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One soldier has been killed and 11 people wounded after a group of Buddhist monks was attacked by bombers in southern Thailand.

Several monks were among those injured when a remote-controlled device in a rubbish bin was detonated by mobile phone as five Buddhists collected alms in a street in the city of Narathiwat, police said.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by Muslim separatists who have been fighting Thailand’s mainly Buddhist government since early 2004.

The soldiers were accompanying the monks to protect them from attack.

One soldier died on his way to hospital, while other soldiers, monks and four passers-by were wounded, police said.

Muslim insurgency

The insurgency in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – an Islamic sultanate until Bangkok annexed the region a century ago – has shown no sign of abating since a coup led by a Muslim general overthrew Thaksin Shinawatra, the elected prime minister, on September 19.

Muslim separatists carried out a series of attacks last week.

In Narathiwat province, separatists set off a bomb under a table at a crowded teashop, killing four people, on Friday.

A week earlier, a migrant worker from Myanmar was beheaded in front of his teenage daughter.

The militants tossed his head on the side of a village street in Narathiwat and then set off a remote-control bomb when police tried to retrieve it.

Since the coup, Surayud Chulanont, the former army chief appointed prime minister by the military, has said he wants a peaceful solution to the violence.

He has offered to hold talks with leaders of the Muslim insurgency, a reversal of policy from the days of Thaksin.

However the military also extended the emergency rule ordered by Thaksin, which gives sweeping powers to the authorities.

Aceh peace-deal eyed

During an official visit to Jakarta on Saturday, Surayud hailed Indonesia’s Aceh peace accord signed in Helsinki last year which ended a separatist insurgency which had killed 15,000 people since 1979.

“Indonesia has set a model in solving the conflict in the Aceh province successfully,” a Thai government web site, thaigov.go.th, quoted Surayud as saying after meeting Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president.

“The Aceh model is a good example to bring peace to southern Thailand,” Surayud said.

Surayud also went to Kuala Lumpur this week for talks with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised full co-operation with Thailand.

Under Thaksin-era relations between Thailand and Malaysia became strained after Bangkok accused mainly-Muslim Malaysia of sheltering Islamic insurgents.

News from the Nation, Agence France Presse and the Bangkok Post reports that in Narathiwat province in the troubled south, a five kilogram bomb was detonated this morning.

The bomb was hidden in a garbage can in front of an electronics shop in downtown Muang. It was triggered at 6.30 am local time by mobile phone as five Buddhist monks were gathering alms, accompanied by thirteen soldiers who were acting as an escort. The bomb was triggered as they passed the shop, and all five monks and the soldiers were injured in the blast.

The monks came from Wat Promniwat. Three were seriously injured. Three civilians were also injured. After the wounded were transported to hospital, one of the soldiers died from his injuries. 22-year old Private Pramote Wannasuk, from a Chon-Buri-based taskforce, became the 28th person to have died in the violence since last Sunday. This week is said to have been the bloodiest week in recent memory.

The current insurgency began on January 4, 2004, and has claimed 1,700 lives. The governor of Narathiwat province, Pracha Therat said Allah punished people who committed violent acts. Pracha is a Buddhist. He said that the bomb could have been placed in the garbage can during a power blackout. This had gone on for several hours, as a result of heavy rains which have been pounding the southern provinces.

Yesterday, premier Surayud Chulanot was in Indonesia, and said that he would use the example of Aceh as an example for containing the violence in the south of Thailand, which affects the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, as well as two districts of Songkhla.

The Thai academic Ahmed Somboon Bualeng poured scorn on the suggestion. He said that yje government of Indonesia knew who the rebels were – representatives of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). In Thailand, although groups of rebels are engaged in preliminary peace talks, it is unknown who is still perpetrating the violence.

There are other reasons to suggest any parallels with Aceh and Thailand’s predominantly Muslim south are preposterous. Most importantly, Aceh’s road to peace involved an agreement to introduce Sharia law. With 20 percent of Thailand’s southern residents being Buddhists, such a measure will only increase inter-faith distrust and conflict, as it has done in the north of Nigeria between Muslims and Christians.

On July 31 this year, almost a year after peace was signed between GAM and Indonesia, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group reported on the problems that sharia has caused. As AKI described it, sharia “is creating a conflict between the civilian and religious authorities and is also penalising women and the poor.”

