.
Why are the Patani people resisting Thai rule?
- The Thais invaded Patani in 1786 and initiated colonisation measures that culminated in annexation in 1902 and full political incorporation in the aftermath of the 1909 Anglo-Siamese Treaty.
- The Thai concept of nationhood is via complete assimilation in identity, culture, language, lifestyle and mindset into a single “Thai” identity as created by the Phibun Songkhram regime of the 1930s-40s and perpetuated by present-day Thai policies.
- Hence, the “Patani people” do not exist in the socio-political essence of official Thai nationhood. The Patani populace are forced to forego their identity, language, ethnicity, culture and history and are expected by the occupying Thai state to be “Thais” modelled on the ethnic-T’ais of the Central Chao Phraya basin.
- Just like any other repressed ethno-cultural group in this world, the Patani people are resisting this attempt to subsume their identity and heritage.
- The Patani Region is the last unliberated colonised territory in Southeast Asia. The populace is resisting Thai rule in their struggle to free their captive land from colonisation and from ethnic, cultural and linguistic annihilation.
- The Thai concept of nationhood is via complete assimilation in identity, culture, language, lifestyle and mindset into a single “Thai” identity as created by the Phibun Songkhram regime of the 1930s-40s and perpetuated by present-day Thai policies.
- Hence, the “Patani people” do not exist in the socio-political essence of official Thai nationhood. The Patani populace are forced to forego their identity, language, ethnicity, culture and history and are expected by the occupying Thai state to be “Thais” modelled on the ethnic-T’ais of the Central Chao Phraya basin.
- Just like any other repressed ethno-cultural group in this world, the Patani people are resisting this attempt to subsume their identity and heritage.
- The Patani Region is the last unliberated colonised territory in Southeast Asia. The populace is resisting Thai rule in their struggle to free their captive land from colonisation and from ethnic, cultural and linguistic annihilation.
Why do the people of the region want to secede from Thailand?
- The Patani Region has nothing in common with the Thai colonising state.
- The populace are Malay Muslims, undifferentiated in language, culture, religion and mindset from their Malay Muslim brothers in Malaysia.
- Thailand, as a unitary state based on T’ai identity and Theravada Buddhism, is an alien socio-political paradigm that has no logical rationale to “own” and occupy the Patani Region beyond some sort of war booty, a vestige of the era of colonisation in Southeast Asian history.
Has the Patani people launched a Jihad against the Thai state?
- This is not an Islamic Jihad.
- This is not a religious conflict.
- This is about a captive people (the Patani Malays) with their own ethnic identity, language and culture resisting their comprehensive domination by another ethno-cultural group (the T’ais).
- The Patani Malays are Muslims, but Islam is not the catalysts of this conflict in the same vein that the Buddhist faith of the T’ai colonisers does not define their agenda or mindset.
Why can’t the Patani people live in peace with the rest of their fellow Thais?
- How could a people live in peace when its language, its culture, its very identity are erased by the colonising state?
- How could a people live in peace when every single place name in its homeland is erased and replaced with alien renditions in the Thai script?
- How could a people live in peace when they are tagged as a wayward offshoot of the alien colonising race, being called “Thai Muslims” on their own land? Would Americans agree to being called “Southern Canadians”? Would the British be happy with the tag “Western Germans”? Would the Japanese be amenable to being called “Archipelagic Chinese”? Would the Thais themselves accept their race as either “Eastern Burmese” or “Western Khmer”? Why must the Patani Malays be the exception, be the only ones to foresake their identity to a colonising force?
Isn’t this struggle too late, a misfit in the modern world?
- Nationalist struggles are fought over hundreds of years over many generations.
- A century is not “too late”.
- Spain was colonised and settled by Arabs (the "Moors") for over 700 years from the 8th to the early 15th centuries. But the Spanish regained their land literally inch by painful inch in hundreds of battles and ancient guerilla warfare and resistance not unlike today’s Patani Insurgency.
- Vietnam was ruled by Imperial China on four occasions – 207BC-39AD, 43-544AD, 602-905AD and 1407-27AD – for a total of 1,070 years. Inspite of relentless Chinese assimilation policies, the Vietnamese did not become “Chinese” after a millennium of colonization.
- China itself was ruled by the Mongols for a century in the 13th-14th centuries, and by the Manchus for 300 years until the early 20th century. The Chinese did not become “Mongols” or “Manchus” and ultimately expelled these colonisers.
