ASIA TIMES : Eye on Catalonia, South Thailand yearns to vote

http://www.atimes.com/article/eye-catalonia-south-thailand-yearns-vote/

Malay Muslim activists in the insurgency-prone region have called for a referendum on 'rights to self-determination', a rally cry military authorities have curbed and silenced

By DON PATHAN YALA, OCTOBER 31, 2017 3:48 PM (UTC+8)

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An artist takes part in a graffiti event as part of the Saiburi Street Xhibit in Pattani - one of Thailand's southernmost Muslim majority provinces hit by a deadly insurgency - on February 28, 2016. Photo: AFP/Madree Tohlala

Spain may be halfway around the world from Thailand, but that hasn’t stopped ethnic Malay political activists in the Southeast Asian nation’s Muslim-majority southernmost region from tuning in to developments in Catalonia, where a vote for independence has been met with a swift and firm counter-response from Madrid.

Political activists here have observed the political crisis in Spain with curiosity, wondering how the Catalan population developed their political platform, strengthened their movement’s grass roots legitimacy and ultimately through democratic means challenged the Spanish government’s notion of undivided national sovereignty

http://www.atimes.com/article/eye-catalonia-south-thailand-yearns-vote/

EDITORIAL: An inconvenient truth in the deep South opinion

The Thai state's propaganda machine cannot win the battle for hearts and minds

The Nation

Citizens and activists who take a more critical view of the government’s policy and actions in the Malay-speaking South have not only been subjected to harassment by the authorities but also nasty propaganda often referred to as “IO”, or information operations.

The idea of IO is to discredit those perceived by the authorities to be obstructing the effort to win hearts and minds among the local residents, about 90 percent of whom are Muslims of Malay ethnicity.
The authorities believe that if they can win over the locals, they can quell the armed separatist movements by denying them support and legitimacy.
One group now bearing the brunt of the government’s IO machine is the Federation of Patanian Students and Youth, or PerMAS, a network of university and high-school students.
Though the group’s stronghold in the deep South, PerMAS membership stretches throughout Thailand and even into neighbouring countries.
Because of their outspoken stance against the culture of impunity among government security officials, PerMAS has been consistently accused of collaborating with separatist organisations, particularly the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), believed by Thai officials to control vast majority of the insurgents on the ground. Thailand’s IO paints PerMAS as the “political wing” of the BRN, a label that members strongly reject.
Though 11 years have passed since the current wave of insurgency first emerged, regular and cordial dialogue between Thai security officials and PerMAS has not resolved the differences.
Undermining the efforts is the government’s semi-secret IO machine, which continues to churn out propaganda attacking and harassing these activists.
Whether a deliberate strategy or not, this double-faced approach only makes the authorities look bad. If anything, it illustrates a lack of unity of purpose and strategy on the government side.
Intelligence and security officials need to ask themselves whether such propaganda tactics against groups like PerMAS are even necessary. And if they continue to insist that IO is a legitimate approach, they should be more truthful about the information they dish out.
Rallies organised by PerMAS and associated groups like Lempar, Nusantara, Perwani and Wartani draw upwards of 10,000 people. The criticism voiced at such large public events is no doubt uncomfortable for the authorities.
But attacking these groups with distorted information won’t help the situation. For many locals, it only enforces a longstanding lack of trust in state officials.
Positive change won’t be achieved by the state reaching out to them with an olive branch in one hand while holding a whip in the other.
There are far more productive ways to engage these activists.
First, actions speak louder than words. Acting to end the culture of impunity among security forces by clamping down on dubious tactics such as torture and extrajudicial killing would be a crucial step in the right direction. The best way to show local residents that the state cares deeply about their concerns would be to take up their grievances and look into them with an open mind.
The authorities must ask themselves why local residents have diverted their hope and trust towards these youth activists. Is it perhaps that they have good reason to believe no one else will stand up for their rights?
Like it or not, an “us versus them” mentality still prevails in the deep South, where the “Siamese” are more often than not seen as outsiders.
The authorities need to grasp this inconvenient truth. It may not fit neatly into their official explanation of the situation, but if we are to get to the bottom of this longstanding and deadly conflict, we must stop fooling ourselves with our own propaganda.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/An-inconvenient-truth-in-the-deep-South-30271893.html

