Community radio in multiethnic contexts: A fragmented public sphere?

Here, I use the concept of the public sphere as an open space that is accessible to all those who want to say something and to those who want to listen to what other people say.Footnote ⁶ Therefore, community radio, with its alleged easy access, is an appropriate means to constitute such a public sphere at the local level. From a normative standpoint, Habermas conceptualises Öffentlichkeit as a sphere of political reasoning, where, based on rational discourse, citizens form their political will and the idea of a common good can emerge.Footnote ⁷ Modern public spheres produce discourse and images that dominate perceptions of social and political life. Empirical research has shown that even under the conditions of a free press this rational discourse in modern mass media, especially radio and television, appears to be the exception rather than the rule. Arguments tend to be reduced to announcements and political statements without rational reasoning that refer to opposing opinions.Footnote ⁸ Postcolonial as well as feminist critics of Habermasian research have also illustrated that public spheres are characterised by significant processes of exclusion and inclusion with regard to income, gender, and ethnicity.Footnote ⁹

The differentiation of media, especially mass self-communication,Footnote ¹⁰ in which the users become both senders and receivers, enabled ethnic and subcultural milieus to increasingly communicate among and between each other. This tendency can be seen in the emergence of ethnic mediaFootnote ¹¹ or broadcasting outlets that concentrate on people with a low educational background. Mass media such as community radio can strongly support ethnic consciousness by facilitating the wider public use of minority languages.Footnote ¹² This pluralisation could have its downside. It could limit the development of an inclusive national political public sphere or threaten the inclusive function of an existing public sphere, if cultural and other differences and conflicts between groups are not discussed in the public sphere and the interpreters of these cultures retreat into the trenches of particularistic communication and private life.Footnote ¹³ As illustrated below, even in Thailand's community radio sector— where the logic of communication should be based on neither profit nor propaganda, but on the shared concerns of local citizens — there are tensions between these concerns, market forces, and government.

Community radio in Thailand

Community radio is a relatively new phenomenon in Southeast Asia. Although the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a rapid spread of this new form of self-mass communication in Latin America and Africa, community radio spread much slower in Asia, partly because governments were not interested in the medium.Footnote ¹⁴ In Thailand, radio is the second most popular medium behind television: 48 per cent of the urban population and 33 per cent of the rural population listen to the radio daily.Footnote ¹⁵ Based on the 1955 Radio and Television Act, all radio stations in the country were under state control and therefore primarily represented Bangkok-centred viewpoints.Footnote ¹⁶ Broadcasting also developed under the auspices of the military, which ruled Thailand with few exceptions from the 1930s up until the late 1980s, and its civilian agencies, which provided concessions and broadcasting content.

As a result of this military control, private content providers and journalists developed various forms of self-censorship. News programmes, for example, were produced by the Public Relations Department and distributed by the state-controlled Radio Station of Thailand to stations that were required to broadcast them. It was only very recently that independent news broadcasters emerged. The 1997 Constitution broke the state's monopoly on radio, establishing the right for sue phak prachachon (peoples' media): sections 39, 40, and 41 of the Constitution not only guaranteed freedom of the press, it also gave the people the right to access airwaves and demanded the establishment of an independent public regulatory body.Footnote ¹⁷

This significant change in Thailand's media sector was partly the result of a media reform movement that emerged after the so-called Black May events in 1992, during which the massive use of military force against pro-democracy demonstrators led to the death of at least 52 people. After the event, scholars and nongovernmental organisations heavily criticised the state's five television channels for following government censorship orders while reporting on the demonstrations. Throughout the first half of the 1990s, a movement of scholars and nongovernmental activists demanded the diversification of Thai media and an end to state control. These demands were reflected in the 1997 Constitution, which, however, did not codify frequency allocation, but stipulated that a law on this had to be drafted within three years.

The drafting the new law on frequency allocation took place in the face of strong lobbying from NGOs, businesses, and government officials. The former demanded a business-friendly law that would support the idea of a free media market, whereas the latter asked for a continuation of state control under the notion of ‘national security’.Footnote ¹⁸ Civil society groups formed the Article 40 Follow-Up Group, which continually organised public events and sent representatives of different groups like the hill tribes, farmers, and children's advocates to observe the parliamentary media bill-drafting committee in order to maintain public pressure on lawmakers.

