BANGKOK
A village chief has been shot dead in the latest violence in Thailand’s Muslim south, which has recently been shaken by daily attacks despite the junta’s assurances of improvement.
Police Lt. Preecha Ratyotha, investigator at Srisakorn district police station, told the Anadolu Agency, “a village chief was shot dead early Monday when returning home from the mosque, in Srisakorn district of Narathiwat province.”
Around two hours later, a remote-controlled bomb hidden along a road in neighboring Pattani province exploded as soldiers were leaving a pick-up truck to inspect the area.
Two soldiers were injured and transported to a local hospital.
Police suspect separatist rebels of being behind both attacks.
In another incident Monday morning, a 16-year-old Muslim was shot at and injured by a group of four men riding a motorcycle in Yala province, but police believe the case was likely related to a personal conflict.
The attacks come after a weekend that saw at least nine people – including eight police officers – injured across the insurgency-plagued region bordering Malaysia.
The series of attacks came in the wake of Defense Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan telling reporters last week that "violence had decreased substantially" in the region.
In a presentation about the post-coup military government’s performance in the last six months, Wongsuwan said, "violence has decreased by 60 percent and the loss of lives by 40 percent."
He added, "more time is needed to encourage people in southern provinces to take part in the peacebuilding and development process."
The three southernmost Thai provinces -- Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat -- constituted an independent Islamic sultanate with great religious influence in the Southeast Asian Muslim world until it was incorporated into Siam after a 1909 Anglo-Siamese agreement.
Great Britain was then the colonial master in Malaysia and exerted a degree of control over the region.
From 1938, a virulently nationalistic campaign organized by the government of Field Marshal Phibunsongkhram tried to impose Thai cultural norms on Malay Muslims, who reacted by asking for some degree of political and cultural autonomy.
Things, however, turned for the worse in the 1960s, when military dictator Field Marshal Tarit Sanarat attempted to control Islamic boarding schools, locally known as pondoks.
Several Muslim groups took up arms and started a guerrilla war against the Thai state.
The situation quieted down at the end of the 1980s and the "Southern problem" was considered solved. However, in January 2004, a new wave of attacks against the military, police and Buddhist monks shook the Thai government.
Since then, the violence has continued unabated. Outside of claiming the lives of more than 6,000 people, both Buddhists and Muslim, it has also left around 11,000 injured.
