Thread: Analysis: A debate over autonomy in Thailand's restive south

So it was an election pledge or not Steve?

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Yingluck promises peace in South

Yingluck promises peace in South

By The Nation
Published on June 15, 2011

• 
• 

Pheu Thai candidate Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday put on hijab head covering to meet Muslim constituents in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala.

"I want to highlight the Pheu Thai platform to transform the three southernmost provinces into a special administrative area similar to Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and Pattaya City Administration," she said on board a charter flight before arriving for the first leg of her campaign in Narathiwat.

Yingluck said she would seek to improve Thai-Saudi ties, paving the way for a larger number of Thai Muslims to make their religious pilgrimage to Mecca without having to make advance payments for the trip.

She said her party had sound policies to promote halal food and to introduce electric-train services in the South.

She conceded that her party had limited presence in the region, having won one of its 11 House of Representatives seats in the last general election, but she was hopeful that her campaigning could rectify the situation.
....

It didn't - even that one seat was lost. Plan, pledge, proposal, promise, platform, policy - whatever. Real World Politics for Grown-ups 101: unless the votes (thus support) are there, it doesn't happen.

Originally Posted by SteveCM

It didn't - even that one seat was lost. Plan, pledge, proposal, promise, platform, policy - whatever. Real World Politics for Grown-ups 101: unless the votes (thus support) are there, it doesn't happen.

It appears we have a Pro muzzie mod logged on tonight (deleting my posts) so sorry I can't make any comments re the restive South!

^^ So, it was an election pledge or not Steve?

^^^

With the greatest respect it was an election pledge and you know it was, but why keep carping on about it?

It won't be the first election pledge broken in LOS and it certainly won't be the last.

From yesterday

Drug eradication in the south proven to be effective : National News Bureau of Thailand

Drug eradication in the south proven to be effective

BANGKOK, 26 September 2011 (NNT)-Fourth Army Region Chief Lt General Udomchai Thammasarotrat said drug eradication operation in the South of Thailand in the past two months had been proven to be effective with the number of abusers and dealers reduced by 40%.

Under the so called ‘581 operation’, 8 important steps had been taken to get everyone involved in the process. Authorities and residents have been working alongside which has helped make the mission easier to achieve result and reduce the workload for authorities.

The authorities now had access to the suspects as 615 villages and mosques had joined the operation. The officers working under the 581 operation show respect to Muslims when they are doing their job.

They also get involved on a community level particularly with the teenagers who are prone to joining the extremist groups. The Fourth Region Army Chief added that the operation would be more intense in a bid to stamp out drug addiction problems in communities in the South.

Insurgents commit "war crimes" in Thai south - Amnesty

Tuesday September 27, 2011

Insurgents commit "war crimes" in Thai south - Amnesty

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Amnesty International on Tuesday condemned the indiscriminate murder of civilians by insurgents in Thailand's southern border provinces, saying the killings amounted to war crimes.

Nearly 4,800 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and thousands injured in the southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, plus parts of neighbouring Songkhla since a long-running insurgency flared up in 2004.

"(The insurgents) have committed -- and are continuing to commit -- what amount to acts aimed at spreading terror among the civilian population, and which constitute war crimes," the London-based rights group said in a report.

Ethnic Malay Muslims form the majority of the population in the area, which was mostly part of a Malay sultanate until annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.

The insurgents are thought to be pursuing separatist aims, but the various shadowy groups have rarely put forward demands or shown any interest in negotiating with the state.

On Sept. 16, a triple bomb attack in Narathiwat killed six people and wounded scores.

The Amnesty report, entitled "They Took Nothing but his Life", detailed the deaths of 82 people in 66 insurgent attacks between November 2006 and June 2011 in three districts.

Most victims were Muslim, but Amnesty said the insurgents killed both Muslims and Buddhists from all walks of life, including rubber tappers, farmers, teachers, village headmen and civil servants, sometimes with their family members.

Many killings occurred at night, but some took place in broad daylight and in front of witnesses in places like tea shops and markets. Yet even when the killers were not masked, few witnesses came forward due to fears of retaliation, the report said.

ECONOMY AFFECTED

The attacks have forced many Buddhists to relocate. Since 2004, at least 200,000 people have reportedly moved from the four provinces to Hat Yai, the capital of Songkhla, doubling the size of the city, Amnesty said.

