News and Analysis - Thailand: Insurgency Violence Boils Over In Bangkok (06 May 2007)

A week of increased protests in Thailand’s southern province of Yala over the incarceration of 20 people, who police said were insurgents, ended with bombings and shootings leaving many dead on Saturday.  Violence also spread to Bangkok on Saturday with a bombing near Chitrlada Palace, the Bangkok residence of Thailand's 79-year old king.  Saturday’s small bomb shattered glass in a telephone booth outside the palace and lightly wounded one person as the country celebrated the 60-year anniversary of the coronation of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. It was not known if Bhumibol, the world's longest-reigning monarch, was in the palace.  Immediately following the bombing, the military suggested that former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a coup last September, or his loyalists, were behind the bombs. Thaksin denied any links to the blasts.  Later in the day assertions were made that the bombing was a spread of violence from the south. 

In spite of efforts by the seven-month old military-backed government to reach out to the Muslim-dominated south, violence has escalated to dangerous levels in the last six months.  On Saturday, a 15-kilogram (nine pound) bomb hidden under a bridge went off, killing an infant Muslim girl and two border patrol officers in Yala.  The bomb was apparently set off by remote control.  The attack capped a day of violence in Yala, where at least six people were killed in separate attacks by suspected Islamic militants.  A Muslim man was gunned down Saturday in a drive-by shooting, while rebels ambushed a motorcycle late Friday and shot dead a Muslim father and his two children.  A Muslim man was hacked to death by militants in public view at a Yala market late Friday, and police found the body of another man in a river in the province.  Finally, separate from the attacks, two schools in Yala were burnt down on Saturday, the latest to be targeted in a wave of attacks on schools and teachers, seen as symbols of the government in Bangkok.

The Muslim-majority southern provinces were once an autonomous sultanate, until the region was annexed by mainly Buddhist Thailand a century ago. At some level, separatist unrest has been present ever since.  More than 2,100 people have been killed in the ongoing insurgency in the three southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

(Comment -- It is apparent that Prime Minister (General) Surayud Chulanont’s hold on power is under increasing pressure.  Although he shunned the hard line policies of his predecessor, Thaksin Shinawatra, whom he and the Army ousted in a bloodless coup in September, the strike against order and potentially against the revered monarch have brought his tenure and his policies into serious question.  Since taking power Surayud's conciliatory strategy has included an apology for abuses by security forces in the mainly Malay-speaking region.  He also pushed for dialogue and greater recognition of Malay culture and language while staging nearly 30,000 soldiers and paramilitary in the tense region.   In Thailand, even subtle insults against the monarch have historically been quickly and severely addressed.  Combine the bombing in Bangkok with the increasing loss of life in the south and General Surayud’s tenure must be considered tenuous at best.) [scb]