Finding salvation for the South
After three years in jail, former activist navigates new political climate, writes Kong Rithdee
When Muhammad Anwar bin Ismael Hajiteh was released on Jan 7 on a royal pardon, activists and civic groups in the deep South greeted the news with jubilation. Sentenced to 12 years for his involvement with insurgency activities and being a member of Barisan Revolusi Nasional — charges he denied — Anwar has become a symbol of civic activism treated harshly by martial law. The “Save Anwar” campaign launched by civic groups in 2013 was a big movement that had a significant impact and helped raise awareness for the plight of political prisoners.
Now back home with his family in Yarang district, Pattani province, Anwar helps his wife run a small store selling snacks and drinks, including the popular Malay-style teh tarik.
A sign above a table tells customers that one baht from every order will go to help orphans. Long before he went to jail three years ago, Anwar worked with groups that help women, children and orphans affected by violence, but his passion remains promoting Malay culture and language.
The 33-year-old man looks calm and collected, as if prison has both tamed and strengthened him.
“I want to take it slowly from here,” Anwar said.
“From what I’ve seen after my release, talk and discussion panels about southern problems aren’t as active as in the early 2010s. The violence may have cooled a little bit, but it seems the pressure from the authorities remains high.”
When the Supreme Court overturned an Appeal Court acquittal, and Anwar was sent to jail in 2013, the country still had a civilian government. Through his wife Rormuelah, Anwar dictated messages, thoughts and lyrical prose which were written down and published online. But one year into his sentence, the coup of May 22, 2014, took place, and the warden asked him to stop all communication.
“That we have a military government is one of the reasons that in-depth discussions among activists and social workers aren’t as robust as they were before I went to jail,” he said.
Anwar said the most troubling aspect of prison life was the large number of drugrelated inmates. He believes that while many small-time dealers are locked up, an even larger number of them are still at large in the deep South. Their connections with uniformed men, while hard to prove, compound the problem.
The activist said he plans to start working with the community to reduce drug problems.
Prison has also taught Anwar other valuable lessons.
“I’ve learned to read people and adjust my persona when dealing with them,” he said.
“Before, when I talked to soldiers I would always raise my voice. Now I see no point in doing that because I can get my point across by talking to them nicely.”
In the early 2000s, Anwar worked on several civic projects, chiefly an alternative news journal aimed at reporting the situation from a local viewpoint. Now, the idea has returned and Anwar wants to raise money to launch a regional magazine in jawi script that will not strictly be about politics, but about culture, arts, even entertainment.
But he realised that in the current tense political atmosphere, all language is political: anyone who promotes the local tongue of jawi is often labelled a separatist by authorities.
Anwar’s intention is to “make jawi alive”. “Scholars talk about ‘preserving’ jawi language, as if it’s already dead,” he said. “In my mind, we must make the language alive and my idea of the magazine is something like the free-sheet copies you see in Bangkok — magazines with a variety of issues relating to the people of the deep South. People want to read magazines but not many people want to buy them, so the free sheet is a solution.”
The hard part is finding funding. Anwar also wants the assistance of linguists to help standardise the jawi language, which has many local dialects and spellings. He wants his magazine to become a clearing house for the language widely used in the southernmost provinces.
But like many others, Anwar knows the deep South will continue to go through difficult times, politically, socially and even environmentally given the coalfired power plant protests. In the long run, peace is what everyone wants but Anwar believes the definition of peace varies among different parties.
“To the state, peace means everyone stops fighting and talking, and everything goes back to normal,” he said. “To academics, peace means structural change within the bounds of the constitution. But to the people, peace means all of that and something more. You have to listen to the people too.”
Free at last, Anwar concludes that the freedom to think and dream is what he treasures the most.