The economy has suffered in the rubber-rich region, with a drop in tourist numbers and a fall in consumer spending.

"The government of Thailand has not been able to assert and exercise lawful control over these provinces," Amnesty said, adding human rights violations by security forces, including torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings, had further endangered civilians.

Easy access to guns added to the climate of fear.

An estimated 21,000 members of the armed forces are in the area, including militias set up to protect isolated settlements. Anyone employed by a state body may seek permission to have a gun for self-defence, which is rarely refused, Amnesty said.

It urged the authorities to tighten up on gun ownership, investigate crimes committed by security forces and move beyond a counter-insurgency strategy to address local grievances.

Amnesty: Most casualties in Thai south civilian - Yahoo!

Amnesty: Most casualties in Thai south civilian


AP – 1 hour 11 minutes ago

BANGKOK (AP) — Amnesty International is calling on Muslim guerrillas in Thailand's southern border provinces to stop targeting civilians.

The London-based rights group says that noncombatants have accounted for two-thirds of the nearly 5,000 people killed since insurgents took up arms in 2004.

Bomb blasts or shootings are reported every few days in the far south, and the London-based rights group says many of the attacks constitute war crimes that should be prosecuted under international law.

Most of the violence has taken place in three southern provinces dominated by ethnic Malay Muslims who are a minority in the mostly Buddhist nation.

Amnesty said in report Tuesday that at least 4,766 people have died and 7,808 have been wounded in the conflict.

Thai-ASEAN News Network



Army Chief to Keep Close Eye on South

UPDATE : 27 September 2011

The army chief has vowed to keep a close eye on the situation in the South, and has refused to comment on the group calling itself 'legal citizens', saying he'll let society judge the group for themselves.

Army Chief, General Prayuth Chan-ocha said in an interview that he will monitor the progress solving problems in the southern provinces according to the strategy of the Internal Security Operations Command or ISOC.

He called for integration of all units and sectors, as well as people in the area, to monitor the situation for violence and conflicts.


Meanwhile, the largest forest in the South, Hara-Bara, has been the target of encroachment by local residents.

Officials are investigating the issue, requiring assistance and support from all units and officials.

The army chief refused to comment on a group of professors calling themselves 'legal citizens'.

He instead asks the public to follow the group and investigate its legitimacy.

If there is also an involvement of the legal process, all units are required to be inspected under the law.

Bangkok Post : Pulo leaders 'ready to return'

Pulo leaders 'ready to return'

• Published: 28/09/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

Members of the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) living in exile in Europe will turn themselves in to authorities soon, according to a southern insider.

Chaiyong Maneerungsakul, a member of the Advisory Council for Peace Building in the Southern Border Provinces, said leaders of the separatist movement would turn themselves in following secret talks early this year between Phanu Uthairat, secretary-general of the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre, and Pulo representative Yase Pateh.

He said that Sapae-ing Basor, believed to be the leader of the Barisan Resolusi Nasional Coordinate, and Masae Useng, another suspected key member of the group, would also surrender.

Barisan Resolusi, is a militant group active in the South, but based in Malaysia. Mr Chaiyong warned authorities to be alert to reprisals after the suspected separatist leaders surrendered.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International has condemned the indiscriminate murder of civilians by insurgents in Thailand's southern border provinces, saying the killings amounted to war crimes.

A report issued by the London-based human rights group also said security forces were guilty of excesses, including extrajudicial killings, that endangered civilians.

Nearly 4,800 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and thousands injured in the southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, plus parts of neighbouring Songkhla since the insurgency flared in 2004.

"[The insurgents] have committed _ and are continuing to commit _ what amount to acts aimed at spreading terror among the civilian population, and which constitute war crimes," the report said.

The Amnesty report, entitled "They Took Nothing but his Life", detailed the deaths of 82 people in 66 insurgent attacks between November 2006 and June 2011 in three districts.

Most victims were Muslim, but Amnesty said the insurgents also killed Buddhists from all walks of life.

"The quality of attacks has increased, as has the brutality, the targeting and the size of the bombs and number of casualties," Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty's Thailand researcher and author of the report, told the news conference.

Amnesty said more than 31,000 soldiers could now be in the area, plus tens of thousands of people in militias set up to protect isolated settlements.

