Lanterna Rally

Author: Bede Sheppard

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13:

Since separatist insurgents renewed regular attacks in 2004 in Thailand's southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat, students, teachers, and schools have been caught up in violence by both the insurgents and government security forces. The insurgents, who view the educational system as a symbol of Thai Buddhist state oppression, have burned and bombed government schools, harassed and killed teachers, and spread terror among students and their parents. The vast majority of teachers killed have been ethnic Thai Buddhists, and their deaths are often intended as a warning to others. Yet Muslim teachers have not been spared; insurgents have also targeted Muslim teachers at government schools, and Islamic school administrators who resist insurgents' efforts to use classrooms for indoctrination and recruiting. In some areas, insurgents have also pressured Malay Muslim families not to send children to government schools. The government faces the challenge of protecting children and teachers. Yet in some villages, government security forces have set up long-term military and paramilitary camps or bases in school buildings and on school grounds, interfering with education and student life and potentially attracting attacks as much as deterring them. When security forces have suspected that insurgents are using Islamic schools to hide or shelter, or that insurgents are seeking to indoctrinate school students into their separatist ideology and recruit new supporters and fighters, the government's response has included raids on schools, involving mass arbitrary arrests of students. Some raids have turned violent, endangering students and teachers. Such heavy-handed tactics may succeed in only further alienating the Muslim Malay community from the government. The result is that students, teachers, and schools are caught in the untenable position of facing a risk of violence from both insurgents and government security forces. Violations by both sides in the conflict disrupt access to a quality education for hundreds of thousands of children in the southern border provinces, Thai Buddhist and Malay Muslim alike.