loading . . . Beyond the violence: how Deep South locals transform conflict through social innovation Beyond the violence: how Deep South locals transform conflict through social innovation
Violent incidents have recently reappeared in the Southern Border Provinces, as the peace negotiations stall amid criticism of the lack of clear direction from a government coalition made unstable by the political turmoil in Bangkok.
Several incidents have occurred just since the latter half of last month. In Pattani, there was a case of arson, the discovery of several suspected objects, and a bombing at a Red Cross Fair. In Narathiwat, there was an attempted bombing targeting police and an attack on rangers, and a number of pipe bombs were found. In Yala, a soldier and a police officer were murdered.
The threat of violence also spilled over to nearby provinces. Attack drones were found in Songkhla. Suspected objects were found in Krabi, Phuket and Phang Nga, raising concerns about an increase of insurgent activities compared to last year. Over the past 21 years, there have been 23,000 incidents, 7,704 deaths, and 14,547 injuries, according to a report in May.
However, behind the veil of violence lie culturally rich towns and cities, where locals are leveraging their heritage to create social innovations, as discovered in the correspondent’s visit to Pattani and Narathiwat on 19-25 June. These efforts not only have the potential to improve livelihoods, but also transform the conflict, and hopefully shift more resources toward peace.
De'Lapae Art Space (Photo by Kausar)
De'Lapae Art Space: Art for Peace
Founded by Asst Prof Keeta Isran and Dr Pratch Pimarnman, artists and lecturers at the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Prince of Songkla University, the De'Lapae Art Space located in Bang Nara, Narathiwat Province, serves not only as a contemporary art space, but also houses the D’Art Cafe & Coffee Lab.
The De'Lapae Art Space has no connection to France, despite its French-sounding prefix ‘De’. La’pae comes from a Malay word meaning eight, a symbol of infinity, and also echoes lapan, which means vast space.
It offers an alternative path to peace, using art as a medium to foster understanding among stakeholders. In doing so, it encourages all parties to participate in dialogue, rather than leaving conflict resolution solely in the hands of political leaders.
Lina, the exhibition guide, said De'Lapae Art Space features new works mostly by Malay artists two to three times a year. Visitors tend to come in greater numbers during the opening period of each exhibition, including teachers, students, members of the public, and even military and police officers.
The current exhibition is titled Musim Berbunga (Season of Blossoms) by Abdulhakim Yusof, running from June 1 to August 31. Upon entering the gallery, visitors will find architectural designs alongside floral patterns distinctive of Malay culture.
An example from the Musim Berbunga exhibition, 20 June 2025 (Photo by Anisa)
In addition to showcasing local artists, the De’Lapae Art Space curates major exhibitions in Bangkok, hosts foreign artist residencies in Narathiwat, and runs community programmes, from children’s art workshops to clothing drives for flood victims.
A frequent collaborator of the De’Lapae Art Space is P.ART.Y Gallery Pattani, founded by Dr Pratch Pimarnman, Asst Prof Dr Anchana Nangkala, and Lecturer Nattapon Pichairat who, like De’Lapae’s founders, are also from Prince of Songkla University.
The project’s name comes from combining the letter P for Pattani, ART for art, and Y representing Generation Y, the age group of the founders. It involves designing and renovating an old, unused warehouse into an art exhibition space and café.
P.ART.Y Gallery Pattani has had the opportunity to welcome notable guests such as the U.S. Ambassador and former senators. Currently, the gallery showcases a variety of traditional patterned textiles and offers souvenirs for visitors.
The coffee at both the D’Art Cafe & Coffee Lab and P.ART.Y Gallery Pattani is excellent, thanks to Prach, a certified Arabica Q Grader. Both venues serve specialty beans, including Liberica from Malaysia and Arabica from Yemen, which are now hard to find in Thailand.
P.ART.Y Gallery Pattani’s souvenir corner, 22 June 2025 (Photo by Anisa)
More than a café
In Yaring District, Pattani Province, a coffee shop is located along Highway AH18, near Yaring Hospital and the Yaring Municipal Stadium. The land where the shop stands once belonged to the grandparents of Sayyid Hadri Al-Idrus.
After graduating, Sayyid planned to start a barramundi fish business back home, but market fluctuations and an influx of Malaysian barramundi led him to launch a coffee business with his younger brother instead.
Lyft, named in honour of Sayyid’s late older brother and co-founder, has been operating for over two years. The idea to open the coffee shop originally came from their sister, and Sayyid agreed it had potential.
“I feel the view is very good. When the breeze hits your face or something like that, I feel that, wow, I like it. There ought to be others like us who like it. So I thought about it.” Sayyid said and laughed, recalling his experience while still tending barramundi on the land at that time.
Lyft, 21 June 2025, courtesy from the locality.