It urged the authorities to tighten restrictions on gun ownership, investigate crimes committed by security forces and move beyond a counter-insurgency strategy to address local grievances.

Meanwhile, army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha yesterday chaired a meeting in Narathiwat, which approved a plan to deploy more than 3,000 paramilitary rangers to the three southern provinces early next month.

Most of the rangers will be southerners.

More murders today...

Villager murdered in Pattani
28/09/2011 : A man was shot dead at a village market in Pattani's Nong Chik district on Wednesday morning, police said.

4 soldiers killed, 3 hurt in Narathiwat
28/09/2011 : Four soldiers were killed and three others seriously wounded when they came under an armed attack in front of Lamo Nok School in Narathiwat's Ruso district on Wednesday, reports said.

Bangkok Post : DSW: 11,074 cases of unrest in South

DSW: 11,074 cases of unrest in South

• Published: 28/09/2011 at 02:05 PM
• Online news:

There were 11,074 cases of violence in southernmost provinces from January 2004 to August 2011, the Deep South Watch (DSW) reported on Wednesday.

A total of 4,846 people were killed and 7,995 others injured in the unrest, the DSW said.

“The unrest in deep South has been continuing over the past seven years and eight months and an average of two people were killed each day”, Srisompop Chitpiromsri of the DSW said.

Of the total death tool, 49.9 per cent were villagers, 8.7 per cent were suspected militants killed in clashes with security forces, 7.3 per cent were soldiers, 6.4 per cent were kamnans, village chiefs and assistant village headmen, 6 per cent were police, 5.8 per cent village defence volunteers, 4.1 per cent were state’s employees and 3.1 per cent were teachers and educational personnel, according to the DSW.

Thai Government Shelves Autonomy for Deep South as Violence Continues | Asia | English

September 28, 2011

Thai Government Shelves Autonomy for Deep South as Violence Continues

Daniel Schearf
Bangkok

The Thai government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has back-tracked on a campaign pledge to establish a special administration zone in its troubled southern provinces.

Political analysts say a simmering insurgency in the majority-Muslim Malay region can only be resolved by allowing some form of self-rule. But, the government has little incentive to challenge the status quo.

When Thailand’s Pheu Thai party was campaigning for votes earlier this year, they tried to gain support in Thailand’s deep south among people who have not traditionally supported them.

The party offered to make the three southern border provinces a special administrative zone. Thailand’s Narathiwat, Pattani, and Yala provinces were part of a Muslim sultanate that was annexed by Thailand, more than a century ago.

Since 2004, insurgents have waged a violent campaign against a dominant Thai Buddhist culture in the majority ethnic Malay Muslim region.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said the government has no plan to grant special status to the provinces.

"This is partly because that the government did not, Pheu Thai party, did not get a single seat in the Deep South," said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, the Thailand analyst for the International Crisis Group. "And, they probably don't see any political points they would gain by pushing forward this policy."

Yingluck Shinawatra’s party was unpopular in the south before the election, partly because of violent crackdowns that occurred during her brother’s rule several years ago.

But, although it may not be politically advantageous for Pheu Thai, analysts say allowing the south more say in running its own affairs would help quell the seven-year insurgency that has cost nearly 5,000 lives.

Tens of thousands of soldiers in the south maintain security through emergency laws that give them immunity from prosecution.

Rights groups say this allows for official abuses that stoke the insurgency.

Donna Guest is Amnesty International’s deputy Asia program director. She told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand Tuesday that security forces still commit torture and other human rights violations.

“Amnesty’s 2009 report noted that not a single individual has been held accountable for torturing suspects," she said. "And, more than two-and-a-half years on, this remains the case.”

This week, Amnesty said two-thirds of victims in the southern violence are civilians, the majority of them Muslims viewed as cooperating with the government or not supporting the insurgency.

Guest says, in the last five years, insurgent attacks have concentrated on soft targets such as farmers, schools, merchants, monks and civil servants.

“As the insurgents have never clearly articulated their grievances, aims or demands, these targeted attacks seem aimed primarily at spreading terror among the civilian population. These attacks constitute war crimes,” said Guest.

Analysts say that part of the problem with the government’s response to the southern violence is a lack of coherent and coordinated efforts.

Earlier this month, police blamed bomb attacks that killed seven people, including five Malaysians, on a government campaign against drug dealers. However the Interior Ministry rejects that connection and says the violence was related to feelings of injustice, inequality and economic difficulties.

