At 1.30am on Oct 11, more than 100 masked soldiers, police and militia raided a house in Kolo Tanyong village near Pattani province’s northern coast.
They held his wife and family at gunpoint as they hauled Abduldayib Dolah from his bed, slapped on plastic wristcuffs and a blindfold and swept away into the night.
This is “standard procedure”, southern style. Authorities have turned the midnight raid into reality. It is, in fact, the main tactic in the attempt to solve puzzles that the army’s intelligence branches and Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc) are still working on after 12 years of low-intensity warfare in “Patani” — the geographical description of the three and a half provinces that separatists kill, bomb, steal and until recently beheaded for.
The puzzles boil down to the question asked by Hollywood’s Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) to the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) in the early days of the fighting in the South (1969): “Who are those guys?”
After 12 years at war, Isoc and six regimes and 11 prime ministers and seven army commanders, authorities do not know who the insurgents are, who leads, directs and writes plans for them, who finances them. By abducting him, Isoc commanders hoped Abduldayib could, as the British say, “help with their inquiries”, mainly by accusing him of being “a key insurgency figure” as they later put it. They took him to the nearby Ingkhayutthaborihan Military Camp.
On 25 of the next 55 days, relatives including his wife were allowed to visit the prisoner, briefly. On the 56th day of the 37-day period Isoc is authorised to detain suspects, soldiers even went to the family home at 7.30am to bring his wife to the camp. There they said they needed her permission to draw DNA samples from saliva and bloodstains from his cold, dead body.
He was the third detainee to die in military custody in two months. For the past six weeks, his wife has done nothing but try to find out how and why he died, and who was with him.
She has even filed a request for help to the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E Mendez of Argentina.
Over the course of his interrogations, she had noticed only that he grew more stressed out. To the surprise of no one, a hurried “independent” inquiry sponsored by Isoc concluded after testimony and examination that, “No cause of death could be determined”. Again.
Last week, three NGOs specialising in human rights and the deep South issued a 59-page booklet called Torture. It detailed allegations of 18 cases involving 48 military officers and 13 policemen. Methods documented included stripping detainees naked during questioning, the use of dogs, sleep deprivation, cold rooms and lots and lots of beatings.
In other words, ho-hum, except the book charged that the number of such cases has increased since May 23, 2014.
Lt Gen Nakrob Bunbuathong of the Isoc operations centre said the groups should have spoken to him first. He was “dubious” about every charge detailed, but of course Isoc takes Torture seriously and the country can rest assured that every case will be meticulously investigated and publicly explained. Any security official involved in any illegal actions will be held accountable and punished.
It remains to be seen if the UN’s Mr Mendez intends to make inquiries. But another prominent figure came and went and seemed completely uninterested.
Iyad Ameen Madani has been the 10th secretary-general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for two years. The Saudi Arabian announced and made consecutive official, working visits to Malaysia and Thailand from Jan 8 through to last Wednesday. His four days in Thailand were unfortunately seen and seldom heard. He never used the word “Rohingya” and he never uttered the phrase “Islamic State” or any of its aliases.
Not that Mr Madani’s sympathies are suspect. He was in Bangkok when the killer bomb exploded in Istanbul. He was onto the OIC website within minutes with a statement denouncing the attack and promising continuous opposition to terrorism, including Islamic terrorism.
But specifically? Exactly at a time a kind word from a friendly visitor could have added prestige to controversial and deadly situations, the admittedly genial Mr Madani couldn’t be found. On the Rohingya, he simply joined Aung San Suu Kyi in the Department of Found Wanting. On the Islamic State, only 24 hours before the Jakarta assaults, not a word.
On the deep South, Mr Madani actually managed to muddle matters. In Kuala Lumpur, he spoke privately with the Malaysians who have organised the Mara Patani group, which claims to represent the southern separatists. That raised further criticism from Isoc’s Lt Gen Nakrob, who was furious that Malaysia, the self-styled facilitator of phantom peace talks, would allow such a meeting.
The OIC chief took part in the foreign ministry’s paean to diversity, Interfaith Dialogue on Peaceful Coexistence in Multicultural Societies. The photo op with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was a true smiles and chuckles moment.
Most of all, Mr Madani extended the silence over Torture, and over the sudden death of Abduldayib Dolah. The numerous dead and disappeared could have used a kind word.