In 2000, the Frequencies Distribution, Radio and Television Broadcasting and Telecommunication Business Supervision Agency Act was promulgated. Article 26 of the law was widely held up as a success by media advocates, as it required that 20 per cent of the airwaves be distributed to community radio and television.Footnote ¹⁹ Although Thaksin Shinawatra — prime minister from 2001 and deposed by a military coup in 2006 — tried to create a climate of fear among critical journalists by filing libel suits against them as well as by using his economic power, the era of community radio in Thailand had begun. While the pro-Thaksin Red Shirt movement currently relies on community radio for mobilisation, Thaksin himself was not keen on supporting this new type of media because of its potential independence. Yet, as Lisa Brooten and Supinya Klangnarong highlight, it was impossible for Thaksin to publicly oppose the community radio movement while he was in power due to its growing popularity and support among civil society organisations.Footnote ²⁰

Thailand's first community radio station was established in Kanchanaburi province in 2001, but there has been a dramatic increase in the number of such stations since then as radio broadcasting technology became cheaper and easier to operate. Community radio has become a popular medium for various interest groups in the country. In 2009, when public regulators asked community radio operators to apply for licences, more than 6,000 applications were submitted. There are now an estimated 6,500 to 7,000 such stations, an average of 85 to 92 in each of Thailand's 76 provinces.Footnote ²¹

The number varies from province to province, however: there are approximately 265 registered radio stations in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region alone, but only around 18 in Narathiwat province, 26 in Pattani, and 27 in Yala.Footnote ²² In addition, some community radio stations are licensed, while others operate illegally.Footnote ²³ The closure of some radio stations by the authorities was politically based: stations in Northeastern and Northern Thailand as well as parts of Bangkok have been an important element for the mobilisation of the Red Shirts.Footnote ²⁴ Since the 2006 coup, the controversial lèse-majesté law has been exploited by various military-backed governments to suppress Red Shirt-affiliated media.Footnote ²⁵

In Northeast and Northern Thailand, Thaksin's strongholds, community stations were shut down by the post-coup military government. The stations were later allowed to resume broadcasting, but only under strict conditions, such as broadcasting all government orders and announcements. In 2009 and 2010, Abhisit Vejjajiva's elected government declared a state of emergency, again increasing the political pressure on the ‘Red Shirt media’ who were openly mobilising support for Thaksin. Although this censorship largely focused on web sites, according to the secretary-general of the Campaign for Media Reform (CPMR), a Thai media rights NGO, 26 community radio stations were shut down in 2009.Footnote ²⁶ In Malay Muslim dominated Southern Thailand, however, the community radio sector has not fallen under added scrutiny since the Red Shirts are not a strong presence.

Malay Muslim media in Southern Thailand

Before the era of community radio stations, Southern Thailand and its 1.8 million Malay Muslims had for a long time no local broadcasting media, although Malays are distinguished from the ethnic Thai majority by their culture, language (Malay), and history.Footnote ²⁷ Since the formerly independent Malay Sultanate of Patani was divided between British Malaya and Siam in 1909, Thailand has, sometimes forcefully, attempted to integrate the region into the Thai nation-state and to assimilate its population. After the present-day provinces of Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani formally became part of Siam and the rest of the Malay principality of Kelantan became part of the British Empire, the central government in Bangkok systematically replaced the local elite with its own administrators. This political change also demanded the break up of local and regional ethnic identities. Bureaucrats in Bangkok have long viewed the local Malay Muslim identity as a potential threat to national integration and therefore to be replaced by Buddhist Thai identity.Footnote ²⁸ In reaction to this assimilationist policy, waves of separatist insurgencies emerged from the 1970s until the early 1990s, and again since 2004. In the South, the Thai central state, dominated by Buddhist officials, has been perceived as a corrupt foreign conqueror.Footnote ²⁹

The Thai state's nation-building project centred on the idea of cultural uniformity and included the school system as well as the media.Footnote ³⁰ Newspapers, radio, and television were dominated by the Bangkok elite, reflecting the views of the dominant Buddhist majority in the country. Bangkok did not support the development of local media until recently. Although there are Malay printing and publishing houses, which also, for example, publish literature for the Malaysian market, there were hardly any Malay-language newspapers or political magazines. Although a number of political magazines have been published from time to time, they were usually launched by influential figures or had a very limited readership.Footnote ³¹

While there are presently Malay-language Internet sites that report news on Southern Thailand, these often have a dubious background and are hardly accessible to the rural population. At the time of writing, there was still no local Malay daily. In January 2013, the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC) launched the first Malay-language television channel ‘to promote the understanding of people in the deep southern provinces of Thailand’.Footnote ³² The SBPAC channel can only be received via satellite, which limits its reach. Channel 5, Channel 11, and Thai PBS have also aired programmes in Malay, but they are not popular in the South.

