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BENARNEWS- Representatives of Thailand’s southern insurgents and government peace negotiators will meet for another round of “pre-talks” in Malaysia on Tuesday, a former insurgent told BenarNews.
The meeting will be the third closed-door meeting held since June in what Thai officials describe as a “confidence-building phase” in the effort to restart peace talks.
Two days later, MARA Patani – the umbrella group representing southern “dissident” groups in the talks – will hold two media encounters.
“There has been an appointment for the peace dialogue panel led by Gen. Aksara Kerdpol and MARA Patani in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Aug. 25,” a former Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO) leader told BenarNews, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Then on Aug. 27, the members of MARA Patani will have a roundtable-style talk with some ten media outlets from Thailand’s Deep South and from Bangkok,” he added.
That afternoon, MARA Patani will give a press conference to Thai, Malaysian and Malaysia-based foreign media, he said.
'Assess the situation'
MARA Patani was formed in May this year, at a meeting chaired by Malaysian mediator Ahmad Zamzamin Hashim in Putrajaya, Malaysia’s administrative capital.
At that meeting, six insurgent groups agreed to attempt to negotiate jointly with the government of Thailand in the lead-up to peace talks.
The groups are three factions of PULO, Barisan Islam Perberbasan Patani (BIPP), Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) and Gerakan Mujahideen Islami Patani (GMIP).
Since 1959, a variety of groups in Thailand’s mostly Muslim Deep South – the provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and four districts of Songkla province – have been waging a low-grade insurgency in a bid to secede from the Kingdom.
More than 6,000 people have been killed and 10,000 injured in violence in the Deep South since the insurgency flared again in January 2004.
The upcoming encounter will be the third round of pre-talks between the two sides, after two sessions in June, according to Asst. Prof. Srisompob Jitpiromsri, director of the Center for Conflict Studies and Cultural Diversity at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani.
“This time the Thai dialogue panel and the MARA Patani will talk and assess the situation in the past few months, how they lived up to making the atmosphere conversation-friendly,” he said Friday.
Srisompob confirmed that MARA Patani would make its media debut on Aug. 27. That appearance would mark the first time the rebels have made public statements about their aspirations during current peace-talk efforts.
Steps toward peace
In July, Maj. Gen. Nakrob Boonbuathong of the Internal Security Operation Command (ISOC), the secretary of the Thai dialogue panel, told BenarNews that the peace process comprises three phrases.
The first and current phase is confidence-building, he said. The second is agreeing to solve problems faced by the Patani Malay population of the Deep South. The third is laying out roadmaps to reconcile grievances, based on identified problems.
“First mutual trust, where we are at, and second agreement to fix each of the problems, for example why some needed to escape, what made them feel uncomfortable,” Nakrob said.
“We haven’t reached the second phrase yet, so I cannot detail well what the agreement will look like,” he added.
Asked if the agreement would include a ceasefire, he said, “we will focus on solving the problems the people have.”
'Too extreme'
Srisompob, the professor at Prince of Songkla University, took part in the last round of Deep South peace talks, under the civilian government of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Those talks stalled in December 2013.
Thailand signed an initial agreement with BRN in Kuala Lumpur in February 2013, which paved the way for two consequent rounds of talks.
But the talks hit a snag when BRN chief negotiator Hassan Bin Toyib later announced five demands via a video posted on YouTube that the government rejected.
The video called for the government to grant all territory within the Deep South sovereignty and to recognize the “Patani Malay Nation.”
The rebels’ demands were too extreme and left no room for progress in the negotiations, Srisompob said.
“There were no adjustments to the terms or demands. For instance, the demands on identity (of Patani Malay), self-ruling or autonomy, the ones they have been asking for a long time,” he said.


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