3 dead after attacks, bombings rock Thailand’s south

By Max Constant

BANGKOK

A series of attacks and bombings have rocked Thailand’s insurgency-plagued south overnight, leaving a soldier and two civilians dead and three other people injured.

Pattani province’s main radio station reported Thursday that 10 violent incidents -- including drive-by shootings, bombings, destruction of utility poles and burning of tires -- took place in seven districts in Thailand’s three southernmost majority Muslim provinces and nearby Songkhla.

In one attack, men riding a motorcycle shot at a military checkpoint in Muang district, killing one soldier.

In Thepa district of Songkhla, a bomb was thrown in front of a branch of the Government Savings Bank, injuring three civilians.

In neighboring Jana district, a group of men shot at security guards working in a car sales office, killing two of them.

Violence in the region has been intensifying since late last month.

On Oct. 24, a bomb exploded near a noodle shop in Pattani, killing a 60-year-old woman and injuring 21 other people.

On Oct. 28, two men riding a motorcycle shot at a car in front of an education office in Mayo district of Pattani, killing a 49-year-old female teacher who was driving the vehicle and injuring a passenger, a female civil servant.

The two attackers, who were captured on security cameras, left a note near the car, with the words “for you who killed Malayu people” -- using a local term that refers to ethnic Malay Muslims.

The attack was condemned as a “severe violation of human rights” in a joint statement released by the Internal Security Operational Command (ISOC), the main domestic security agency, and the National Human Rights Commission.

The southern insurgency -- which has destabilized the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat for decades -- is rooted in a century-old ethno-cultural conflict between Malay Muslims living in the region and the Thai central state where Buddhism is considered the de-facto national religion.

Armed insurgent groups were formed in the 1960s after the then-military dictatorship tried to interfere in Islamic schools, but the insurgency faded in the 1990s.

In 2004, a rejuvenated armed movement -- composed of numerous local cells of fighters loosely grouped around the National Revolutionary Front, or BRN -- emerged.

After the military seized power in May 2014, the junta continued the overthrown elected civilian government’s policy of holding peace talks with insurgent groups.

But a recent report on the Thai south by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, regarded this dialogue as having “foundered” because both sides “prefer hostilities to compromise”.

“The National Council for Peace and Order [NCPO], which seized power in the 2014 coup, professes to support dialogue to end the insurgency but avoids commitment,” the report said, referring to the ruling junta by its official name.