A plot to keep the Muslim South down?

Pravit Rojanaphruk, The Nation, Asia News Network

Nearly six months have passed since the latest cycle of violence erupted in the deep South on Jan. 4. Perhaps it's time to face the fact that any solution to end the conflict will require a fundamental shift in the thinking of not just the government, but the public and the mass media as well.

The fact that violence continues unabated on a near daily basis points to a failure of the government's crisis management. While the leaders continue to juggle the hot potato, the public and the media should perhaps pay attention to two important issues.

The first is the need for empathy by the Thai Buddhist majority, to put themselves in the shoes of Thai-Malay Muslims in the deep South.

Many Muslims feel that they are being treated as second-class citizens in their own hometowns. These people, who do not support separatism or violence, also feel that there exists some sort of conspiracy to keep Muslim people in the area down.

Take for example the call for the establishment of a Department of Engineering at Prince of Songkhla University's Pattani Campus. Locals say the government rejected their demand by reasoning that the climate was too humid for metal tools to be installed. The department of engineering was given to the Hat Yai Campus of the same university in Songkhla province, which is predominantly Buddhist.

The suspicion may be true or unfounded -- but the fact that there is a perception that the Buddhist majority is trying to undermine Thai-Malay Muslim minority is itself a big problem.

Then comes the second and equally important issue of the lack of understanding about Islam and especially the history of the Thai-Malay people in the South. Thai Buddhists simply take it for granted that they don't have to understand minorities, be it Muslims, hilltribes or whatever group.

In the predominantly Muslim deep South, governors and officials are mostly dispatched from elsewhere, often with little knowledge or sensitivity about the cultural, religious and historical differences. To make it worse, locals believe that many of these officials are corrupt.

An example of the insensitivity is seen in a big shopping mall in Pattani, which doesn't provide a prayer room for Muslim staff and discourages female Muslim staff from wearing headscarves.

Thais often celebrate their tolerance towards minorities. But tolerance doesn't have to be accompanied by ignorance and stereotyping of others. Instead, what is needed is education of the Buddhist majority about minority groups, and vice versa.

The same ignorance and stereotyping are echoed in the way the media, which is very Bangkok-centered, portrays Thai-Malay Muslims as being violence-prone, troublesome, backward, intolerant and unpatriotic.

Although the mass media have been giving intense coverage to the deep South, it appears that the region only deserves attention in times of crisis.

While there doesn't appear to be any conscious effort to bar any Thai minority from working in the media, an affirmative- action policy could help make the media more inclusive and diverse. In the meantime, journalists from Bangkok are simply dispatched to the deep South, often carrying with them their Bangkok-centric worldview.

People in the deep South end up as passive subjects being reported about, not so different from the way they are being ruled by Bangkok-appointed governors.