IN BANGKOK
I SPENT three days in Thailand’s troubled deep south earlier this week, visiting the mosque in Cho Airong where the June 8 massacre took place.
Locals arrive to commemorate those killed in the June 8 massacre at the mosque in Cho Airong. PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh
I met, among others, a teacher who has been shot at and lives in fear, and a young Buddhist monk who was wounded in an attack soon after the mosque incident, which was put down as retaliatory violence.
Victims of conflict - the young Buddhist monk wounded last week.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh
The south is a deceptive place. It is well connected with a network of good roads through beautiful lush countryside and green hills clothed in dense jungle.
The way of life here seems peaceful, and while it is true that many live in fear, that is more the case in rural areas than in the cities where life is quite normal.
On my last night in Narathiwat, I photographed a big sculpture of one of the peace birds that started with an idea from Souriya "Sunshine" — the maverick musician and peace activist from Isan who has made his home in Narathiwat.
I remember being there when the Thai Air Force dropped over 100 million of the little origami cranes from the skies in December 2004, in what was touted as a major expression of the silent majority’s yearning for peace and unity after the terrible events of that year — the January 4 raid on the military weapons depot in Narathiwat, the local uprising and subsequent killing of young men culminating in the Krue Se mosque incident in April, and the Tak Bai incident of October.
Origami bird sculpture in Narathiwat - peace remains elusive.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh
The peace bird operation turned out to be little more than an empty gesture.
In hundreds of homes across the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and part of Songkhla, people still grieve for family members lost often in horribly violent circumstances.
In schools across the region, there are little children who should never have to go through these kinds of experiences, yet have seen people — sometimes their own parents and teachers — slaughtered in front of them.
I have been in villages where the Thai army has been engaged in building relationships with civilians through developmental work.
This attempt began around 2004, but success has been sporadic and isolated. The government and security agencies seem sometimes to be operating in a world which only tenuously overlaps with the world of local communities.
A woman cooks for the large crowd at the mosque.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh
Rumour is a potent force across this land, and repeated often enough it becomes perceived as fact.
Stories that seem black and white on the surface, upon closer examination dissolve into multiple shades of grey, with the truth falling through the cracks.
The apparently peaceful communities are capable of erupting in outbursts of anger and violence that belie the smiles of the locals that sat around me on the sidewalk late last Tuesday in Narathiwat while a man flipped rotis on his hot pans, and the politeness of the soldiers who check cars and motorcycles on the main roads and side lanes.
Flipping rotis in Narathiwat - life is deceptively normal.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh
The rage that is expressed in anonymous clandestine strikes leaving both Buddhist and Muslim civilians dead and entire families and communities bleeding, is even more difficult to deal with.
A generation is growing up in bitterness.
Read my most recent reports: A wake-up call to Bangkok
Read more about the south Thailand situation: 3 Muslims shot in Thai south and Thai south gripped by fear.