- India was ruled by the British Empire for almost two centuries until independence in 1947.
- Indonesia was under crippling Dutch rule for 350 years but reemerged after the Second World War to expel the Dutch from Aceh all the way to Papua.
- Hong Kong reverted to China after 156 years as a British Crown Colony. Macau was a Portuguese colony for four hundred years before also reverting to Chinese sovereignty.
- Hence, Patani’s century of direct Thai rule does not in any way negate the legitimate right of the Patani people for self-determination.
- Indeed, the Patani Malays will never be Thais. Many are tortured; others "disappeared"; placed in concentration camps; had their names changed; had the names of their towns and cities altered; had their ethnicity and language erased, but they will never be made into “Thais.”
- There are better odds of the Thais becoming a "Burmese" than the Patani Malays becoming Thais.
Why must Muslims kill innocent Thais of all faiths, no matter how legitimate and noble your intentions may be?
- The killings started more than three centuries ago when successive Siamese polities (Ayutthaya, Thonburi, Krung Thep, Siam, and modern Thailand) invaded the Patani Kingdom and subjected the Malay populace to great hardships amidst atrocities and represssion.
- The Patani Malays were at the receiving end of the violence for over three centuries.
- Organised resistance to Thai colonisation began in the past 50 years as this is the only avenue for the Malays to stave off Thai aggression on their homeland.
- Most of the killings in the Patani Region today are perpetrated by the Thai authorities and their hired hands, hence the predominance of Malay victims in the conflict.
Why have the Patani people not peacefully stated their grievances to the Thai government?
- All attempts at peaceful resolution by the Patani populace were met with violent, punitive measures by the Thai state.
- Thousands of Patani Malays have died in their peaceful approach to self-determination. These include Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir and hundreds of other community leaders in the captive region.
- Successive Thai regimes throughout this colonization period, including the present government, have maintained a non-negotiation, zero tolerance, zero compromise stance with various Patani nationalist groups and civil society movements.
- Indeed, Patani Malays suspected of association with these movements would be dealt with severely by the Thai regime via various instruments of state and the security apparatus, including 40,000 troops and 30,000 police personnel and a myriad of other phalanges of the occupation forces.
Why didn’t the Patani Region separate peacefully?
- How could the Region “separate peacefully” when the Patani people are not allowed to even discuss their grievances or present various political options?
- The term “separation” itself is a trigger point for Thai overreaction and punitive measures against any Patani advocate of such a concept.
What do the Patani People actually want?
- Freedom
- Self-determination
- The freedom to practise their own culture, speak their own language, take pride in their identity, understand their heritage and history, and to chart their own destiny.
How to achieve peaceful resolution?
- Referendum on the preference of the Patani people.
- Either continue being a part of Thailand.
- Or independence under specific mechanisms promulgated and enforced by the United Nations and ASEAN under the auspices of the Nations of Interest, namely Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
- The populace are Malay Muslims, undifferentiated in language, culture, religion and mindset from their Malay Muslim brothers in Malaysia.
- Thailand, as a unitary state based on T’ai identity and Theravada Buddhism, is an alien socio-political paradigm that has no logical rationale to “own” and occupy the Patani Region beyond some sort of war booty, a vestige of the era of colonisation in Southeast Asian history.
Has the Patani people launched a Jihad against the Thai state?
- This is not an Islamic Jihad.
- This is not a religious conflict.
- This is about a captive people (the Patani Malays) with their own ethnic identity, language and culture resisting their comprehensive domination by another ethno-cultural group (the T’ais).
- The Patani Malays are Muslims, but Islam is not the catalysts of this conflict in the same vein that the Buddhist faith of the T’ai colonisers does not define their agenda or mindset.
Why can’t the Patani people live in peace with the rest of their fellow Thais?
- How could a people live in peace when its language, its culture, its very identity are erased by the colonising state?
- How could a people live in peace when every single place name in its homeland is erased and replaced with alien renditions in the Thai script?
- How could a people live in peace when they are tagged as a wayward offshoot of the alien colonising race, being called “Thai Muslims” on their own land? Would Americans agree to being called “Southern Canadians”? Would the British be happy with the tag “Western Germans”? Would the Japanese be amenable to being called “Archipelagic Chinese”? Would the Thais themselves accept their race as either “Eastern Burmese” or “Western Khmer”? Why must the Patani Malays be the exception, be the only ones to foresake their identity to a colonising force?
