The Research Of Muslim Separatist Movement In Southern Thailand

The Muslim separatist movement in Southern Thailand, having been unheard of for years, has awaken since the entrance of the 21^st century by multifold factors inside and outside Thailand. Emerging from the background in which national separatist movement has causing great clamors, concerted by religion extremism and international terrorism, the Muslim separatist movement of Southern Thailand displays a complicated scene interwoven with national separatism, terrorism and other related crimes. Its revival has not only directly influenced the political economical development and the relationship of ethnic group in Thailand, but also affected Thai's relations with neighbor Malaysia and, to a larger extent, the entire region, and further with Thai's relations with Islamic nations and organizations; subsequently struck an alarming bell which international terrorist force make use of ethnic conflicts to infiltrate the region planning terrorist plots. Therefore, wide range and thorough investigation and study on the origin, development and trends of Southern Thailand Muslim separatist movement can reveal its regular patterns, which bear not only important theoretical value, but also positive and realistic implications.Through the analysis on the history and present situation of the Muslim separatist movement, combined with the changes in Thailand's domestic politics and economy, along with the changes in the international background, this paper explains the origins of, the causes for and the essence of the revival of the Muslim separatist movement in Southern Thailand at this time in an attempt to find out the regular patterns of this separatist movement, and puts forward its proposal on the trends and the measures the government of Thailand should take to deal with these trends. The main structure and contents of this paper are as follows:The introduction explains the significance of this thesis, its theoretical framework and methodology including related research both at home and abroad, and to define some terms applied in this paper. The first chapter mainly presents the history and present situation of the Muslim separatist movement. The second chapter adopted historical, political, economical, cultural approach, synthesized with the international background analysis to analyse the causes for the Muslim separatist movement in Southern Thailand, to reach the conclusion that the formation and development of the Muslim separatist movement in Southern Thailand is the continuation of the past movements and the result of the interaction between inner and outer factors in which the inner factors have taken the decisive part. The third chapter, based its analysis on the nature of the Muslim separatist movement in Southern Thailand, proposes its views that the possible trends and the countermeasures the government of Thailand should adopt. The paper is concluded by the ending words.