Thai PM threatens to lay siege to troubled region

Thailand’s prime minister threatened today to lay siege to villages that allegedly supported separatists in the country’s Muslim-dominated south.

But a local leader warned the tactic could instead boost terrorists’ influence in the insurgency-wracked region.

In fresh violence, a bomb exploded today in the nightlife district of a southern border town, killing four people and wounding 37, police said.

And, as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was beginning the second day of a tour of the troubled region, gunmen killed a Buddhist villager in Narathiwat.

More than 650 people died in attacks last year in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – violence the government blames on a Muslim insurgency.

Thaksin designated 358 villages in those three provinces as “red zones”, meaning he has deemed them hostile to state power and sympathetic to Islamic rebels. About 200 of those villages are in Narathiwat province.

He dangled the carrot of state aid to villages that back the government.

“But I will not give a single baht to the villages that are designated as red zones,” he said.

“I don’t want the money going toward supporting insurgents in the red-zone villages. I don’t want the money to be used to buy guns and bombs … no one can use our money to separate (the three southernmost provinces) from Thailand.”

“If the money sanctions do not work, I will send soldiers to lay siege to the red zone villages and put more pressure on them,” Thaksin said.

Abdulrohman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, warned that slashing development funds would only push villagers closer to the militants and pave the way for local and international Muslim extremists.

“The Muslim world is monitoring the developments in this region closely, and when they find that we are being ignored or sanctioned by the government then they will step in to help,” he said.