“When people here say it’s business as usual, nothing has changed, they mean people still get killed and bombs continue to explode every day…”

A senior Buddhist monk made this off-the-cuff comment in a radio programme all the way from the southernmost district of Sugei Golok on the first day of Buddhist Lent last week.

A day earlier, I heard a veteran teacher in Pattani tell another radio programme:

“Not a day passes without people here being killed or maimed by violence from the insurgents… it’s the kind of norm that is not acceptable.”

Read more: The Nation