EDITORIAL: Southern youth activists taking to the streets

The Nation

Their involvement in anti-coup protest in Bangkok is actually good for country

An interesting development over the past few months that has been overlooked by the public is the participation of ethnic Malay Muslim students from Thailand's southernmost provinces in the protest against the current government.

A significant number of students and youth leaders have been coming to Bangkok and elsewhere to take part in the various demonstrations and speaking engagements to voice their disapproval against the military regime.

Some were briefly detained alongside other youth activists and students for their peaceful demonstration. 

This development should be welcomed simply because these Malay youths and students from the deep South are teaming up with the rest of the country's student movement and embracing the "Thai narrative", as opposed to the one that focuses exclusively on Pattani.

And while they are calling for the same thing that many of us want to see - democracy, accountability, rule of law, transparency - the fact that they are becoming part of the Thai narrative demonstrates that these Malay Muslim youths also feel that they have a stake and a sense of shared destiny with the rest of the people in this country.

The government, especially the security apparatus, views these Malay Muslim youth activists as spreading their wings beyond the three southernmost provinces that have been hit by an 11-year insurgency that has claimed more than 6,000 lives, with no end in sight - but they predict more trouble, because they see things through a security lens. Problems arise when the lens gets damaged and the authorities become cross-eyed and don't realise it. 

The Malay Muslim youths and student activists have over the years earned a great deal of respect and trust from the local population, especially at the grassroots level where abuses by the authorities often occur. 

These youths step in and speak out against alleged injustices and abuses. Their activism can be traced back eight years, when many of them occupied the Pattani Central Mosque to protest about the alleged rape against a Muslim woman in Yala province, not to mention the alleged torture and extra-judicial/targeted killings carried out by government officials. 

But in recent months, they have been joining the Thai student protests in Bangkok and other parts of the country. 

Unfortunately, security officials and intelligence officials see this development as a security challenge against the regime.

If anything, Thai society and government officials, especially those working on the conflict in the deep South, should actually welcome such a development.

This is not to suggest that these Malay Muslim students should be receiving red carpet treatment while in Bangkok.

Up until now, these students and youth activists have been a bunch of uncompromising separatists bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malay. Many are still being harassed. And the authorities can get away with it because they have the Emergency Law to shield them from just about anything in terms of legal repercussions. Sadly, a culture of impunity exists in this historically contested region. 

And while the Malay Muslim students and youths are promoting the concept of the "right to self-determination", it is still a far cry from separatism or armed insurgency taken up by the thousands of Malay Muslim militants on the ground.

When the red shirts and the yellow shirts were going at it on the streets of Bangkok and elsewhere, these Malay Muslim youths stayed put. Today, they see a common ground with the Thai student activists from other parts of the country.

In his weekly remarks on Friday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha tried to sound reconciliatory; he said the 14 detained students were pure and innocent and urged them to channel their activities in a constructive manner. 

While such a statement suggested that he was extending an olive branch to the student movement, he, nevertheless, could not get away from his old self and suggested that some hidden hands have been guiding these students. 

Hasn't it occurred to Prayuth and other security officials that these youth activists have a mind of their own and that they may see things differently from the country's military, whose mandate is still questionable?

If the head honcho can't differentiate between good intention and good policy, there isn't much hope for the folks down the line, is there?

But it does not need to be that way. They just need to broaden their minds, open their hearts and not see every criticism as an attempt to overthrow them.

But the good news is that these guys are here today and gone tomorrow. These youth activists are demanding to know when tomorrow will be and that tomorrow doesn't mean forever.