect their being Malays.

As for the officials, when under pressure from the villaTHE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

82 gers or from other front elements and in the absence of enough evidence, they had to release the guilty.

Of course, this made for dissatisfaction among the officials. After it happened many times, that dissatisfaction led to the persecution of innocent villagers, and the problem then became a vicious circle like that.

I know because I’ve heard grownups from many sides talking among themselves. I know because I am someone from here. I know because I’ve never differentiated between Buddhists and Muslims. I know because I pretend not to notice, I pretend to be dumb.

I know because many of my friends older or of the same age as me who are front elements have tried to persuade me to join them, but I can see through their minds. If I do, it’s because a close friend of mine erred into that world, but once he was truly in it, it turned out to be another world altogether from the one he had envisioned.

And then he couldn’t get out and he couldn’t stand staying in it either, and when he finally clenched his teeth and got out, that friend of mine was murdered.

This was one example of a death that’s a puzzle and leads to suspicion for the parents and relatives of the dead. Because, to their knowledge, their dead child or grandchild was a good servant of Allah who had never strayed from the right path.

Many times deaths of that kind are presented by the sympathisers as the doings of state officials.

And there are times as numerous when I know that solSIRIWORN KAEWKAN

83 diers or policemen did it but they blamed it on the terrorists.

What’s more frightening than this is that they blamed it on villagers whose hands were clean, not to mention those deaths that resulted from personal hatreds in great numbers and in various forms.

I know, I saw, but I can’t say anything, unlike when I was still small, when anyone could speak, smile, laugh, do anything without being wary, without being afraid of displeasing anyone.

And now that speaking is of no advantage, I keep mute.

But this time I’ll speak for the last time.

I’d like to tell the story of a friend of mine by the name of Zachariah Yali.

We were very close.

He was bright and knowledgeable.

We grew up together because my house and his were only a few dozen metres apart.

When we were young, I mean when I started school, many times we’d run across the wooden bridge to go and play on the other side of the canal, which is a Thai Buddhist community. We had several friends who were Thai Buddhists.

Often those friends invited us to go and gather cat-tits flowers at the edge of the jungle in late afternoon and we’d put them to float in a dipping bowl to perfume the water, which we then used to do our ablutions before the evening prayer.

Many times when we played in the Thai Buddhist THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

84 village, we’d go and listen to the monks and novices praying at the temple.

One novice who was one of my friends’ elder brother would even discreetly teach us to read and pray in Pali and even gave us a small prayer book.

Zachariah learned all of this faster than I did.

Of course, we knew that praying in Pali should be kept secret, we couldn’t let our parents and most of the Tanyong Baru folk know about it, but then one day our secret was discovered by Teacher Madeng Yali, Zachariah’s father.

After prayer one evening, Teacher Madeng called Zachariah and me to see him, saying that there was something we must discuss and come to an understanding about.

Teacher Madeng said only this and we knew at once it must have to do with our surreptitiously learning to read Pali. Zachariah and I went to sit quietly in the teacher’s library. Teacher Madeng let us simmer in silence for something like ten minutes. At first we felt rather feverish but by the end both of us were shivering in front of him, even though he sat reading the Koran quietly without even looking at us.

After a while he looked up from the holy book, smiled slightly and told us it was good that we had opened another side of the world of knowledge.

After that, he had Zachariah and I alternately recite the Koran until very late into the night.

If I’m not mistaken, Zachariah and I were then in the third year of primary.

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85 Not long after that, Zachariah started to refuse when I invited him to go and play in the village across the canal.

At the time I didn’t think much of it, because I knew Zachariah was crazy about a few new friends who had just moved to our school.

A few months later, Zachariah had me stumped when he criticised me for keeping going to play over there.

At the end of the school year, Zachariah disappeared from Tanyong Baru.

I asked Teacher Madeng Yali. He told me Zachariah had gone to stay at a friend’s house in Su-ngai Kolok.

Only three days before the new term started, Zachariah came to see me at home. It was around midnight then. Everybody was asleep, except me who sat reading the Koran.

I started when I heard my name called out of the darkness.

Open the door for me, the voice outside the window said. Zachariah… It’s me, Zachariah, your friend.

Once he was inside, I asked him where he had disappeared for so long, but Zachariah raised a finger to his mouth in warning to tell me to speak softly. So I whispered the same question, but he asked me whether I wanted to take a ride on a motorcycle. Hearing this, my eyes grew big out of excitement and curiosity. So I whispered that he meant to say he had his own motorcycle, did he?

