Deep South emergency decree extended 3 months

After a recent car bombing of police apartments in the Deep South province of Narathiwat, the Emergency Situation Administration Committee decided to extend the state of emergency decree in the troubled Southern provinces. The extension means that the current state of emergency will not end on December 20 as scheduled, but will instead continue until March 19 at the earliest.

The emergency decree applies to three provinces in the Deep South: Narathiwat, Pattani, and Yala, where there have been outbreaks of violence and insurgency. The decision was made to extend the state of emergency for another three months to allow security authorities to have faster and broader powers in dealing with any of the violent incidents that occur in the region.

The new resolution does not broaden the affected areas, nor does it exempt more districts than the previous emergency decree. Thai PBS World reports that, in Yala, the districts of Betong and Kabang are exempted. Likewise, Yaring, Mai Kaen, and Mae Lan districts do not fall under the emergency decree while the rest of Pattani does. And in Narathiwat, the site of the recent police bombing, Si Sakhon and Su-Ngai Kolok districts have escaped the state of emergency extension.

The emergency committee is chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan. While he approved the emergency decree, he made special mention to ask that everyone enforcing it exercise extreme caution. While the government desires a swift crackdown on violence, he insisted there must be no violations of human rights.

Prawit tasked the Internal Security Operations Command with carrying out the decree humanely. He also asked them to examine other areas throughout the Deep South to see if more districts could be safely exempted from the decree at a later date.

Meanwhile, in Narathiwat, the search continues for a woman seen driving through a police checkpoint in the Lamphu sub-district in the pickup truck that was later used to bomb the police apartments in the Mueang district. There, 36 people, mostly the families of police officers, were injured in the bombing and one police officer was killed.