Thailand’s Tropical Gulag

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Is the Thai military torturing its Muslim minority? An Archipelago TV production for Aljazeera’s investigative programme “People and Power”. Duration: 25:00

For eight years now, the Thai army has fought a brutal war against shadowy insurgents in its Muslim-dominated south. More than 4,400 people have been killed just a few hundred miles from Thailand’s fabled beach resorts. Insurgent suspects are detained and interrogated at military facilities. Dozens have died in custody.

On 30 May 2010 a 25-year-old man called Sulaiman Naesa was found dead in a cell at Ingkhayut army base in Pattani, one of the two main detention and interrogation centers in war-torn southern Thailand. A suspected Islamic militant, Sulaiman had been held without charge of eight days.  Then he tied a towel to the grating of a window, made a noose with the other end, and hanged himself. Or so the Royal Thai Army insists. Sulaiman’s family claimed he wasn’t suicidal. Was he tortured to death? Local activists believe so, although we might never know for sure: at the family’s request, no autopsy was performed. But Sulaiman Naesa’s death has briefly illuminated a murky world the Thai army would rather forget.

An Archipelago TV production for Aljazeera’s investigative programme, “People and Power”. Worldwide broadcast on January 19, 2011. Duration: 25:00

CREDITS:

Producer: Andrew Marshall

Director/Editor: Orlando de Guzman

Field Producer: Siwaporn Teerawichitchainan

Translation: Shintaro Hara, Sawitree Wongketjai, Siwaporn Teerawichitchainan

Programme Editor: Diarmuid Jeffreys