Thai workers in Malaysia funding insurgents
A Thai diplomat in a northern Malaysian state has said his countrymen working in Malaysia are funding insurgents in Thailand’s restive southern provinces, according to a report Friday.
Thai consul general Surapon Petch-Vra, who is based in Kelantan state, told the New Straits Times newspaper Thai workers have been sending back money to groups involved in the violence in the country’s south which flared up six years ago.
The southern region was once an autonomous Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension that flared up into the present insurgency.
“Admittedly, a few of our citizens who are earning an income in Malaysia are sending their money to certain perpetrators of violence,” he was quoted as telling the paper.