In Aceh, the wilayatul hisbah enforces “vice and virtue” law. Effectively they are vigilantes. In April it was announced that in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam district of Aceh, non-Muslims would also have to be subjected to Islamic law.

There are already worrying signs that the leader of the coup which took place on September 19 is seeking more involvement from Muslim countries in solving the problems in the south. This individual, General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, is a Muslim. Boonyaratkalin appointed the current Thai prime minister who is now eulogizing the Aceh process. Should Islamic law be introduced to Thailand, the Buddhists in the south would become alienated and denied the normal rights of citizenship.

The Midnight University Website, the foremost free and critical
educational and public intellectual website in Thailand with over
freely accessible 1,500 scholarly articles, a lively webboard with
ongoing thought-provoking debates, which receives well over 2.5 visits
per month from viewers around the world, has already been shut down
by the Thai Information & Communications Ministry last night, acting
under the order of the self-styled military Council of Democratic
Reform. This is not only a hugh loss to academic and intellectual
freedom in Thai society, but also a closure of a free forum for the
contention of ideas to find a peaceful alternative to violent conflict
in Thailand.

We are gathering signatures for a campaign to pressure for the
reversion of this unjustifiable violation of the Thai people’s right
to information and free expression by the Thai authorities. So, please
consider adding your and your firiends’ names to the end of this
message and e-mail it back to me so that we could save what little is
left of precious freedom and wisdom in Thai society in these dark and
difficult times.

Sincerely,

Somkiat Tangnamo
< midnightuniv@gmail.com>

BANGKOK — As soon as they had consolidated their power, Thailand’s military coup leaders made a symbolic kowtow to the man who had made it all possible: the country’s 78-year-old monarch.

More than anything else, it was the tacit alliance between the army generals and the long-ruling monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, that allowed the coup plotters to secure their victory last week.

Three days after the tanks rolled into Bangkok, the generals paid homage to the King. In a nationally televised ceremony, the top coup leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, stood before a shrine to the monarch. A royal decree was recited, confirming their alliance, and then the general kneeled and bowed before a portrait of the King.

In exchange for his support, the military has repeatedly signalled its loyalty to the King. Soldiers have tied yellow ribbons — the royal colour — onto their rifles and tanks. The official name of the military junta — the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy — is a further bow to the dominance of the world’s longest-reigning monarch.

In Bangkok yesterday, the military felt confident enough to withdraw 10 tanks from the Royal Plaza in the city centre, where they had been stationed since the coup. This week, the military will appoint an interim prime minister and finalize a new constitution.

In another gesture of allegiance to the King, the coup leaders threatened Saturday to take “immediate action” against any foreign journalist who writes anything that “may infringe” on the monarchy. The warning was apparently provoked by the military’s displeasure that some foreign reporters have mentioned the King’s role in political matters — a taboo subject.

King Bhumibol, who celebrated an extraordinary 60 years on the throne this spring, has often sided with coups and military regimes in the past. But he is so powerful and so revered that it is illegal and almost unthinkable to criticize him.

Publicity about him is unrelentingly positive. Laudatory reports about his activities are broadcast on every television channel at 8 p.m. every night, often showing Thais prostrating themselves before him. Cinema audiences are required to rise for the royal anthem before every movie, with his image on the screen.

Thailand banned a recent biography of the King by a U.S. journalist because the book was insufficiently respectful. Even the Amazon website’s page about the book is blocked by police censors, with a warning that reads: “Sorry, the website you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police due to inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any information which is deemed to violate national security.”

The crime of lèse-majesté — insulting the dignity of the monarch — is taken extremely seriously, with violations punishable by up to 15 years in prison. A number of journalists, intellectuals and politicians have been charged with the offence, despite protests from international human-rights groups.

“Many people think the King is a god,” said Thanapol Eawsakul, publisher of a political magazine that saw one of its issues banned because it printed skeptical articles about the monarchy. “It’s not surprising, with the media making so much propaganda for him. Nobody criticizes him.”

Despite the ban, and despite a police attempt to prosecute Mr. Thanapol for “upsetting public order,” the issue about the monarchy sold out and was eventually reprinted with another 6,000 copies, although it was difficult for the publisher to find a printer.

