Looking in: External Views of the Way Forward in Thai Southern Insurgency

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Notes

1. Figures and wording are those of the Reuters report found in “Southern Thailand Attacks Reflect Tension”.

2. My 1977 MA thesis, earned enroute to the PhD at the University of Hawaii, dealt with the reasons southern Thailand historically did not become northern Malaya (now Malaysia); my PhD dissertation, dealing with the insurgency of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), necessarily privileged the more central struggles in the Northeast and North at the expense of the South. For published versions of these works see bibliography.

3. This statement can certainly be challenged. A perusal, for example, of the relevant postings on Thailand by Human Rights Watch (see https://www.hrw.org/asia/thailand) reveals ample objections to the present actions of the state, to include in SBP, and thus could support a different conclusion. To my reading, though, such postings do not appear to claim that in SBP abuse is systematic or a matter of policy. There may be other cause-oriented positions, though, which require qualification of my assessment.

4. See e.g. Amnesty International, Thailand.

5. The signal case today is the Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories. Most states that condemn Israel as a ‘settler colonial’ society are themselves implicated by the same mechanism in the theory of ‘internal colonialism’ – yet seem quite unaware that in voting against Israel they are laying the foundation for future challenges to their own legitimacy and national boundaries. Historically, for the U.S., the case of Native Americans well illustrates the dynamic. For the legal framework mentioned, see Quaye, Liberation Struggles in International Law.