The Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) has recently announced the appointment of a new leader, Mr Kasturi Mahkota, but the Thai security authorities are indifferent to the new appointment claiming that the decades-old separatist movement has no control of the new breed of Islamic insurgents who have been waging a terror campaign in the deep South.

The third round of informal peace talk between the government and a collection of six separatist groups known under the name of Mara Patani is scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur on August 25 with Malaysia acting as the facilitator.

October 25, 2013 marks the 9th anniversary of the Tak Bai incident in Narathiwat in which 85 Malay Muslims died, 78 of them of suffocation after they were stacked on top of one another on trucks for five hours ride to the Ingkayuth army camp in Pattani.

In the past 3-4 months, there has been a surge of activities from civic groups in the three southernmost provinces against the extension of the emergency decree. Of late, a network of civic groups was established to oppose the extension of the emergency decree by inviting members of the public to write protest letters or send protest postcards to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rig ...

It was Sunday June 30 late afternoon. 18-year old Ms Oraphan Plachumthet or Nong Nick, a Mathayom 5 student of Benjamarachuthis school, was riding on the pillion of a motorcycle driven by her junior schoolmate, 16-year old Tantikorn Puichumpol, on their way home from school where they had participated in a sports competition.