“There have actually been explosions in many places, but they still haven’t affected us,” Sayyid said about the insurgency’s impact on the shop. ”I mean, the issue of numbers has always stayed the same. Whether it explodes near or far, it hasn’t yet had an impact.”
“The local people are probably used to things like this by now. Just recently, when there was a bombing at all-night market, right after the explosion, the very next day, people were already back setting up their stalls. ... The vendors kept selling, but with fewer of them.”
Sayyid suspects other business owners have likely felt the impact of the insurgency to varying degrees. However, he views climate change as the biggest challenge, affecting customers’ income, spending habits, and their ability to visit his shop.
“The only thing I’m afraid of is that the weather is not the same as before. It’s not like it used to be. Before, the rain would come punctually. When I was raising fish, we could calculate that during this month, then it would be like this. We could plan. But now, the rain comes and it floods. It’s just not the same, as far as I feel.”
Lyft continues to thrive. Sayyid plans to strengthen the shop’s social media presence, and an adjacent space is under construction to offer new food items alongside the coffee and beverages currently served.
Sayyid Hadri Al-Idrus, 21 June 2025. (Photo by Anisa.)
He also wants to provide a social service by putting up a bulletin board for job postings, such as lawn trimming, woodcutting, or tutoring, serving as a connection point between service providers and those seeking help.
In the future, Sayyid plans to launch a social enterprise project. In the southern border provinces, he observes that during the Qurban ritual, the meat is often given to acquaintances, who are mostly already well-off.
“We practice sacrificial slaughter and eat the sacrifice, sometimes we eat it just to finish it off, but we feel there are still vulnerable groups who should have access to meat throughout the year,” said Sayyid. “There are many more like that, people who say they have no electricity to use. Some families live on 70 baht with 7 or 8 members.
“Recently, I also performed a sacrificial slaughter and distributed the meat for villagers to manage. But even when we do that, the refrigerators of the villagers are limited in some households. Kept in the fridge, it might only last about 2 to 3 months.”
To address the issue, Sayyid wants to establish a meat bank consisting of a frozen storage system, distribution system, and a communication channel linking donors and recipients. The initiative would not only reduce food waste and support vulnerable groups but also create opportunities to attract investors.
In many countries, legal restrictions on the Qurban ritual have prompted Muslims to seek alternative sources. With meat being more affordable in Thailand’s southern border provinces, Sayyid sees an opportunity to meet this demand.
Although the project may appear ambitious, Sayyid has run the numbers and found it to be less costly than expected, especially compared to projects managed by Local Administrative Organizations, whose autonomy is still constrained by the central government in Bangkok.
“Nowadays, I feel that politicians specifically spend money. Like the local politicians, I feel that it doesn’t achieve much. For example, it is spent on making roads which already exist, but they just keep doing it. Actually, with just a budget of one million baht, we could manage to set up a meat bank and provide for many more people in need like this,” Sayyid said.
Enliven Narathiwat
Mubarad ‘Ya’ Salaeh is a poet, photographer, and musician. At just 28, Mubarak was nominated for the S.E.A. Write Award. He has published four books, each varying in rarity. His latest collection, Nothing Follows its Season, is published by SM-Thai Publishing House, and is fondly described as ‘Yellow Power Ranger’ due to its bright cover.
After the search for soul led him to a psychiatric hospital his in youth, Mubarad now dedicates his life to his family and his children, whom he likens to “flowers.” Having squeezed out creative output in the past, Mubarad now embraces slow mornings and allows his poems to unfold gradually, drawing inspiration from the shifting moods of each day.
As a multi-passionate creative, Mubarad founded Southern Coffee in Bang Naka Subdistrict, Mueang District, Narathiwat Province. “I didn’t want to create it to be a coffee shop but I wanted to create it to be a public library, or I intended it to be an intellectual centre,” he said. The shop offers many literary works to browse, such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Mubarad Salaeh (right), Nuriya Waji (centre), and the author (left), 23 June 2025. (Photo by Anisa.)
Lately, he has been focusing on the Bang Nara Estuary: “Bang Nara” is derived from the historical name of Narathiwat, while estuary refers to the region’s fertile river plains. It is an art platform open to all, created to foster learning and enliven his hometown.
“In who we are, it’s more organic. … Everyone in our network is in business such as coffee shops, restaurants. Everyone has their own profession. Everyone has their own money. But everyone has the common ground of their passion for what we like.
“And what do we get from this? It’s the platform for young people. You want to sing, you want to take photos, you want do draw, you can do everything. Recently, we just held a sketch drawing event. … We don’t want to have money involved. We want everyone to get it because this isn’t Bangkok. It’s not a big city.”
