Since 2004, the violent conflict between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims has caused more than 7, 500 deaths and 13, 000 injuries in the southern border provinces of Thailand. This will be the first collection published in English to give voice to those who have rebounded from these profound personal tragedies to demand justice and peace.
The ethnic and religious separatist insurgency in the southern provinces of Thailand is complex. Ninety to ninety-five percent of Thai citizens are Buddhists. In the southernmost provinces, however, Muslims are in the majority—yet they are governed by the Buddhist Thai capital in the north. In 2006 and 2014, the Thai government went through separate coups, resulting in differing policies to address this problem in the south, including a National Culture Act to promote ‘Thai-ness’ throughout the country. In the south, this has resulted in a repressive and corrupt police force and military raids on Muslim villages, provoking the burning of schools and other symbols of Thai government, bombings, and even the killing of teachers and monks.
The narratives collected here, primarily from women, testify that although the violence has been generated from both sides of the Buddhist/Muslim divide, the actions undertaken by armed forces of the Thai Buddhist state—including repressive violence and torture—have served as a catalyst for increased Muslim insurgency. These contributions reveal the fundamental problem of how a minority people can fully belong within a state that has insisted on religious, cultural, and linguistic homogenization.
Table of Content
Tranlator’s Note by Hara Shintaro
Preface by Soraya Jamjuree
Introduction by John Clifford Holt
1. This Land Is for You
2. Whose Security Is This?
3. Justice Should Be Fought For
4. A Mother’s Hope
5. Transition of Fear
6. The Time Has Come for Me to Stand Up
7. A Grey Memory
8. A Smile Amid the Tears
9. Life After Liberation
10. Still Smiling
11. A Mother Seeking Justice
12. I Am My Father’s Blood
13. Becoming a ‘Defendant and Coming Back as a ‘Mr.”
14. I Endure
15. I’m Fighting Because I’ve Done Nothing Wrong
16. In the Middle of a Happy Forest
17. Living with Memory
18. Revovering Kuching Lepah
19. Suffering Has a Starting Point. I’m Waiting for Its End!
20. The Sandpoint of a Believer
About the author
John Clifford Holt is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the Humanities in Religion and Asian Studies at Bowdoin College.
Soraya Jamjuree teaches at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani and is a founder of the Civic Women’s Network for Peace in the Southern Border Provinces of Thailand.
Hara Shintaro is a researcher and translator of Malay.
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