Peace

Thailand

The Land of Smiles,

A country of grace and beauty.

On a bright clear Sunday, 5 Jan of 2004, a hundred million paper cranes drifted down gently from the sky, cranes of peace and harmony.

Sixty three million people, minus perhaps 5 million disgruntled Muslims, “origamied” paper cranes of all sizes. 100 million carefully folded cranes with peace messages written in them. One special crane had Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra’s signature. Children and adults scrambled for them as the finder of this crane would enjoy a scholarship. It was also King Bhumiphol Adulyadez’s 77th birthday.

But the critics called the gesture a gimmick. The Muslims of the Southern Provinces called it an un-Muslin act. The media had their choice of words for it — they called it “50 military planes bombarded the provinces with paper cranes.”

Various ethnic groups — Malays, Chinese, Laotians, Cambodians, Indonesians, and Sri Lankans — have lived here over many years overlapping each others customs and cultures. Various religions are practised — Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduim, and Taoism with a generous splash of Animism. They have all live here in relative peace with the majority Muslim population.

Now religious harmony has been disrupted, it is not to come easy in this border region of Thailand and Malaysia.

So what is the problem? Insurgents they say — Afghani Jihads, Al Qaedas, Jamiaah Islamiahs, multiple Malaysian Islamic radical groups, and, for good measure, Tamil Tigers could be the cause, some think. A quiet and peaceful juncture for the training of terrorists perhaps, quiet provinces providing a trading post for smuggling drugs and arms in and out of the country.

Bombings of police stations, drive-by shootings of politicians, and arson has resulted in the deaths of more than 500 in recent years. Violence for violence in the burning of mosques is not the answer. Violence against the police and soldiers, security, politicians and Buddhist monks has escalated. The misguided act of security officials in piling of protesters into trucks and suffocating more than 80 has incensed the situation further.

A new awareness is needed, all is not well in this southern melting pot. The concentration of five million Muslims is not getting enough attention from the central government.

Steps more concrete than paper are needed in Southern Thailand.