In what may be an attempt to address these differences, the government is planning a new center for coordinating and integrating policies and operations in the south.

Government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisang says the two main agencies responsible for security and development, the Internal Security Operations Command and the Southern Border Provinces Administration Center, never talk to each other. She says the center will promote better cooperation.

“The government [is] concerned about security and also the development and to make the fairness to the people in the Deep South," she said. "This is the way that the government wants to do.”

Thai authorities are quick to point out that annual deaths are going down, indicating that, despite the ongoing violence, the situation is at least better than before.

But analyst Rungrawee says the efforts at improving coordination among various agencies will do little to end the violence because the government’s overall policy remains the same.

"If the government continues to use the same approach, it doesn't matter how they restructure the bureaucratic system, if they don't initiate new policy there's no way that we're going to see a permanent end to the conflict in the deep south," said Rungrawee.

Rungrawee says any hopes for peace rest on some form of decentralized power and holding formal dialogue with the insurgents.

Full: A Thai insurgency grows by being misunderstood - The National

A Thai insurgency grows by being misunderstood

Joshua Kurlantzick
Sep 29, 2011

Thailand's deep south, along the Malaysian border, should be a hotbed of tourism. With warm sparkling blue seas on both sides, this region of rubber plantations and palms and sandy beaches seemed, in better times, to be the archetype of a tropical paradise.

But most visitors to the deep south these days are Thai army units and occasional foreign diplomats who travel from Bangkok in armoured carriers to observe one of the world's bloodiest - and least-known - insurgencies.

The Muslim-majority south has seen 4,000 die in a decade of war between separatist insurgents and Thai security forces, which are dominated by Thailand's Buddhist majority. The fighting has left the region looking more like Iraq than the popular image of Thailand. The most recent violence was unleashed yesterday, when assailants attacked a school in the deep south, killing at least four Thai soldiers.

Ten years after September 11, 2001, the effects of that day in Manhattan can still be felt in Thailand's south - and in many other places. But while 9/11 focused the world's attention on Islamist insurgencies, it also incorrectly tied many local struggles to Al Qaeda. The struggle in Southern Thailand is one of them.

Thailand's insurgency draws fuel from local racial, linguistic and religious divides, not from global Islamism. In places like this, supposed or weak links to Al Qaeda obscure the true challenges, and make it far harder to address the real causes of insurgency.

Thailand's ethnically Malay, Malay-speaking Muslim south, annexed from an independent sultanate in 1902, has long chafed at rule by Buddhist-dominated Bangkok.

In the 1960s and 70s, a separatist insurgency was quelled by promises of development and amnesty for militants. The current insurgency erupted in 2001. No one can say why with certainty, but the respected International Crisis Group blames decades of linguistic, religious and racial discrimination.

However, after 9/11 many foreign analysts, and some Thai officials, rushed to connect the militants with Al Qaeda. It is true that some funding from Saudi charities had flowed into southern Thailand, and that several prominent Muslim leaders had trained in hard-line schools in the Middle East. And a few militants from Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian Al Qaeda ally, had apparently passed through the south.

Still, the most knowledgeable analysts, Don Pathan of Bangkok's The Nation newspaper and Joseph Liow of Singapore's Rajaratnam School of International Studies, have concluded that any links to foreign militants were minor and inconsequential. The insurgency was about local self-identity.

But this reality was ignored. Foreign journalists descended on southern Thailand, as they did on the southern Philippines and parts of Indonesia, to find supposed Al Qaeda links. Terrorism "watchdogs" claimed Al Qaeda was targeting the region. The government said militants were receiving money from Al Qaeda.

"Suddenly, we were focused really hard on southern Thailand," said a longtime American diplomat. "There was pressure from intelligence agencies … to see international terrorism there."

The US military trained Thai forces for counterinsurgency. Other Western nations launched development programmes. A senior US Marine called for US special forces to be deployed.

All this attention backfired, especially since the government made many missteps in the early 2000s. It detained numerous young men. Many disappeared. New emergency laws erased civil rights while giving security forces blanket amnesty. Death squads began shooting suspects in the head.

The global focus did reap benefits. Attention from organisations such as Human Rights Watch taught both sides they could not act with impunity. The US-based Asia Foundation tried to promote development and inter-faith dialogue. By the mid 2000s, some in the government had realised that the tough approach had not helped. They switched to promoting Malay culture and rights, and to tackling economic grievances.

