AP News, April 20th, 2007
Thailand's prime minister said Friday the government is considering granting amnesty to Muslim insurgents in the south, a step that would be a major policy shift in the three-year conflict.
At the same time, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said the government supports Buddhists who have taken up arms to protect their families against Muslim insurgents.
On a visit to the south, Surayud said he did not object to an amnesty, proposed by the area's top army chief.
"I want the issue to be clearly discussed at the local level and accepted by all parties concerned," Surayud told reporters. "The government is ready to enact the (amnesty) law in the future."
An amnesty was first discussed in 2004, but rejected under former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government in favor of a hard-line approach.
Surayud, however, came into office in October following the coup that ousted Thaksin with promises to bring peace to the region through reconciliation.
"It opens an opportunity for insurgents to emerge from the shadow and stop using violence," said Srisompop Chitphiromsri, political scientist at Prince of Songkhla University at Pattani.
He said an amnesty in the 1980s successfully ended the country's decades-long communist insurgency.
Buddhist civilians, including monks, have been the insurgents' prime targets in three years of violence in Thailand's southernmost Muslim-majority provinces _ Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat _ which has left more than 2,000 people dead.
Several government agencies have provided guns to both Buddhist and Muslim civilians in the south to protect their villages. But a proliferation of firearms and growing mistrust between Muslim and Buddhist communities has raised concerns of retaliatory attacks by Buddhists.
"Buddhists are taking up arms for self-defense," Surayud said. "The government is happy to support them for such a purpose."
Thailand is overwhelmingly Buddhist, but the country's far south is predominantly Muslim, and residents of the region have long felt that they are treated like second-class citizens.
