Foreign peace advocates share their view on southern conflict
An international conference, entitled "Communication, Conflicts and Peace Process: Landscape of Knowledge from Asia and Deep South of Thailand" was held at the Islamic Study College, Prince of Songkhla University, on August 21-22.
The conference featured interesting talks by Dr Stein Tonnesson, a Norwegian peace researcher and historian from the Peace Study Research Institute of Oslo, Norway. Separately, another talk of similar subject was held at the King Prachadhipok’s Institute featuring Michael Culbert, a former Irish Republic Army member.
Mr Culbert began his talk by saying that people of a country would not rise up and take up arms against their government without a really good reason. Then he talked about his experience of engagement in political activities, including armed activities, with the IRA.
He admitted that the use of arms was one of the means of the IRA to fight for the independence of northern Ireland until when he was caught and imprisoned that he started to realize that that the use of arms would never achieve their goal and that the IRA must change tact although the objective remains unchanged.
Mr Culbert said that 40 years ago he never thought that a conflict could never be resolved without the use of arms. He added that he took up arms against Britian because the British government did not offer anything which would change the status quo as the Irish people had aspired. They (British) thought that putting the Irish in jails would change their political ideology and that was wrong, he continued.
The former IRA official said his thinking started to change during his imprisonment when the British introduced political discussions with the imprisoned IRA members.
He noted that the dialogue was not easy because there were questions about why talking with the terrorists. He said that Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa was branded a terrorist before by the while South Africans and all the former Israeli leaders who fought against the British for their homeland were also branded terrorists by the British.
Mr Culbert admitted that he was baffled by the absence of any political party that would represent the separatist groups to communicate with the Thai government or the absence of any organization which would come up to announce openly what was the real cause of their violent activities.
However, he stressed that peace would never be achieved if there was no communication or dialogue with the opposing side.
Dr Stein Tonnesson, meanwhile, said that he felt there was greater peace in Southeast Asia now than it was the case during the Cold War between 1960-1970 when many people were killed.
He noted that the use of arms would never achieve the desired success because it was costly and the use of arms would often meet with forceful retailiation from the government.
He said he didn’t understand why the southern separatists resorted to killing teachers and bombings without any group announcing their responsibilities and despite the fact that they have slim chance of winning.
Dr Tonnesson said that the dialogue between the separatist groups and the Thai government must be recognized by all parties concerned, including the civic society. The dialogue must also include calls for the end of the use of arms and no demand for separatism, he added.
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Caption : (from left) Dr Stein Tonnesson, Michael Culbert