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BOSNIAN AMERICAN
INFORMATION CENTER
671 S. GREEN BAY ROAD, LAKE FOREST, ILL
60045
TEL.: 847-234-7150 * FAX:
847-234-7179
October 28, 2004
H.E. Colin Powell,
Secretary of State
U. S. State
Department
2201 C Street NW,
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Secretary
Powell:
I am writing
this letter to express my deep disgust and outrage over
the brutality and atrocities committed by Thailand’s
government in three provinces, Narathiwat, Pattani and
Yala, on their southern border with Malaysia and to
respectfully ask for your help.
According to
the Chicago Tribune and other U.S. papers, on October
25, 2004, Thailand’s brutal government have used police
and soldiers, under command of Lt. Gen. Pisarn
Wattanawonghiri, to disrupt a peaceful demonstration, by
attacking their own Muslim citizens, during the holly
month of Ramadan, and rounding up about 1,300 people,
detaining them and packing them into army trucks so
tightly that 78 Muslim detainees were suffocated or
crashed to death. The Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra,
added an insult to injury by his crude remark to the
reporters that they died because of “fasting”. These
deaths are only the latest example of brutality of the
military and police of Thailand committed against their
Muslim citizens. More than 400 Muslims have been already
killed since the beginning of this year. These three
southern provinces, with Muslim majority, once formed
the Sultanate of Pattani. The International Herald
Tribune writes: “ In retrospect it is unfortunate that
in the early 20th century the British did not
carry out their plans to detach Pattani from Thai
sovereignty, as they did with the Malay states… Nor did
the victors in 1945 punish Thailand, as they once
intended, for its pro-Japan wartime posture by joining
these provinces to Malaya.”
In any case, the
highly centralized Thai state is not able or willing to
address the needs of this region with majority
population of Malay ancestry. Fear and suffering of
these Muslims will turn into anger and the government is
loosing trust of the people. This is the situation in
which fundamentalism thrives. The government’s
strong-arm methods used in these provinces will provoke
more violent reaction and terrorism. This development
would not be in the interest of the region or ASEAN or
the USA.
In the last
decade, using force and diplomacy, the US has helped my
old country Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bosnjaks to survive
and to defeat the forces of terror and evil. In this
case, I propose to you Mr. Secretary, that since the US
has already developed close relations with Thailand as
well as with Malaysia and other members of the ASEAN, to
advice Thai government to stop using strong-arm methods
against their Muslim citizens and to integrate them into
all levels of government. This change would have
positive impact on the entire region. We must remove the
roots of terror everywhere in the world.
Very truly
yours,
Becir Tanovic,
President
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