Rubber trapper shot dead in Thailand’s south

By Max Constant

BANGKOK (AA) - A villager was shot dead in Thailand’s Muslim south Thursday as he was preparing to garner rubber at his plantation.

An inspector at the Saba Yoi district police station in Songkhla province -- one of three provinces plagued by insurgency for decades -- told Anadolu Agency that the villager had been sharpening his knife in front of his house when two men drove by on a motorcycle.

“One of them shot him three times. We found him in a pool of blood,” said Police Lt. Col. Dejthana Thongsuwan.

Police could not affirm whether the attack was due to a personal conflict or linked to the decades-old insurgency against the Thai central state that has been destabilizing the region, where 80 percent of the population is Malay-Muslim.

The attack followed a series of violent incidents over the last few weeks in the three southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, which include the Nov. 26 killing of an eight-month pregnant woman.

A recent release from independent organization Deep South Watch, which is monitoring the violence, however, show that there has been a fall in violence over the last 10 years

Up to the end of October 2016, 564 violent incidents -- including 227 deaths from attacks -- took place, while in 2015, there were a total of 673 incidents and 246 deaths, and, in 2014, 806 incidents and 341 deaths.

The bloodiest year in the last 12 was in 2005 with 2,174 incidents and 601 deaths.

The southern insurgency 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.

A recent report on the south by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, has claimed, however, that the talks have “foundered” as 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.