Portal:Thailand/Selected article/January 2007
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The South Thailand insurgency is a separatist campaign which took place in the Pattani region, the three southernmost provinces of Thailand, with violence increasingly spilling over into neighboring provinces and threatening to extend up to the national capital in Bangkok. A long series of conflicts has resulted in over 2,500 deaths in the past decade, with more than 2,300 occurring since an escalation of violence in January of 2004.
In July 2005 Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra assumed wide-ranging emergency powers to deal with the insurgency. In September 2006, Army Commander Sonthi Boonyaratkalin was granted extraordinary increase in executive powers to combat the unrest. On September 19, Sonthi and the Thai military seized power from Thaksin. Despite reconciliatory gestures from the junta, the insurgency continued.