But the hard line proved hard to reverse. By 2009 foreign governments and aid agencies, and many Thai liberals, had stopped paying attention. Insurgents and security forces realised that few outsiders were watching.

As the world turned away, both sides have doubled down. Thailand's military budget has more than doubled since 2006, and the military has stepped up operations. The government encouraged the south's Buddhist minority to create vigilante groups.

Brutal insurgent attacks on civilians have become more common: four or five people are killed on a typical day. Draconian emergency laws allow the security forces to target anyone they want. Activists such as prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit have vanished, and no one has been punished.

Ten years after 9/11, the region's chaos offers an object lesson. Linking a local insurgency to Al Qaeda allowed security forces to take a tough, if misguided, approach. Then, as it became clear that Al Qaeda was not to blame, foreign powers turned away, ignoring the consequences of the crackdown they had promoted.

These mistakes have been repeated in the southern Philippines, where US special forces have trained the Filipino army, and in Somalia, where US and Ethiopian intervention in the mid-2000s obscured local grievances and backfired, helping to radicalise many Somalis and make the country a haven for real Al Qaeda-linked groups. It's a tragic - and avoidable - pattern.

Joshua Kurlantzick is Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations

Bangkok Post : Alarming trendin the South

EDITORIAL

Alarming trend in the South

• Published: 30/09/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

Violence has not only become part of life in the restive South but the frequency and severity of the attacks have risen sharply these past two months since the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra took office.



All of a sudden, the pattern of intermittent attacks between uncertain intervals has turned into a series of frightening onslaughts, one after another.

Since August, the deep South has been suffering from daily violence which has included the shooting of teachers, attacks on troops guarding monks, assaults on police stations and fresh markets, street ambushes, group murders, and the ubiquitous motorcycle and car bombs which have killed and maimed indiscriminately.

In mid-September the country was rocked by a concatenation of car bombs in Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat, while the daily attacks have continued unabated. On Tuesday, four soldiers were killed in an open attack on a school where they were stationed, with a six-year-old boy seriously injured.

Why the sudden surge of violence?

Right after the car bombs in Sungai Kolok, Deputy Prime Minister Pol Gen Kowit Watana declared that the attacks were linked to drug trafficking rackets and not a move by separatists to challenge the newly-installed Yingluck administration. Still, it would be a big mistake for the government to sidetrack the political dimensions of the surging violence.

Despite the widely-held belief that drug traffickers have been financing separatists for their own gains, there are actually only a small number of cases directly linked with drug traffickers each year, according to Srisompop Jitpiromsri of Deep South Watch who has closely monitored the southern violence since it broke out on Jan 4, 2004. A careful study of the Muslim youngsters at drug rehabilitation centres also revealed that few of them could be proven to have taken part in the anti-government movements.

Meanwhile, the attacks were highest in both frequency and severity during the Thaksin administration, in retaliation for the violent military operations at Krue Se mosque and the Tak Bai crackdown. With Thaksin Shinawatra as the de facto leader of Pheu Thai Party and brother of the incumbent prime minister, it is quite possible that the recent upsurge in violence is a political message of double fury. The locals believed the Thaksin government had little sympathy for southern Muslims. And this has been proven yet again in the Yingluck administration's betrayal of Pheu Thai's election promise to turn the deep South into a special administrative zone. Although Pheu Thai did not win a single seat in the deep South, the combined votes for a special administrative zone from Pheu Thai and other parties were higher than the Democrat Party's status quo policy platform, said Mr Srisompop.

The locals' yearning for political decentralisation was officially dashed last week, when PM Yingluck declared that the region was not ready for it. Instead, she announced the setting up of a new security agency to effect better policy coordination. In other words, the Yingluck administration still does not understand the southern Muslims' yearning for state respect for their cultural identity and the need to accord them political decentralisation in order to keep the peace. Nearly 5,000 people have been killed in the prolonged southern strife, more than half of whom were civilians.

It is clear that so long as the government refuses to give up central control over a region with a distinctively different history, culture and aspirations, more innocent people will continue to perish.