Mubarad said everything has gone smoothly and he prefers organizing activities independently. “Right now, the government doesn’t keep watch or anything because we just organize fun and organic events. There’s no disrespecting each other. There’s no promotion. There’re no sponsors.”
When asked about the artistic identity of Narathiwat, he explained, “This place has the problem of incidents, the problem of geography, the problem of conflicts, and the problem of religion. People here have themselves many issues to tackle. But the true identity, the identity here is the rice salad, but few people tackle that. Most tackle themes of insecurity.
“As for the other issues, they don’t really talk about them, and there are many. So, I ... want to be the bright side. Yes, I try to talk about beauty, talk about preservation. Not very much has been preserved but at least it lets you know that this place has these things.”
The southern border provinces are often perceived as unsafe. Yet they are also vibrant hubs of social innovation and artistic richness, with immense potential for growth and peace. Perhaps transforming the conflict begins with looking beyond the dominant narrative.
“We’re starting to get tired of it,” Mubarad responded when asked about the contrast between security checkpoints, barbed wire, and concrete blast barriers on one hand, and the beautiful cities on the other.
“It’s normal for everyone to ask questions. But when people come here themselves, it breaks down the images in their minds. That’s okay, it’s already a success. Just come. If you don’t come, you won’t know. That’s all there is to it. We can tell them. They still won’t believe it. They just can’t imagine it. That’s not their fault.”
Barbed wire is a common sight along roads in the southern border provinces. (Photo by Anisa)
Nuriya Waji: The Challenges of a Female Artist
Nuriya ‘Junee’ Waji is an artist from Sai Buri District in Pattani and the wife of Mubarad. Her work has been featured in major exhibitions, including Muslimah: The Way of Women at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in 2017, and her 2019 solo show Fade Away at YuYuan Art & Antique in Lhong 1919.
Images of Life, her master’s thesis at Silpakorn University, showcases her artistic identity: she interviewed people affected by the unrest in the Deep South and incorporated their clothing into her work to tell the story of her community.
“That shirt is the only one left. The reason he still has it is because he wore it that day.” said Nuriya about the case of Pittaya Janthasap, who was affected by a bomb explosion in front of his house on 21 September 2012 and whose family ran a car repair service. “His house was completely burned down because it was the day he took gasoline into the house. It then became the fuel to burn the house down.”
“I stretched the shirt as much as possible. I wanted to reflect that he was an innocent person. When you open it up, tear it apart, there’s nothing inside, it’s empty.”
“I stitched it exactly by the medical method. I learned from medical professionals how to stitch. Then, I dyed it to express the cleansing of those stories for them before mounting it on a frame.”
Her work was exhibited at the Bangkok Art Biennale. After that, she went to Indonesia as an artist-in-residence, where she interviewed local elders and created another piece about prisoners of war during the Dutch invasion.
“It’s sad,” Nuriya said with a trembling voice. “Most of my work has been around the issue of events. Lately, I’ve started to break myself out of these problems.”
“When I met Mubarad, he tried to tell me that if we still talk about the events and it doesn’t change anything, we should choose to fight in other ways. Sometimes these issues are drummed into us too. It’s down, it’s dark, especially for us women with the status of mothers and hormones of these kinds. So I’m taking a break from these topics for now.”
Although her work has helped people in the southern border provinces to open up about the emotional impact of the events and to care more for one another’s feelings, being an artist in the three provinces still comes with many challenges.
“For example, I draw people. Even if it’s our problems, there are questions raised about a Muslim drawing people. According to the religious principles or the knowledge of the people in the area, they’ll forbid drawing people or forbid drawing animals. But I didn’t see the restrictions there,” she explained.
“I talk more about my intentions, why I convey this. I don’t want people to come and worship. But when I was studying, many questions like this are put to us.”
“For me, I feel the interpretation is incomplete when they say that religion forbids drawing people. There are certain things in the area where they set restrictions on their own. There are certain things that Muslims worldwide do differently.”
Being a female artist also comes with the challenge of work-life balance.
“I have to divide my time, one part for my child, another part as a wife to my husband.
“Because I’m a Muslim who believes in the scripture. It’s like a handbook which tells us that we must follow the teachings and how to live with our likes. I love my work, but I have to do these duties. How can we do both?
“When I was studying, the professors often said that being a female artist will be more difficult than being a male artist. … I see it as a good thing. Maybe it doesn’t make us so focused that we forget our family. Or if one day we are successful, where are the people behind us? That’s scary too.”
From 17 July to 10 October, Nuriya is exhibiting her work at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre under the theme Local Myths: The Intrinsic Aesthetic, as part of the Local Networking Project, alongside Prach Pimarnman, Keeta Isran, and artists from other regions.
eng editor 1
Mon, 2025-07-14 - 13:36
* Feature
* Deep South
* Patani peace process http://dlvr.it/TLxxnY
