Thailand, Malaysia plan border wall

[ahojunk]

Thailand, Malaysia plan border wall
8 Sep 2016 at 19:21
Reuters

A border pass in Sadao district, Songkhla province. (Bangkok Post photo)

VIENTIANE - Thailand and Malaysia will discuss plans to build a wall along their shared border, Thai officials said on Thursday, a day before Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is set to meet his counterpart in Bangkok.

Human trafficking and the smuggling of drugs and weapons are among the transnational crimes that have flourished along the 640km Thai-Malay border, until a crackdown by Thailand last year disrupted regional trafficking routes.

Mr Najib is to meet Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on an official visit that will focus on security cooperation and investment.

The wall is on the agenda for the meeting, said a Thai foreign ministry official.

"It will be on the agenda during Najib's visit, but it will not be the biggest item on the agenda," foreign ministry spokesman Chinawut Setawat told Reuters at a regional meeting in Vientiane.

"It is still at the memorandum of understanding phase," said Colonel Yutthanam Petchmuang, a spokesman for Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command.

Malaysia's foreign ministry did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

Mr Najib's visit follows three deadly bomb attacks in southern Thailand over the past month, including a wave of bombs in tourist towns in August that Thai police have linked to Muslim separatists operating in the country's south.

The porous Thai-Malay border has also been a site for the smuggling of weapons, drugs and illegal oil. After taking power in a May 2014 coup, Thailand's junta promised what it called a "zero tolerance" policy of human trafficking and launched a nationwide crackdown on vice and crime.

In January 2004, a shadowy separatist insurgency by ethnic Malays resurfaced in Thailand, after simmering for decades. Since then, 6,500 people have been killed, says Deep South Watch, a body that monitors the violence.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat were once part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate until they were annexed by Thailand in 1909.

Two issues in particular have spurred the interest of Malaysia and Thailand in building a border wall, said Srisompop Jitpiromsri, director of Deep South Watch.

"The first is to stop the flow of illegal goods, whether it is petrol, drugs or human trafficking," he told Reuters.

"The second reason is that insurgents operating in Thailand regularly cross the border and use Malaysia as a safety base."

Yet it remains unclear how far the wall will reduce crime.

"There are still many logistical issues to address before building the wall," Mr Srisompop said. "It's a tremendously long area."

 

[ahojunk]

SEP 11, 2016 @ 10:30 PM
Who Will Bang Their Heads If Malaysia And Thailand Build A Border Wall
Ralph Jennings, CONTRIBUTOR
I cover under-reported stories from Taiwan and Asia.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Prime ministers from Malaysia and Thailand have started to discuss building a wall along their land border to control rebels that have vexed Bangkok for decades. Thai junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak broached the topic last week at an annual consultation, leaving doors open to more talks. Border walls and other fortifications are nothing new. Eastern European countries are working on theirs to stem migration from Syria. The United States and Mexico have fortified much of the 3,141 km (1,951 miles) between them to discourage illegal northbound immigration. A wall can feasibly be done. But it’s unclear how many people would bang their heads against a wall along the 640 km-long Thai-Malaysia border.

Members of a bomb squad inspect the site of a motocycle blast in front of a school by suspected separatist militants in the Takbai district of Thailand’s restive southern province of Narathiwat on September 6, 2016. (MADAREE TOHLALA/AFP/Getty Images)

A well-guarded wall would make it easier to quell the violent Muslim-backed insurgency in southern Thailand. Separatists in four southern provinces had killed 6,500 people and injured 12,000 over the decade to 2015, according to figures in the Bangkok Post. The border matters because militants in one elusive group called Runda Kumpulan Kecil flee to Malaysia after bombings, arson and murders in Thailand, according to the Terrorism Monitor. Since 2004, Thai authorities have “continually alleged that militants have crossed over into Malaysia after conducting attacks,” the Monitor’s 2007 report says.

These types would find it harder to sneak over the notoriously porous land border as they do now and instead line up at approved checkpoints with everyone else. Thailand may be asked to pay for most of the wall as it benefits them more, says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “Such a wall would allow authorities on both sides to better manage and control migration flows,” he says. “Thailand would have more interest in having such a wall to manage its southern insurgency and therefore may be expected to foot much of the bill.”

If the two sides can work out the bill, their wall would also stop a certain amount of border trade in oils and rubber, analysts say. Malaysia is Thailand’s biggest trading partner, with exports and imports worth $22 billion per year, according to online resources directory ThaiWebsites.com. But most of that trade passes through legal channels that would not be hindered by a wall.

A wall might stop no one.

The Great Wall of China worked only until the 13th century when Mongols reportedly bribed a sentry to pass it. Thailand and Malaysia enforce sea borders on either side of their land border near the Indochinese peninsula’s isthmus, as well, and no one’s talking about a wall there. “Migrants would still find alternative outlets by sea and through corruption, loopholes and border trade along the wall,” Pongsudhirak says. “The ultimate efficacy of such a wall is doubtful.”

Thailand’s junta leader, also prime minister, may be talking up the wall to raise popularity for recently renewed talks with the insurgents, whose previous governments have been unable to deter since rebels took root in 1948.

“One needs to note that the porousness of the Thai border is on the mind of the Thai dictator largely because renewed talks on Thailand southern insurgency have just begun, and the dictatorship is prone to see illicit border crossings from Malaysia as a major factor in the insurgency,” says Michael Montesano, visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “This is a way to distract the public from the long-term failure of its own counter-insurgency tactics and from the social and political issues that feed the insurgency.”

 

[Jlaw]

It's a good idea. some malay locals become terrorists because it's the easy way out if one is lazy.

 

[AndrewJin]

The walls are spreading around the globe....
Hope when finished, can become a popular scenic site like in China.

 

[ahojunk]

@AndrewJin ,

Don't get carried away.

The wall is more like a fence.

Building a wall like the Great Wall would cost too much money and is not needed.

 

[Anjo]

Lets get Trump in on this and somehow have Mexico pay for it.

One a more serious note, surely "walls" are bit outdated now in the sense of how they want to use it right? Wouldn't it be more effective(and cheaper) to have a higher military presence on the border?