The Real Victims in Southern Thailand's Insurgency

By Robert Horn / Bangkok
Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011


Thai soldiers and police gather next to the body of a Muslim rubber farmer who was shot dead by suspected militants in Thailand's southern province of Narathiwat on February 12, 2011
Madaree Tohlala / AFP / Getty Images

Usman Buesa taught the Koran. But spreading the word of Islam didn't protect him from those who profess to defend Islam. As the 24-year-old teacher in Pattani province in southern Thailand drove two of his young students home on the back of his motorcycle on Jan. 27, Islamic insurgents put a bullet in his head. Neither the students nor others who saw the shooting were willing to identify the killers. "They've been too traumatized or scared to talk," Usman's father told investigators.

Usman was one of almost 5,000 people who have been killed since 2004 in what Amnesty International is now labeling an "internal armed conflict" in the deep south of Thailand. The insurgency pits Islamic militants against the predominantly Buddhist Thai state, which has flooded the area with as many as 40,000 soldiers in its counter-insurgency operations. Since 2006, according to an Amnesty International report released on Tuesday, the militants have responded by deliberately attacking civilians. Ironically, the group says, a majority of the victims in the region's violence have been those whom the insurgents are supposedly fighting for: Muslim farmers, rubber tappers, teachers, shopkeepers and others. "These killings constitute war crimes," Donna Guest, Amnesty's deputy director for Asia and the Pacific, told a press conference in Bangkok. "There are no circumstances in which targeting civilians is justified." (Read about how violence is up in southern Thailand.)

Guest's contention that the violence meets the Geneva Convention's standard for an internal armed conflict would make the insurgents liable to be tried for war crimes — if they could be identified, much less apprehended. But those responsible for the dramatic upsurge in shootings, bombings and arson in the deep south since 2004 have often been described as "shadowy." Their organization remains nameless. They don't claim responsibility for attacks. They have never issued a comprehensive statement detailing their grievances, demands or goals. But the deadly violence has steadily intensified. A bombing in the border town of Sungai Kolok two weeks ago, for instance, killed six and wounded over 100. Notes left on bodies following attacks like this and other evidence indicates that most killings are "ideological," says Ben Zawacki, Amnesty's researcher for Thailand. He says such attacks are likely intended to create an atmosphere of terror that would prevent anyone with questionable loyalties from helping the authorities.

Resistance against the central government has been a feature of life in Thailand's five southernmost provinces — Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Satun and Songkhla — since they were annexed in 1902. The Malay Muslims who make up the majority of the population here have long complained of discrimination and abuse at the hands of the Thai state. By the late 1990s, however, most residents had come to accept they were part of Thailand and older, better-known separatist groups were fading away. But in 2001, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's new government adopted a hard-line approach to the low-level resistance that still existed in the provinces. Soon after, violence exploded to unprecedented levels, although it has remained contained to the deep south.

Southern Thailand borders Malaysia, and as with most border regions, it is a nexus for smuggling and a wide variety of criminal activity. That has led some to conclude that a significant proportion of the violence is rooted in crime rather than ethnic or religious grievances. "It is irresponsible for Amnesty International to say that the 5,000 deaths are the work of insurgents," says Marc Askew, a political scientist from the University of Melbourne who has studied the violence in the region. He said that 30% to 40% of attacks are probably related to criminal activity. Col. Parinya Chaitilok, a spokesman for Thailand's Fourth Army, which is responsible for security in the deep south, said he believes that only about 20% of attacks on civilians are the work of insurgents. "They don't usually attack civilians. They usually attack us, the security forces,'' he says.(Read about a documentary over the violence in Thailand.)

Amnesty was quick to stress that the government's security forces are also guilty of abuses. A 2009 report issued by the group alleged that security forces routinely used torture on suspects. "That use of torture is ongoing," Zawacki says, adding that a major problem is the impunity with which security forces operate in the region. No soldier has even been charged with torture, an unlawful killing or any other form of abuse. Zawacki gives credit, however, to recently elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for being open to offers of help from Indonesia in seeking solutions to the southern problem, noting that Indonesia had learned valuable lessons in negotiating an end to a long-running insurgency in its western province of Aceh in 2005.

On the other hand, the Yingluck government's recent nomination of a retired general, who was responsible for the shelling of southern Thailand's holiest mosque in 2004, to a top national security position may be an indication the administration is going to take an even harder line against the insurgents. As the new government considers its options, the death toll in the south keeps rising.