Zachariah answered that he was going to have one but he wanted me to have one too so we could take rides together. Then he invited me to go with him. After grilling THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

86 him for quite a long time, I had a feeling that something wasn’t right, so I refused.

Three days later, one of our teachers was shot to death in front of his lodgings as he got ready to go to school on the first day of the new school year.

I asked Zachariah if he knew who had shot our teacher. He froze and stared at me before saying, why are you asking me? So I told him who else I should ask, given that he was my closest friend.

Sorrow had yet to disappear from our hearts, pupils and teachers alike, when our school was burned to the ground one night. Even now the feeling of loss and sorrow hasn’t left my heart.

That night, even though many people tried to put down the fire, they couldn’t save our school from the raging flames. I remember how tall and fierce the flames were and I’m certain that I saw my own desk slowly burn to ashes.

Zachariah’s younger sister stood crying between us.

Actually I should say that she raved as if she’d lost her mind.

They’ve burnt my school! Allah! Zachariah! They’ve burnt my school! Allah!

Fariya squeezed her brother’s hand and kept repeating those words until the entire school had turned into live charcoal and ashes before us.

Zachariah held his sister’s hand as he gazed at the disaster and kept silent and still.

Fariya had just started school. She had become attached to SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

87 her friends, to her teacher and she was having a great time learning. So I wasn’t surprised that she’d be so distraught. I could do nothing except try to get her to calm down.

Before the dawn of a new day, the entire school building was a heap of ashes. After taking his sister back home, Zachariah returned with me.

We were silent all the way.

Until we reached my house. Then he burst into tears, starting me, and then he confessed that it was he who’d burned down our school.

I uttered the name of Allah and asked him to repeat, because I must have misheard. Zachariah insisted that what I’d heard was the truth.

He told me that as soon as he’d started the fire at the school, he’d stealthily repaired home to listen to what was going on outside.

As soon as someone yelled in the dark that the school’s on fire, they’ve burned the school, Zachariah shouted, calling his father and his mother.

Several people ran to gather in front of the blaze.

At the same time, many didn’t dare go out of their homes. Teacher Madeng and his wife told Zachariah to stay home with his sister but he decided to go and look at his handiwork, so he invited his sister to run to my house to go and see the school together.

As he confessed his crime to me, Zachariah buried his face in his palms, his whole body shivering, invoking the name of Allah all the time.

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

88 After I had succeeded in calming him down, he said to me that he wouldn’t leave Tanyong Baru again, he wouldn’t go back there again, after which he would only repeat that he was afraid someone would come after him to kill him. He said he wasn’t ready to die.

May Allah protect you! I didn’t know what else to say to cheer him up.

Three days later, Zachariah was shot dead inside the tea shop. Nobody in Tanyong Baru knows who killed him and what for.

Even Teacher Madeng is totally in the dark.

Nevertheless, several villagers told each other that he’d been killed by soldiers. I know that that rumour was spread by front elements in our village.

I’m the only one to know why Zachariah was killed and by whom.

From that moment on, I knew at once that actually death goes around in front of our very noses all the time.

And that belief sank deeper into my heart when a few months later my house was burned down. I lost my family and I lost everything in my life in that worlddestroying blaze.

I lost everything except Adam.

From that moment on, I’ve been trying to find an answer to myself whether it was lucky or unlucky for me that on that night I was reciting the Koran until very late at Teacher Madeng’s house before deciding to spend the night there.

SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

89 From that night on, I promised myself that I would no longer speak to anyone, except my goat Adam and Teacher Madeng Yali.

Nevertheless, today I’m getting worried, afraid I might say too much to Teacher Madeng.

Actually, I know that Teacher Madeng hasn’t many people to talk with.

One day, he came to see me at the foot of the bridge, which is my and Adam’s home. He told us about this and then about that, for example that these days Tanyong Baru youngsters prefer to go to karaoke shops rather than to the mosque. Some who’ve gone to university give themselves airs. Even more so if they’ve graduated in Arab countries, they can’t see anybody else’s head, especially the old people in the village, and they forbid the children to speak Thai, to go to Thai schools.

Then the teacher complained about state officials, for example the civil servants and other state employees in the three provinces. Some deliberately sabotage their work or duty to be transferred out of the area. Many soldiers and policemen try to do everything they can to be promoted, without consideration for the peace and happiness of the land. And many other stories.

