Is this fence thing something that's catching?
Thailand will build security fences along part of its 650-km border with Malaysia to try to stop militant Muslims escaping after attacking Thai forces, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Tuesday.
| He's making the assumption the real culprits are from Malaysia, which could be so... |
The army would build the fences across suspected escape routes used by militants in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s largely Muslim south, where a new wave of violence began last month when gunmen raided an army base, he said. "We will focus on areas with cross-border smuggling problems which are not too many. We don’t have to build fences all along the entire 600-km border," Thaksin told reporters in Bangkok.
Thaksin has said the government would pour money into the south, focusing on economic development in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces near the Malaysian border, where a low-key separatist insurgency was fought in the 1970s and 1980s. "I will spend about three years making them places for tourism, investments and jobs," Thaksin said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. "People will also have better education." |