The adage ‘no news is good news’ is not always true for Muslims in southern Thailand. Reports from the south seldom make it to the mainstream news agenda, conveying the impression that the conflict is dying down. Yet in less than four years about 3,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed, and tens of thousands wounded.
As the conflict in Aceh recedes into the past, another part of Muslim southeast Asia has emerged as a conflict zone, as if to replace the ‘vacuum' created by the successful peace accord between GAM and Jakarta. The Muslim-majority provinces in southern Thailand, which border with Malaysia, have been the scene of unprecedented casualties in recent months, pushing the death toll to 2,000, all killed in circumstances that have yet to be explained in a plausible manner.
Hardly had the blood dried on Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s hands after the storming of the historic Kerisik mosque in Pattani last April, than the ‘Butcher of Bangkok’ committed another horrifying massacre of Muslims...
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand has suddenly found himself playing the role of a public-relations officer, distributing packets of rice to Muslim villagers while brandishing the rhetoric of fighting terrorism...
