Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-cha welcomed the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamad, at the government house in Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday, October 24, 2018. The Malaysian PM began a 2-day visit to Thailand on Wednesday during where he is actually expected to discuss regarding the peace talks in southern border provinces with Thailand’s PM, where a Muslim separatist’s active revolt has been blazing since a decade. Over the decade, Malaysia has been acting like a peace promoter between the rebel groups as well as the Thai government, but so far not more progress has been achieved out of it. Nearly 7,000 people have died in the 2004 insurgency.
This border violence would be explained by the truth that most of the residents in the region are identified as Malay Muslims and the residents of Thailand as predominantly Buddhists.
As for the Thai Prime Minister, he said that he and Mahathir were discussing the wave of conflict which has been going on for the past 14 years in Thailand’s southern border provinces and agreed on total cooperation. And the cooperation meaning not only about the reoccurring issue but also expanded to other areas such as economic development and measures to tackle, handle border security issues, particularly in extremism, transnational crime such as narcotic drugs, human trafficking and countering terrorism.
On Tuesday, the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the visit of PM is expected to add motion to the southern Thailand peace process. While the PM said, he has an extreme belief that on working together toward will be effective in solving the problem.
As of now, both Thailand and Malaysia have each appointed their facilitators for the talks. Both the charges are said to be high-ranking security officials having a clear knowledge of both the issue and the in-country problems because of the issue.
After this, Mahathir is planning to meet with the president of Thailand’s Privy Council with business people and Malaysian expatriates on Thursday.
