Daniel Pedersen

The Courier Mail

November 12, 2005

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

THAILAND has confronted the spectre of ethnic cleansing this week as civil conflict escalated in its Muslim-dominated southern provinces.

Interior Vice-Minister Kosin Ketthong suggested starting a program of transmigration within the kingdom to stack the south with Buddhists.

It was his first proposal since being put to work to try and quell a revolt that has killed more than 1000 people since January last year.

Mr Kosin floated the idea on Wednesday, suggesting Buddhists from the country’s poor northeast could assimilate with the equally-poor Muslim majority in the south to reduce extremism in the region.

By Thursday night the Government had moved to distance itself from Mr Kosin’s statements, claiming the proposal had never really been seriously considered.

The Vice-Minister’s suggestion came the same day the powerful former deputy prime minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh proposed rewriting history books.

His suggestion was a reaction to insurgents who claimed a Muslim-dominated south, once known as Pattani Darussalam, had existed for 600 years before Thailand. Disputing this, Mr Chavalit told an audience at Kasetsart University: "Hence we need to revise history for better understanding."

He said Culture Minister Uraiwan Thienthong should commission a panel to revise historical accounts.

The Islamic militant group, the Pattani United Liberation Organisation, which in the past has fought for a separate state in the south, just days ago warned this latest conflict could degenerate into war between religions unless Bangkok granted the south self-government.

The PULO was active in the 1970s, but had splintered and largely disintegrated by the mid-1990s. Some of its remaining leaders live in exile in Europe.

The group has begun issuing statements about the insurgency and there have been persistent allegations it is involved in conflict.

Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon was this week quick to dismiss self-rule. "We are not a federal system," he said. "We don’t have the concept of autonomy within our constitution."

The night before Mr Kosin floated his idea for a transmigration program, 15-year-old Chakri Songpimai found himself in the most dire of circumstances.

While driving through Narathiwat’s Rangae district with his father Chaovalit, 41, the owner of Pornchai Enterprise Company, six gunmen fired on their pickup.

Mr Chaovalit’s body was riddled with bullets and he died instantly. Chakri was badly wounded, taking hits to the right leg and left hand, but managed to drive 3km, his dead father alongside, to a roadside security checkpoint.

Mr Chaovalit’s death was one among more than a dozen in the south this week, while government infrastructure, already creaking from almost two years of bombings, shootings and arson attacks again took heavy hits.

Two car bombings on Tuesday targeted a provincial education office and the Yala City Hall. The driver of one of the vehicles blown up miraculously escaped.

Fourteen vehicles were destroyed in the two attacks and five people wounded.

The bombings came less than 24 hours after militants launched 20 co-ordinated attacks against government targets.

Five people, including two militants, were killed and two injured in ensuing gun battles.

ENDS