YALA – Having set ablaze the last remaining school in the deep south last week, militants have spent the entire New Year’s holiday at home with no schools to raze, a situation they have found increasingly frustrating.
One militant told NTN the lack of schools to torch had completely ruined his New Year. “I even went back to the charred frame of a school down the road and tried for hours to get it lit again.”
A 42-year-old militant from neighboring Pattani, who has razed more than 32 schools in 25 years, said he spent the holidays setting off fireworks with his kids. “It was fun. But it would have been more fun if I could have fired them into their school.”
“Unfortunately I burned it down last month,” he added.
A separatist leader, who blames Bangkok authorities for neglecting the three southernmost provinces, has demanded that “the government must either build new schools or immediately repair and reopen the schools we have already torched so we can burn them down again.”
Militants are furious at the government’s lack of progress. Standing beside two full canisters of gasoline and waving a book of matches, one exclaimed: “This is ridiculous. We have been burning down schools for decades and have never run out. This is the most incompetent government ever, ever!”
Not all the southern separatists are so frustrated. A militant from Narathiwat said he spent December 31 with friends staring into a bonfire and sentimentally recalling all the schools they had torched that year. On the current state of affairs, he said wistfully: “These schools come and go. You just have to be patient man. They’ll be back and so will we to burn them down again.”
