PATTANI, Thailand, Jul 5 (IPS) - Rohana Samu is among the fortunate. She is glad to have steady work for the past four years no matter how monotonous her job is -- working an eight-hour shift daily in a frigid room, cleaning fish.

It is a view shared by other Malay-Muslims who, like the 32-year-old Rohana, spend a similar stretch in a large, sealed-off room preparing fresh fish like sardine, threadfin bream and lizardfish for one of this southern province's fish processing companies.

The products from the company Rohana works at are shipped to foreign markets such as Japan. They range from thick slabs of minced fish, which are served fried or blended in noodle soup, to canned fish in a range of sauces, including tomato.

But the sense of job security that Rohana and other women employed in Pattani's fisheries industry have is not a common sentiment shared across this southern Thai province. Many other economic sectors have taken a beating due to an unfolding insurgency that has plagued Pattani and its neighbouring provinces of Yala and Narathiwat since January 2004.

In late March, the Thai government revealed that 108 factories had closed over the past four years in the three southern provinces near the Malaysian border. Other indicators are as troubling in a region with a predominantly Malay-Muslim population, Buddhist Thailand's largest minority. The three provinces are among the poorest, the government stated, with economic growth averaging 1.8 percent annually, as against the 4.3 percent annual growth rates in the entire south.

Yet one would not get that sense when talking to Naiyana Saengprajong, chief of sales and export at Chaicharoen Marine Co., Ltd, one of the pillars of this province's fisheries industry.

"Our production line has not been affected by the conflict," she said in an interview. "We still export 60 percent of our products to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the U.S."

Pattani's governor feels likewise of the fishing sector in this province, which faces the Gulf of Thailand. "The economy of Pattani averages 26 billion baht (777 million U.S. dollars) a year, of which the fisheries sector accounts for 33 percent," Panu Uthairat, the governor, told journalists. "There are 17 fishing factories in operation."

"The fishing industry is very important for us; it is one of the major economies in the province," he adds of the sector that is fed by over 700 fishing trawlers and commercial boats and smaller boats operated by some 20,000 households.

If anything, the problems the fishing sector has faced in recent years is one that is shared globally -- the rapid spike in the price of oil and a drop in the regular catch of fish in nearby waters and in the seas beyond the Gulf.

"The increase in oil prices has meant more boats staying in the port than going out to sea," Wasan Sriwatana, director of the Pattani fisheries provincial office, told IPS. "Overfishing in the previous years has also seen a drop in the catch."

When the seas seemed abundant -- with some Thai trawlers going as far as Indonesia to fish -- the monthly catch brought into Pattani ranged from 10,000 to 13,000 tonnes of fish, the fisheries office records reveal. But it has halved since then, with only 5,000 tonnes of fish brought in by the boats every month to feed the fish industry's production line.

The fishing sector's ability to survive largely unscathed in the violence-scarred south stems from a mix of circumstances, says Srisompop Chitpiromsri, a political science lecturer at the Prince of Songkhla University, in Pattani. "Most of the fishing activity takes place in urban areas and near villages where there are strong local leaders who work with civil society groups when there are problems."

"And with one exception, the militants have not targeted boats going out to sea," Srisompop, who is also the editor of Deep South Watch, a group monitoring the conflict, told IPS. "In early 2007 there was one attack, where the militants burnt some boats and a fisheries office. That was due to a conflict with a local community leader."

By contrast, he says, people working in the remote rubber plantations and paddy fields in Narathiwat and Yala have been attacked since the current conflict between government troops and Malay-Muslim insurgents exploded. "The rubber plantations and rice fields are close to villages where the militants go for their recruits or near the mountains covered with forests that they use as part of their operations," Srisompop said.

The rubber plantations have been the worst hit, Col. Acra Tiproche, the army spokesman, confirmed to IPS. "We have to deploy troops to clear the plantations before the rubber tappers go out. Many of them have been attacked since they have to go before sunrise to tap the trees for the latex."

The current conflict is the latest in a cycle of violence going back decades. An earlier generation of Malay-Muslim rebels fought Thai troops in an effort to carve out a separate Malay-Muslim state that included Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. These three provinces had once been part of the Malay-Muslim kingdom of Pattani before they were annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.

The grievances that gave rise to the earlier conflict -- such as cultural discrimination, suppression of the Malay-Muslim's language, Yawi, and limited economic opportunities -- still prevail. So, too, the heavy-handed manner in which the Thai state and its troops treat the locals.

The current conflict has claimed over 3,000 lives since January 2004, with majority of the victims being the Malay-Muslims. In 2007, alone, there were over 2,600 attacks, a dramatic spike from the over 1,300 that had been recorded in the first year of the violence.

Rohana, a resident of Pattani, is aware of the troubled terrain she has to cover when going for work. She is always on guard for possible attacks when she leaves her home. "We can never say when it will happen, but I have to work to support my family," she says. "I am glad that this conflict has not affected my job."

(END/2008)

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