“Many people want to know about the King,” Mr. Thanapol said. “There’s so much gossip, but no real information.”

In a typical village in northern Thailand, a street vendor says she sells about 10 framed portraits of the monarch on market day every week. Hundreds of villagers wear yellow shirts as a symbol of their love for him. “He is like a Buddha — the being that we respect the most,” said Amornrat Chantawit, a 35-year-old egg vendor. “It’s as if we are his children. He is like a father. We have to do what he says.”

A military officer agrees. “We would give our lives to protect the King,” he says. “The King is above everything else.” Even the supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra — the prime minister who was deposed by the coup — are quick to express obedience to the throne.

“Every time Thailand has a crisis, it is the King who will solve the problem,” said Surapong Tovijakchaikoon, a member of Mr. Thaksin’s political party. “Everyone respects the King’s decisions. All Thai people love the King.”

A 29-year-old Canadian schoolteacher who died in a weekend bombing in southern Thailand was a footloose traveller from Toronto who had recently settled into a full-time home.

“He was really happy there and was finally getting into a groove,” said Jessie Lee Daniel’s aunt, Sue Jones. “He loved Thailand.”

Mr. Daniel was one of four people who died in a series of bombings that ripped through a neighbourhood in Hat Yai, southern Thailand’s biggest city, as extremists expanded their attacks beyond traditional targets.

Five bombs exploded simultaneously in tourist spots in the city’s business district, Police Major-General Paitoom Pattanasophon told reporters yesterday, including two at department stores and one at a hotel. Three Thais also died and dozens more people were injured, including several other foreigners.
Mr. Daniel had been teaching at Phol Vidhya School in Hat Yai since arriving in Thailand last November. He was the first Western fatality in an insurgency that has gone on for three years.

Mr. Daniel was an accomplished photographer with a passion for dancing, said Ms. Jones, a resident of Trenton, Ont., with whom Mr. Daniel lived for several years after his mother died in 1995. “He was just like my soulmate,” Ms. Jones said in an interview. “He was such a good kid, so genuine.”

She said that her nephew’s hero was Australian “crocodile hunter” Steve Irwin — killed by a stingray earlier this month — because Mr. Irwin embodied Mr. Daniel’s gregarious, adventuresome spirit.

Mr. Daniel, formerly a factory worker in the Toronto area, discovered a love of teaching once he arrived in Thailand.

“The kids called him ‘Teacher Beckham,’ because he looked a little bit like [English soccer star] David Beckham,” Ms. Jones said.

He had also lived briefly in Costa Rica and California in recent years. “He was especially excited about seeing elephants when he got to Thailand,” his aunt said.

She said Mr. Daniel had a Thai girlfriend and had made many friends. When the explosions took place Saturday night, he was eating in a local restaurant with a friend who had just arrived from Toronto. Mr. Daniel was one of the first to reach the street after the first wave of bombs, Ms. Jones said. At that moment, another bomb exploded, killing him. His remains will be cremated and returned to Canada.

Since a January, 2004, raid on a government weapons depot, more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers have died in a bloody conflict between the Thai army and Muslim separatist insurgents in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces, known as the Red Zone.

Thirty people were injured in explosions at Hat Yai’s airport and a supermarket in April, 2005. The primary targets of all the attacks in the past three years have been have Thai Buddhist teachers and government workers.

More than 80 per cent of the people in the three provinces are Yawi-speaking Muslims, but 90 per cent of government officials are Thai-speaking Buddhists. This has created a linguistic barrier and cultural divide between the authorities and the residents that dates back to the signing of the Anglo-Siamese agreement in 1909, when Thailand annexed the three provinces.

In recent months, more than 100 Thai teachers fearing for their lives have applied for transfers to other provinces. In an effort to halt the exodus, the government is offering weapons training and discount prices on handguns for teachers.

“The school is very well known for English lessons. There are about 10 foreigners teaching there right now,” said former Phol Vidhya student Noon Wandee, 23, who was instructing at a nearby computer shop Saturday night. “I was very scared. I didn’t think this would happen again after the bombing last year.”

The region has seen long periods of martial law and has attracted the attention of international human-rights groups.