Thai Buddhism, Thai Buddhists And The Southern Conflict

摘要

Thailand's 'southern border provinces' of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat - along with four districts of neighbouring Songkhla - are the site of fiery political violence characterised by daily killings.1 The area was historically a Malay sultanate, and was only loosely under Thai suzerainty until the early twentieth century. During the twentieth century there was periodic resistance to Bangkok's attempts to suppress local identity and to incorporate this largely Malay-speaking, Muslim-majority area into a predominantly Buddhist nation-state.