Vol. 73/No. 37      September 28, 2009

Thailand’s population is roughly 75 percent Thai, 14 percent Chinese, and 5 percent Malay. The Malay religion is Islam, while nearly 95 percent of Thailand’s population is Buddhist.

The fighting is taking place in the southernmost provinces where Malays comprise about 80 percent of the nearly 2 million people.

The south is among the less-developed areas of the country. Nearly 23 percent of the population in the southern province of Pattani lived below the official poverty level of 1,100 baht per month (US$32), more than twice the national average, according to 2004 UN figures. Infant mortality in Narathiwat, another southern province, is the highest in the country.

The majority of Malays in the south are small farmers, subsisting on cultivation of rice, fruits, and rubber as well as coastal fishing.

The tin mines, plantations, and other large businesses are almost exclusively owned by Thai or Chinese. While the Thai are a minority in the region, they make up the vast majority of government employees and officials.

More than 3,500 people have reportedly been killed in an upsurge in violence that began in early 2004. More than 330 have died in 2009 as of September 5, up from 285 in the same period last year.

Civilians have become a major target of both sides in the south, fomenting divisions and mistrust between the two populations. Since 2004 the Thai Buddhist population in the region has declined from about 300,000 to 230,000.

The government has increasingly been arming Thais, as well as a small number of Malays, in the south to aid the government’s counterinsurgency war. In June unknown gunmen opened fire on a mosque during prayer, killing 12 people. Malay residents believe it was carried out by government forces or Thai militia.

The combined force of police, military, and government-backed militia forces now number more than 60,000—double what it was just two years ago.  
 
‘Thaization’ campaign
Following a military coup in 1932, the government placed the southern provinces under the direct control of the Ministry of the Interior and began a sustained policy of forced assimilation, imposing Thai names, Buddhist law, and use of the Thai language. In the 1960s Bangkok launched a “Thaization” campaign, granting land to some 160,000 Buddhist Thais that agreed to move to the area.

The fighting was at a low point in the late 1990s, but began to pick up again in response to a repressive clampdown following the election of populist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001.

The government imposed martial law in January 2004 following an insurgent raid on an army camp. In October of that year, the military fired on a peaceful demonstration of about 1,500 outside a police station in Narathiwat protesting the arrest of Malay militia members accused of handing over their government-issued weapons to insurgent forces. Some 1,300 protesters were arrested and stacked up to six layers deep in trucks for at least five hours, causing 78 to die from asphyxiation and injuring many others. Officers responsible for the action were acquitted in court.

The government that came to power following a pro-monarchy military coup in 2006 made overtures to remedy national grievances in the south. Economic development has increased, but little else changed.  
 
‘Hearts and minds’
The government has announced a $1.6 billion stimulus plan for the region to win “hearts and minds,” while stepping up the counterinsurgency war and maintaining martial law as well as an emergency degree that grants broad powers and immunity to the police and military forces. The vast majority of Malays oppose the massive military presence.

“Corrupt officials will keep the money for themselves. This is a useless idea,” Malay villager Arware told the World Bulletin in June, referring to the stimulus. “The emergency laws let them arrest innocent people, jail them for a month, and sometimes they torture them—how can this win hearts and minds?”

While the root of the conflict is clear—the systematic oppression of the Malay Muslims—no group claims responsibility for the insurgent attacks and terrorist bombings.

There are several Malay organizations fighting for independence or autonomy, which have worked with each other to varying degrees in recent years. Some call for an Islamic state and one is led by veterans of the U.S.-backed rightist Islamist forces that fought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

One of the main organizations, the Patani Liberation Organization, recently outlined demands including the establishment of Islamic law , recognition of the Malay as a distinct nationality, teaching of the Malay language, autonomous status in the south, and the organization of a referendum on independence.  
 
 
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