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Published on July 15, 2007

Reconciliation between the state and Malay-speaking citizens in the troubled South could take as long as 20 years, the head of the multi-agency Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC) said yesterday.

Speaking at a seminar in Hat Yai, Pranai Suwanarat urged the public to be patient with the government's reconciliation process, saying it could take up to 20 years for true reconciliation to be achieved because that was when a new generation of leaders would be in power.

The state has to do its utmost to prepare this generation of youths for their future role in their community, he said.

Pranai said long-term initiatives should be coupled with short-term efforts to win the hearts and minds of the younger generation of militants and their sympathisers.

Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont yesterday defended the government's policy of reconciliation coupled with aggressive military tactics, including recent search and mop-up operations during which hundreds of suspected militants and sympathisers were detained.

Speaking in Bangkok on a weekly television show, Suryaud said a number of those detained had admitted to assisting insurgents or taking part in the violence, and that officials were looking to expand on this information.

He dismissed suggestions that the suspects, virtually all of whom were detained without charges, were being mistreated.

Locals have said the shakedown by combined police and Army units in violence-prone districts of Yala and Narathiwat was more to allay growing public frustration at the authorities' inability to curb the violence in the region, where four more deaths were reported yesterday.

Villager Damae Che-wae, 66, was shot dead in Tambon Bo-nogr in Narathiwat's Rangae district. He was shot at close range while riding to work at his rubber plantation by gunmen who came up behind him on another motorbike.

The headless corpse of a man believed to be between 25 and 27 was discovered on a river bank in Tambon Manangtayor of Narathiwat yesterday. Police said his head was discovered in a plastic bag floating nearby.

In Songkhla's Sabai Yoi district, suspected insurgents shot dead two villagers, Malaseng Hadlo and Muhammad Meesee, as they were riding a motorcycle home.

Police heading to the crime scene were delayed by spikes placed on the road. The killings occurred in a so-called red zone, where insurgents are active, so the responding security team could not travel by foot.

The unrest in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, sometimes spills over into four adjacent districts of Songkhla.