The educational system in the three southernmost provinces appears to be steeped in trouble with more than 80 percent of pre-university students dropping out and 33 percent of illiteracy rate among Grade-3 students who can neither read nor write Thai.
The cabinet on November 2 resolved to let Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to take charge of overseeing the unrest situation in the deep South after General Yutthasak Sasiprapa lost his cabinet post in the latest cabinet reshuffle.
"Do you want to go home? If yes, raise a finger. If you don’t want me to leave, raise two fingers if it is yes."
With newcomers in command at the National Police Office, several new constructive approaches are to be applied in the restive deep South in a bid to win public confidence and trust of the police among the ethnic Malay Muslims there.
Amnesty International has demanded that Thai security forces responsible for the deaths of 85 Muslim protesters in Tak Bai district of Narathiwat eight years ago be brought to justice.
The perpetrators of violent incidents in the far South should be treated as terrorists whereas the government must be ready for peace talks with the terrorist groups and must come up with new peace overtures, said Panitharn Wattanayakorn, a respectable security expert and former secretary-general of of former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
The Supreme Court has upheld the life imprisonment sentence imposed earlier by the Appeals Court on five Islamic militants found guilty of involvement in the brutal killing of a Buddhist monk and two lay assistants at Wat Phromprasit in Pattani back in 2005.
The National Security Council is in favour of peace talks with militant groups in the deep South but is against an autonomous state or a special administration zone for ethnic Muslims.
A framework peace agreement reached early October between the Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) can serve a lesson for Thailand which is facing a bloody insurgency waged by Islamic militant groups.
The latest teacher shot dead by suspected militants in the restive deep South knew he was marked for death but he refused to give up his teaching job and went to school and back home riding unescorted in a motorcycle.