BANGKOK, Oct 26 (AFP) - The death of 84 Thai Muslims opens a new grim chapter in a long-running saga of conflict and violence in Thailand's Muslim-majority south.
Muslims, a minority in this Buddhist nation, have long complained of discrimination and unequal opportunities and the resentment has sporadically sparked armed uprisings against the Bangkok government.
Muslims make up five percent of the national population and mostly live in the three provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala.
Five of Thailand's southernmost provinces were originally part of an ancient Hindu-Malay empire that adopted Islam in the mid-13th century.
After years of fighting, Thailand annexed the ethnic Malay kingdom in 1902 but visitors to the region can clearly see the Muslims have more in common with their mainly Muslim Malaysian neighbours.
Most people in the south speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay, shop fronts bear Arabic writing and women wear headscarves and modest garments while many men sport Muslim skullcaps.
The relative poverty of the region compared to prosperous central Thailand fuelled a deadly Muslim insurgency which flared in the 1970s in a major challenge to the government.
A campaign to channel large amounts of development funds into the area helped turn the tide, and the election of Thailand's first Muslim politicians led to its effective demise in the early 1990s.
But armed separatism resurfaced in January with a brazen raid on an army base in which masked gunmen killed four soldiers and made off with 400 weapons.
The violence rose to a peak in April when 108 militants and five security forces were killed during a day-long uprising.
The massive influx of troops and police from outside the region has nurtured resentment among the population, who say they have been harassed and subjected to insulting behaviour.
A profound mistrust of authority festered in the south, fuelled by government policies including a rule that the Thai language is used for instruction in schools instead of Yawi.
The government has blamed everyone, ranging from corrupt politicians to gangsters using the banner of Islam to protect their illicit activities, for the unrest.
Some analysts say that remnants of the quashed separatist movement have been revived under the influence of terrorist groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
10/26/2004 13:34 GMT - AFP