Word: pattani
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...teachers are late for school again. It happens almost every morning at Ban Bukoh village in Thailand's troubled Pattani province, but the kids are getting used to it. The girls busy themselves by sweeping the corridor outside the government school's single row of tiny classrooms. The boys crib last-minute homework from each other. Then the men with guns arrive-six of them in a pickup truck, two more on a motorbike, all toting M-16 assault rifles. It is the job of these government militiamen to protect two cars and five motorbikes carrying a dozen teachers. Their...
...children sing as the Thai flag is raised between fire-scorched trees. The words can't mean much-some of the children are fresh out of kindergarten. But even the youngest among them must be dimly aware that a conflict is raging in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, and that its battle lines run right through their schoolyard...
...people in the southern provinces of this otherwise overwhelmingly Buddhist nation. Resistance to Bangkok's assimilation policies-banning Muslim headscarves, closing schools not conforming to the national curriculum, preventing civil servants from attending Friday prayers-has simmered and boiled ever since Thailand, then known as Siam, annexed the Pattani sultanate a century ago. In the 1960s, the separatist Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front, or B.R.N.) was formed by a religious teacher after the state tried to force Islamic boarding schools to adopt the national curriculum. B.R.N. and other insurgent groups were neutralized by government amnesties by the 1990s...
...next morning, his optimism is shattered. Overnight, leaflets are found outside the school. "Warning!" one reads. "Muslim brothers and sisters of Pattani: The Malay people of Pattani are currently at war with the Siamese infidel occupiers. Therefore, we must unite." Without claiming responsibility for the arson attack, the leaflet explains that schools are targeted because they are "symbols of the Siamese infidel occupier." It continues: "This is a warning to our brothers and sisters: do not assist the occupier, or cooperate in terms of labor or goods in kind. To help them with labor, money or goods in kind...
...requested that his name not be published, the 16-page document outlines seven points of agreement reached by Thai officials and rebels during the Langkawi meeting. They include the reestablishment of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC), an important development office for the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat closed by Thaksin in 2002; establishing a program for the economic development of the region on par with the rest of the country; and the recognition of southern Muslims as a distinct ethnic group, with Malay an official language in the south...