4.2 Government Policies towards Pondoks
The issue to determine at this point is whether Thailand has violated
Article 27 of the ICCPR as a result of its policies towards pondoks in the
southernmost provinces. Pondoks are private Islamic schools where
instruction is conducted in Malay and Arabic.70 Pondoks focus more on
teaching Islamic principles than does a secular curriculum. In 1961, the
Thai government used monetary incentives for pondoks to include in its
syllabus teaching of and in the Thai language and a more secular
curriculum, which has lead to most of them to do so today.71 Nevertheless,
the eruption of further violent separatist incidents by the Malays from 2001
led the Thai government to implement policies to supervise pondoks more
closely.72 By 2004, the Thai government had identified the pondoks as ‘a
hotbed of radicalism’ and had undertaken steps to eliminate a number of
them. 2006 statistics show that there remains 372 registered pondoks,
though it is believed that there could be around 1000 in total. The
government has attempted their number by closing down pondoks that are
too independent, and declaring a ban against the opening of any new
pondoks.
73 Furthermore, pondoks that do not raise the Thai flag are
accused of committing treason.
4.3 The Closure of Pondoks
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or
Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities postulates that at a minimum,
linguistic minorities are free to establish their own schools whereby their
own language is the medium of instruction.74 Accordingly, the Malay
minority is entitled to establish pondoks whereby the Malay language
forms the medium of instruction.
Article 1(1) of the above UN Declaration requires for states to ‘protect the
existence and …linguistic identities of minorities…and shall encourage
conditions for the promotion of that identity.’ Thailand’s actions in the
closing down and banning of some pondoks do nothing to protect or
promote the existence of linguistic identities of the Malay minority.
Rather, they constitute a prohibition of private educational activities in a