Thin Lei Win of Reuters has a recent article on the situation in the Deep South. Some key excerpts:
Almost two people, most of them civilians, have died every day in Thailand’s Deep South since 2004 when a long-running separatist rebellion took a more violent turn.
More than 7,000 have also been injured, and the impact of the violence on the wider community has been equally dramatic
Yet, the Deep South, just a few hours’ drive from Thailand’s popular beaches, rarely grabs the attention of aid agencies or the media – it causes barely a ripple unless the deaths are grisly
One out of four people have been affected by the violence – either they have friends and relatives who were killed, injured or disappeared from insurgency-related violence or they know people who have, a survey conducted late last year found.
BP: BP is often surprised on how little coverage there is of the situation in the Deep South in the Thai media.
The article also has an interesting anecdote:
Most Muslims I met were weary and distrustful of anyone official and in a uniform. They complained of low-level harassment and how their identity as Malay Muslims is ignored in favour of being Thai.
…
When we drove past two checkpoints without being questioned while almost every other car in front of us were, both my driver and my translator were convinced it was because security saw a non-Muslim woman in the car.
Similarly, a paramilitary group turned up at a recent car bomb site in Yala and found me taking pictures. They took photos of my press card and us, questioned where I was from and where I am staying (while one of the female paramilitaries diligently took down notes of everything I said) and let us go.
My driver, who’d left his Muslim cap in the car, told me, “If I’d been wearing it, there’d be no end to the questions.”
BP: Current efforts to win the hearts and minds doesn’t seem to be working. On the lack of success in winning hearts and minds – see this post from December 2007 which also talks about paramilitaries as well – because BP wonders what is the actual strategy and what goals have been set by the government and the military in the Deep South?
http://asiancorrespondent.com/51646/thailands-forgotten-humanitarian-emergency/