New 106 million baht Deep South projects to meet public and security demands

BANGKOK, 8 August 2014 (NNT) – Deep South authorities announced on Thursday they will go ahead with 11 projects that will complement efforts to tackle unrest in the area, under a 106 million baht budget.

The initiative, one of the fruits of the recent restructuring of major agencies tasked with the solving of the southern unrest, was revealed by Colonel Pramot Phrom-in, spokesperson of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) Region 4 Forward Command.

According to him, the new projects were deemed as being in accord with demands from the public as well as demands in the aspect of internal security.

Among the issues the projects endeavor to address was the oversupply of mangosteen and longkong. 6,100 tons of mangosteen and 10,400 tons of longkong will have been produced by the end of the current season.

Officials purchased 1,100 tons of mangosteen from orchards, and have been able to sell about 700 tons of the purchased fruits. Col. Pramot added that some of the produce will be distributed nationwide, by means of allocating 10 tons to be sold in each and every province.

This initiative will be carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, under a budget of 37 million baht.

[nnt]2014-08-08[/nnt]

Considering a lot of the mangosteen is organic, there's a potentially massive overseas market for the juice, soap made from the peel etc ..... 

It's all very well to have price supports for mangosteen. In terms of solving the security problems of the south, however, this is treating the symptom, not the cause. We must ask who is benefiting here? It will not be the average (Muslim) inhabitant of the region. Rather, it seems obvious that it will be for the good of the landowners.  

A large part of the problem in the South stems from inequitable land ownership, something which is rarely recognized in the pages of this forum. This is not to excuse the numerous heinous brutalities that have been committed by militants, but rather to explain the backdrop, and the lay of the land that allowed them to occur.

 

Thai authorities gave the land ownership in Ban Buesu, where Sommai lives, to 50 Buddhist Thai families more than a decade ago and helped them set up a Buddhist Thai village cooperative. Many ethnic Malay Muslims in that area remain landless until today. For decades Thai government policy has been to increase the number of Buddhist Thais in the South by resettling them from the northeast in many village cooperatives.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/thailand0807/6.htm

 

At the age of 25 Yusouf returned to Pattani and became a teacher at a local pondok, or Islamic boarding school.

"I was among the new generation of educated people in the region. We were determined to make changes," he said. "The situation was quite oppressive."

For seven years, Yusouf helped organise public demonstrations, demanding the same civil rights as the rest of the Thai people, as well as an end to the heavy-handed tactics of the authorities.

 His outspokenness and his college education was no help in trying to change the attitude of officials bent on their own way of doing things.

"Everything we did was deemed as pro-separatist activity, even though we were just calling for justice and an end to police brutality and other form of injustice," Yusouf said.

At 31, Yusouf was put on a blacklist - a status that would more or less guarantee his "disappearance". A number of religious and community leaders in the region at the time also appeared on this list and were never seen again.

http://www.academia.edu/2255999/The_Insurgency_in_the_Malay-Muslim_South_of_Thailand._News_Clippings_Volume_1_

Edited August 8, 201411 yr by DeepInTheForest