I listened to the teacher quietly. Adam himself seemed to endeavour to listen to the teacher’s every word as if afraid he’d miss some important point.

Before going back, the teacher remarked that he’d never seen a government change officials as often as this THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

90 one, especially the fourth army commander.

Hearing this made me thing that, besides changing the fourth army commander often, no government in the world had gone through so many schools and teachers as this one.

At first, I thought I’d tell Teacher Madeng what I thought, but then I thought better of it.

When Teacher Madeng was gone, I told Adam about this and many other topics.

Finally, I repeated to Adam as I did every time that I’d like the paper bird in my cage to be a real one, one that could truly fly and sing.

The more it goes, the less confident I am.

I’m afraid.

I don’t know who is who. I don’t know who those people that come to Tanyong Baru are. I don’t know which side the Tanyong Baru people I used to know are. I don’t even know any longer those Thai Buddhists in the village across the canal I used to be close friends with. As soon as their abbot was killed, I became a stranger to them.

Actually it’s not only my dear Thai Buddhist friends that have changed, but all the people in the village, all the people in both villages, all the people in the world…

In any case, I still hope that everything will get better, but then the world I used to hope for has been destroyed at the same time as the bridge over the canal on the same night as Tok Imam Satorpa Karde was killed.

And that was another time when I asked myself if it SIRIWORN KAEWKAN

91 was lucky or unlucky for me that on that night Adam and I had gone to see Teacher Madeng Yali at his house.

He told us stories and after a while there were shotguns blasting in front of the mosque. About fifteen minutes later, there was a loud explosion in the vicinity of the bridge over the canal…

Now, let me say frankly that I’m not sure.

I’m afraid…afraid to do something wrong, afraid to say something wrong.

So I keep dumb.

I don’t want to speak to anyone at all except my goat Adam, because everyone I know has become I don’t know what. All men have become I don’t know what.

I’m afraid…afraid I’ll do something wrong, but what’s more frightening than this is what I can’t see.

Teacher Madeng may be lucky to have me, but I am lucky to have Adam.

These days I do nothing but pray to Allah.

These days I do nothing but pray to the Buddha.

I’d like the paper bird in my cage to be a real bird, one that can truly fly and sing.

Allah help me! Lord Buddha help me! Help Adam and me! Help me... Above our Tanyong Baru, the sunlight is too strong. I can’t see anything.

Help me… I can’t see anything!

8 March 2006

THE MURDER CASE OF TOK IMAM SATORPA KARDE

92 GLOSSARY ’asr: Muslim afternoon prayer Burka: often blue cloak plus headscarf or veil covering Muslim women from head to foot Da’wah: ‘calling people to Allah’; Muslim missionary work (Arabic) Haji Sulong Tohmina: post‐WW2 Islamic scholar and activist seeking to turn the three Thai southern border provinces into an Islamic republic Hijab: headscarf or veil worn by Muslim women in some Islamic countries as the top part of the burka Kamnan: tambon chief, sub‐district headman (Thai) Kapiyoh: Muslim hat for men Krue Se: on 28 April 2004, the Thai military slaughtered 32 Muslim insurgents inside Pattani’s Krue Se mosque; the insurgents had taken refuge in the mosque after attacking a police station, an irrigation office and a security checkpoint and killing four policemen and two officials.

Kubur: grave (Malay) Longkong (or langsat or lancefruit): Lancium domesticum, clustering fruit grown in southern Thailand; small round brownish thin shell; white meat tasting somewhat like grapefruit Paper birds: on 5 December 2004, Thai military planes dropped over one million paper origami birds all over the three southern border provinces as a ‘peace offering’ of the Thaksin Shinawatra government coinciding with King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 77th birthday anniversary Shahid: martyr (Arabic) Tak Bai: on 25 October 2004, in Tak Bai, Narathiwat province, after the arrest by the Thai military of hundreds of mostly young Muslim demonstrators, at least 85 of them died from either gunshot wounds (7) or beatings and/or suffocation during their three‐hour transportation by lorries to an army camp in Pattani province Tambon: sub‐district (Thai) Tok: Grandfather, Old (Malay – pronounced To') Tripitaka: ‘three baskets’, the Buddhist canon (Sanskrit) Ul‐isha: Muslim night prayer Ustaz: teacher, master (Arabic) SIRIWORN KAEWKAN