Isn’t this struggle too late, a misfit in the modern world?
- Nationalist struggles are fought over hundreds of years over many generations.
- A century is not “too late”.
- Spain was colonised and settled by Arabs (the "Moors") for over 700 years from the 8th to the early 15th centuries. But the Spanish regained their land literally inch by painful inch in hundreds of battles and ancient guerilla warfare and resistance not unlike today’s Patani Insurgency.
- Vietnam was ruled by Imperial China on four occasions – 207BC-39AD, 43-544AD, 602-905AD and 1407-27AD – for a total of 1,070 years. Inspite of relentless Chinese assimilation policies, the Vietnamese did not become “Chinese” after a millennium of colonization.
- China itself was ruled by the Mongols for a century in the 13th-14th centuries, and by the Manchus for 300 years until the early 20th century. The Chinese did not become “Mongols” or “Manchus” and ultimately expelled these colonisers.
- India was ruled by the British Empire for almost two centuries until independence in 1947.
- Indonesia was under crippling Dutch rule for 350 years but reemerged after the Second World War to expel the Dutch from Aceh all the way to Papua.
- Hong Kong reverted to China after 156 years as a British Crown Colony. Macau was a Portuguese colony for four hundred years before also reverting to Chinese sovereignty.
- Hence, Patani’s century of direct Thai rule does not in any way negate the legitimate right of the Patani people for self-determination.
- Indeed, the Patani Malays will never be Thais. Many are tortured; others "disappeared"; placed in concentration camps; had their names changed; had the names of their towns and cities altered; had their ethnicity and language erased, but they will never be made into “Thais.”
- There are better odds of the Thais becoming a "Burmese" than the Patani Malays becoming Thais.
Why must Muslims kill innocent Thais of all faiths, no matter how legitimate and noble your intentions may be?
- The killings started more than three centuries ago when successive Siamese polities (Ayutthaya, Thonburi, Krung Thep, Siam, and modern Thailand) invaded the Patani Kingdom and subjected the Malay populace to great hardships amidst atrocities and represssion.
- The Patani Malays were at the receiving end of the violence for over three centuries.
- Organised resistance to Thai colonisation began in the past 50 years as this is the only avenue for the Malays to stave off Thai aggression on their homeland.
- Most of the killings in the Patani Region today are perpetrated by the Thai authorities and their hired hands, hence the predominance of Malay victims in the conflict.
Why have the Patani people not peacefully stated their grievances to the Thai government?
- All attempts at peaceful resolution by the Patani populace were met with violent, punitive measures by the Thai state.
- Thousands of Patani Malays have died in their peaceful approach to self-determination. These include Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir and hundreds of other community leaders in the captive region.
- Successive Thai regimes throughout this colonization period, including the present government, have maintained a non-negotiation, zero tolerance, zero compromise stance with various Patani nationalist groups and civil society movements.
- Indeed, Patani Malays suspected of association with these movements would be dealt with severely by the Thai regime via various instruments of state and the security apparatus, including 40,000 troops and 30,000 police personnel and a myriad of other phalanges of the occupation forces.
Why didn’t the Patani Region separate peacefully?
- How could the Region “separate peacefully” when the Patani people are not allowed to even discuss their grievances or present various political options?
- The term “separation” itself is a trigger point for Thai overreaction and punitive measures against any Patani advocate of such a concept.
What do the Patani People actually want?
- Freedom
- Self-determination
- The freedom to practise their own culture, speak their own language, take pride in their identity, understand their heritage and history, and to chart their own destiny.
How to achieve peaceful resolution?
- Referendum on the preference of the Patani people.
- Either continue being a part of Thailand.
- Or independence under specific mechanisms promulgated and enforced by the United Nations and ASEAN under the auspices of the Nations of Interest, namely Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
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8 comments:
REFERENDUM FOR PATANI NOW!
KijangMas,
I have long wanted to comment on the plight of the Patani Malays. But have been preoccupied with the problems of the Malays in Malaysia.
We Malays are beset with problems everywhere. We know that others have their problems, too - some out of wanting too much, some out of wanting pure glory. But we must keep on fighting for our rights and promote our interest, never give up hope. As far as I am concerned, the Patani Malays are Malays like we are in Malaysia. I feel brotherhood, kinship, historical and cultural ties with those I met in Malaysia. I wish them every success in their long journey to self-determination.
