July 16, 2008
Bangkok - The army is increasingly depending on the re-education camps to indoctrinate Muslims in the south to prevent them from joining a bloody insurgency.
The court ordered the army to release 85 detained Muslims from the so-called job training course in October, 2007.
The military government imposed a new Internal Security Act (ISA) that allows the army to detain people without charge for up to six months in December.
Many people are being brought into the camps, according to Diana Sarosi of the Working Group on Justice for Peace.
A new training center is being built to serve the rising number of participating Muslims.
Somsae, 39, is one of the Muslims sent to be re-educated about the history of this region. He said he had already left the insurgency a year before his arrest.
Colonel Chinnawat Mandech said the aim of the camps is entirely educational, a battle of ideas aimed at defeating the radical militants' claim that they have an Islamic duty to fight Thai "imperialism" in a Malay Muslim region.
At one re-education programme in Yala province, deputy governor Puchong Pothigudsai said the goal is simply to promote peace.
"The main world religions support each other. The highest purpose of all religions is the same -- kindness and peace,” he told AFP.
But Sarosi said the measures merely worsen the situation in the south and Muslims still feel they are like second-class citizens.
