Yuan banknote and conflict in Thailand South

No, I am not saying China plays some significant role in Thailand’s deep south or re-emerging of Communist Party of Malaya to orchestrate violence in the predominantly Muslim region. Only Thai intelligence community can imagine such thing. But looking at the Chinese paper currency, the renminbi (RMB) reminds me about language in the context of conflict between state and ethnic groups. It recalled what the now defunct National Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation to use Malay as a working language in the deep south. The idea was rejected by General Prem Tinsulanonda, the god father of the military junta. The violence in the deep south is going on and even worst after the September coup last year.

If notice, we will see five different scripts at the back side of the RMB banknote at the right corner in Chinese [written in Romanized script] it says “Zhongguo Renmin Yinhang” and other four scripts; Uyghur, Mongolian, Tibetan and Zhuang for minorities in China. As academic Arienne M Dwyer from East-West Center put it “the presence of these four minority-script phases illustrates that relation of writing to high language prestige in China.”

 China also has conflict with Islamic-ethnic minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region which Uyghur nationalists call it “East Turkistan” or “Uyghuristan” in west part of the communist ruled country. The region shares one-sixth the huge country with more than one percent of Chinese population or some 18 millions. China, since the ancient time through the modern communist regime, wants to maintain its hold of Xinjiang and don’t want to see it develops into something like Tibet or Taiwan.

China claims Xinjiang and the Uyghurs have been part of China since ancient times, dating back to the first century BC but Uyghur aspirations to be independence never disappears. Uprising against communist ruling has erupted time to time in recent history between 1980s and 1990s. Nonetheless, there has not been hot conflict in Xinjiang like those in Palestine, Chechnya, Aceh, Mindanao and Southern Thailand.

China knows very well that the solution to ethnic conflict would include linguistic and cultural autonomy for major ethnic groups. Language policy in border regions responds to local condition and as professor Dwyer cites in her study on the Xingjiang Conflict the policy is one of the most flexible in the world.

However, in order to build “one China”, such policy has been changed nearly two decades ago and thus multilingualism and cultural pluralism were replaced by monolingual and monoculture. Beijing has shifted from cultural accommodation to a policy of assimilation.

Of course, minority languages still exist in their respective region and these scripts in small RMB banknotes remain but Beijing has a covert policy of monolingualism through education reform conducting classes, except on language subjects, in standard Chinese.

This policy shift served only to reinforce of both Uyghur nationalism and small separatist movements. A series of violence in Xinjiang drew international attention since April 1990 when an uprising attacked local government office and police. A number of violence including bus bombings took place since then in 1992 and 1997.

 The Xinjiang story is not a lesson for Thai elites and officials who are struggling to contain violence in the predominantly Muslim region. They put a lot of effort to assimilate the Muslim Malayu in the deep south by employing their Thai nationalism ideology to overrule local nationalism. The method is a counterproductive. The Thai nationalism fails to take superior over the Malayu. They clash and produce violence, instead.

The military-installed government has a strong faith in military means to suppress the militants. The authorities claim the on-going massive arrest to being down more than 350 suspected militants is a big achievement to restore peace. But violence continues and the military never tackles cause root of the problems.  

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

Pattani