Ongoing Conflict in Southern Thailand

"An international symposium attended by the Malay Muslim refugee community was recently held in Sweden"

An international symposium attended by the Malay Muslim refugee community was recently held in Sweden’s parliament.

The hall fills quickly with over 100 participants, mostly from Southern Thailand.

They’re Malay Muslims and prefer to call their homeland Pattani.

Mehmet Kaplan is a member of the Swedish parliament. He recently visited Southern Thailand or the “deep south”.

“What I saw there when I recently visited was a extremely oppressed society. Especially the young people who feel they cannot freely express their cultural identity.”
 
Violence in Pattani dates back to more than a decade ago when the Thais first attempted to assimiliate their language and culture on the Malay Muslim community.... often by force.

Since then over 3000 people  have died, while thousands have fled to seek refuge in Malaysia and Europe.

In the audience at the parliament meeting were Malay Muslims who’ve fled to Sweden.

They’ve taken their fears with them, thousands of kilometers away.

I asked if anyone wanted to talk about their experience.

They all turned me down. ”Ask him”, said a young man, and pointed to Abu Yasir Fikri.

He’s a leading member of the separatist group PULO and lives in exile in Sweden.

“We decided already in 1976 that there was no peaceful way to get our rights. Everyone living in Pattani wants to see an independent state. We can also discuss a type of autonomy but we don’t have a proper negotiator between us and the Thai state.”

Meanwhile the killing continues, now driven by several radical Muslim separatist groups.

Nearly 100 thousand Thai troops are deployed throughout three provinces in the south.
 
Dr Neil Melvin at the International Peace Research Centre in Sweden has been studying the conflict in the province.

He says that Islamic fundamentalism is not the only contributing factor.

”There is a political issue to do about language, about education, about participation and distribution of resources which is not necessarily linked to religious questions precisely. So I think what we have today is a mix of things going on, and I’ll add that on both sides there are economic motivations.”

There are no turists in the deep South anymore, no investment, many schools and temples are shut, and there is an extremely costly military presence.

The solution, says researcher Dr. Neil Melvin is for the government to make a choice.

”It goes back to the ebb and flow in efforts in trying to incorporate the south more closely into Thailand or to give it some kind of space where language issues and territorial issues can have a role in Thailand.”     

The Thai government med in secret with the resistance movement, just last month.

It’s a breakthrough says Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, a former independent commissioner for the national reconciliation committee.

“It's a long and difficult road to a peaceful solution in the South, not helped by the constant political turmoil in Bangkok. That Prime Minister Yingluck met with the separatist movement and recognized them is very significant and may push the peace dialogue forward. ”
 
There’s a window of opportunity for thousands of Muslim Malay refugees to be able to return to Pattani after the meeting.

And it’s time to get a neutral negotiator into the process, says PULOs executive head, Abu Yasir Fikri.

”The conflict is an internal political one, but we need help from the outside to mediate a peaceful solution.”

• Sweden
• Pattani
• refugee
• conflict
• Ric Wasserman