Read more: The Real Victims in Southern Thailand's Insurgency - TIME

^^

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Although Pheu Thai did not win a single seat in the deep South, the combined votes for a special administrative zone from Pheu Thai and other parties were higher than the Democrat Party's status quo policy platform, said Mr Srisompop.

I'd be interested to see the arithmetic behind this.

Originally Posted by SteveCM

^^

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Although Pheu Thai did not win a single seat in the deep South, the combined votes for a special administrative zone from Pheu Thai and other parties were higher than the Democrat Party's status quo policy platform, said Mr Srisompop.

I'd be interested to see the arithmetic behind this.

Maths were never high for sd.... vehicle licensing centre of swansea is the final path for him

Bangkok Post : Security agency warns of increased militant attacks

Security agency warns of increased militant attacks

• Published: 2/10/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

A southern security intelligence agency has warned that Islamic militants will intensify their attacks in cities in the lower South.

Security officers in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala were told to stay on high alert yesterday after the agency said it had received reports that militants would try to step up attacks in towns and cities.

The report, released yesterday by the Deep South Watch centre at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani, said the attacks would be intended as a follow-up to the Sept 16 car bombings in downtown Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat. Those blasts killed six people, including four Malaysian tourists, and wounded more than 100 others.

The rebels would target residential areas, fresh markets, Buddhist communities, entertainment spots and government buildings, using motorcycles and car bombs, said the report.

Authorities have been urged to look for vehicles with fake or modified licence plates.

Separatist violence in southern Thailand claimed 51 lives last month alone, mostly civilians, and wounded 157 others.

The report recorded 67 acts of violence, most of which were firearms attacks, in the three southernmost provinces between Sept 1 and Thursday.

Meanwhile, former conscript Ismail Salae, 24, was arrested yesterday in connection with a shooting which left one man dead and three injured, at a tea shop in Narathiwat's Rangae district on Sept 15.

An arrest warrant was issued for Mr Ismail after the three wounded men allegedly confirmed his identity as one of the six gunmen who attacked the tea shop. Mr Ismail denied the charge.

In Chanae district of Narathiwat, suspected militants shot and killed the village headman of Ban Aiso as he inspected construction under way at a mosque.

Security authorities said two suspects on a motorcycle shot him.

In Pattani's Khok Pho district, a private lorry driver identified as Pisut Boonnab, 61, was shot dead by two gunmen on a motorcycle early yesterday.

Police said the man was shot five times while travelling on his motorcycle to a tea shop. Police have yet to determine the motive behind Pisut's killing.

In Yarang district, Supian Bua-nae, 26, a defence volunteer, was shot and seriously wounded by suspected insurgents while riding his motorcycle on a village road in tambon Korlum on Friday night.

Police said the assailants hid on the roadside and fired three shots at Mr Supian as he drove past.

51 killed in far South last month

51 killed in far South last month

The Nation on Sunday
October 2, 2011 9:07 am

Prince of Songkhla University's Deep South Watch reported yesterday that 51 people were killed and 157 wounded in 67 violent incidents in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat in September.

The news came as a Narathiwat village headman and a Pattani truck driver were killed in separate incidents yesterday.

In Narathiwat's Chanae district, Ban Irzo headman Waepayunan Sideh, 50, was shot dead at around 11am while getting out of his pick-up truck to inspect the progress of construction of a mosque in Ban Ipea-sae. Witnesses told police a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle shot at Waepayunan three times with a pistol before fleeing. Police suspected it was the work of insurgents, as the victim had helped authorities.

In Pattani's Khok Pho district, truck driver Pisut Boonnap, 61, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle at about 8am while driving his motorcycle to a teashop along Chonprathan Rd.

A must read for anyone interested in the south Thailand confllict

http://books.sipri.org/files/PP/SIPRIPP20.pdf

^
Very useful - thanks for the reference.

yep good backgrounder , should be pointed out that it is a little dated though

circa 2007

Originally Posted by Mid

should be pointed out that it is a little dated though

Can't fully please you can I?

Considering that the report contains historical aspects since 1902 and the1960-2007 period in particular then I can't see it as outdated.
There is not much that has changed during the last 5 years which could call for a revised report, the problems are the same today as they were then.

I have not checked for more recent reports from SIPRI or UNHRC , there may be some, this is just something I found when cleaning old hard disks.