Commentary by Pichaya Phataisit, MSc student of food safety
‘The bombing has been going on for more than ten years. It mainly occurs in the southern provinces of Thailand. Some say it is the work of the Muslim group that want to separate three southern provinces from the country but others say it involves a political issue: there were several explosions on one day after the constitution referendum.
The bombings themselves do not really scare me: my family and I live in Bangkok which is quite far from the bombings. However I am afraid that they will not stop very soon since I do not see a solution and the bombings are already very aggressive.
I have some Thai Muslim friends and none of them want to see the Southern provinces separated. So I think the Southern Muslim group are just extremists whose actions don’t do any good to the country or their religion. Violence and injuring or killing innocent people is not the way to solve a problem at all. The same goes for the political issue.
Right now we have a military government, which is not a good thing in my opinion. Before that there was a lot of anti-government protest. The military intervention helped to reduce the number of acts of violence but I think protest is necessary in the process of developing a democracy. So I do not agree with the intervention of our military. I think the military has governed the country for too long. If they keep carrying out coups we will never be a real democratic country.’