I have a lot of admiration for your tenacity, your relentless pursuit for what you believe in. The path is never clear, the support hard to come by - the Asean spirit of togetherness, the preponderance over "more pressing issues" at the UN and elsewhere. You have my full moral support.
I have been wondering whether the International Court of Justice can be a channnel for redress. It requires tremendous resources, though - time, money, historical research, legal expertise, international lobbying etc. I know it's easier said than done, especially considering the limited resources of a subjugated people. You don't want an Abdullah Badawi type of reference to ICJ on Pulau Batu Putih - just depending on whatever you have or don't have, without attempting to get the best resources to take on the international legal battle.
I sympathise with the Patani Malays and pray that one day they will have self-determination.
sepadu.
I have relatives in Patani. To me, they are Malays, they speak Kelantanese, but they have the national identity of Thailand and well versed in Thai language.
They were 'there' when the Thais came. We were then 'separated'.
Unlike the chinese who "were not here" but rather came from mainland China. But these chinese, who label themselves 'chinese', speak 'chinese', seem always want to be 'chinese', while 'cari makan' in the originally Malay land (the Peninsular) called Malaysia. Many are not fluent in Bahasa Malaysia too.
So, these 'chinese' were never like the 'patanis' and yet they use 'patanis' history in refusing to assimilate.
- Semerah Padi
While much of this is a good FAQ, you completely avoided the question of why Muslims need to kill INNOCENT Thais. All you said was, "well they killed us, so we should kill them" which is a counter-productive and inhumane way of dealing with the situation. Many Thai victims have never killed a single Malay separatist and have never been in any way associated with the few Thais who have committed atrocities against the Muslims, taking their lives is completely unjustified murder. Those Thais who are actually responsible for the deaths of innocent Muslims in the Southern provinces should be the sole victims of any retaliatory acts. You cannot attempt to justify the deaths of any other victims.
i hope someday pattani will join malaysia ...insyaallah
Very informative -- answers many of my questions regarding this situation. Thank you.
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Just a progressive-minded fellow from the States
เปิดใจหน่อยเหอะ อยากได้อะไรก็บอกมาภายใต้การมีส่วนร่วมของประเทศไทย สมัยก่อนทุกพื้นที่ในโลกก็มีกันแย่งชิงดินแดนเป็นเรื่องธรรมดา
ต้องถามตัวเองนะว่า "ถ้าแยกไปแล้วจะได้อะไรกลับมานอกจากความรู้สึกว่าเป็นอิสรภาพ" รวยขึ้น? การกินอยู่ดีขึ้น? สุขภาพดีขึ้น?
แล้วถามตัวเองว่า "ถ้าไม่แยกดินแดนแล้ว มีอะไรต่างไปจากเดิม"
เดี๋ยวนี้โลกสมัยสมัยแล้วไม่ได้มีการขูดรีด ส่งส่วยเหมือนสมัยก่อน
อย่าเอาความรู้สึกสะใจมาบดบัง
คงจะถามสินะว่าไม่ใช่คนพื้นที่คงไม่เข้าใจความเจ็บปวดหรอก ใช่มั้ย?
คำตอบคือ จะเจ็บปวดอะไรกันนักกันหนา ถ้าปัจจุบันถูกทารุณเหมือนสมัยก่อนจะไม่ว่าเลย แต่ปัจจุบันนี้ไม่ใช่
ไม่มีใครว่าหรอกนะ อยากจะรักษาวัฒนธรรมก็ทำ อยากจะพูดภาษาถิ่นก็พูดอย่ามาอ้างว่าไม่อยากพูดภาษาไทย แล้วทำไมถึงอยากเรียนภาษาอังกฤษล่ะ
ถ้าเปิดใจหน่อย โลกนี้ต้องการสื่อสาร ต้องการค้าขาย ยังไงก็ต้องปรับตัวเรียนรู้
เรียนรู้จากอดีตเพื่อมาปรับปรุงในปัจจุบันเพื่ออยู่ในโลกอนาคต
คนใต้ฝั่งตะวันตก
To "คนใต้ฝั่งตะวันตก"
Based on your thoughts, I believe you are from the Setul (Satun)-Trang region, most probably a Thai-speaking ethnic-Malay.
The 3-4 million strong Patani Malays have not and will not undergo de facto assimilation per your own ancestral experience.
Their sense of identity and sheer numbers will constantly reinforce their un-Thai-ness.
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