This is problematic, for example, when it comes to national reporting on Southern Thailand. Malay Muslims often feel underrepresented in the Bangkok-based national media. Southern Thailand as well as other regions in the country only find themselves in the national news when something spectacular happens. The southernmost provinces usually appear in national headlines when there has been another dramatically violent incident. In the wake of such events, reporters from the national television channels typically rush to the scene of the bomb blast or assault on state security forces, take photographs, and interview some more or less well-informed officials present at the site before airing the footage. Locals are rarely given a chance to voice their views. Such biased reporting creates a misleading picture of the South as the most restless, dangerous, and chaotic region in the country, since local politics or everyday concerns rarely attract any attention.

Social mobility among the Malay Muslims themselves and the spread of Islamist ideas have not only led them to reflect on their identity in Southern Thailand, it has also led many Malays to question the legitimacy of a Thai state which considers all its peripheries rural and backward — in contrast to the exemplary centre of Bangkok, which is closely associated with Buddhism. The new Malay middle class, employed in universities, private religious schools, Islamic banks, and even the national bureaucracy, have reinterpreted Islam in a way that guarantees the good life both in the here and now and in the hereafter.Footnote ³³

In other words, while this version of Islam stresses private piety and economic success, it also makes claims on the public sphere. Here, most Malays demand public recognition of their particular religion — not a secular state — in which Muslims, Buddhists, and other religious groups in Thailand can live together. These demands include, for example, an extension of sharia law, more state subsidies for Islamic education, a halal food industry, and more government jobs for Malays in the local administration.Footnote ³⁴ Public piety, to put it differently, directly affects questions of the public sphere and thus of the media. A public sphere solely dominated by Buddhist officials and Bangkok-based media is no longer acceptable.

Local officials have been divided about community radio: some regard all cultural content that questions national culture as defined in Bangkok as a threat to the cultural unity of the nation, while others fear that community radio could be a security concern as the media could be misused by insurgents. More progressive government administrators have a more neutral attitude or even hope that community radio will bring an end to the dominance of rumours as well as the mistrust between Thai Buddhist officials and local Malays.

In 2003, Witthayu Chumchon Chut Mueang Pattani (Pattani City Point Community Radio), the first radio station in the three provinces, was established. This station was founded by Ja Ahli, Narong Maseng, and other media activists from the Klum Witthayu Chumchon Chut Mueang Pattani (Pattani City Point Community Radio Group), which was set up in the same year.Footnote ³⁵ The group later expanded and changed its name to Khrueakhai Witthayu Chumchon Changwat Chaiden Phaktai (The Three Border Provinces Community Radio Network). The group sought the assistance of the Thai Sathaban Phatthana Ongkorn Chumchon (Community Organisation Development Institute), a public agency that paid for the technical equipment to establish their radio station. Later, with the support of the Bangkok-based King Prajadhipok Institute, the group developed training workshops and manuals, introducing locals to methods of setting up and running community radio stations.

Subsequently, community radio stations were also set up in Khokpho district and Sai Buri district, Pattani province, and, in the years that followed, more stations were launched in Narathiwat and Yala provinces as well. These groups all faced a fundamental problem of funding. An estimated THB100,000–200,000 (US$3,160–6,320) is necessary for the basic broadcasting equipment, depending on the strength of the antenna (although the NBTC only permits the use of a 500-kilowatt unit with a maximum range of 20 kilometres). Monthly expenses — a minimum of THB6,000 (US$190) — adds to the difficulties associated with operating a radio station, without considering additional costs such as staff training.

Dominance of commercial interests and the middle class in broadcasting

Media literacy is considered crucial for democratic citizenship. Media studies stress that the media and public information are the foundations for a better life, social equality, and political participation.Footnote ³⁶

Access to financial and other resources as well as the necessary licensing, managerial, and journalistic knowledge is crucial for setting up and running a radio station — all of these pose certain barriers to entering the sector. Community radio in the South is dominated by institutions such as Islamic schools, mosques, and Buddhist temples as well as individuals such as businessmen or members of the middle class (e.g. teachers, lawyers, academics). A statistical survey of community radio broadcasters in five Southern provinces (Satun, Songkhla, Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat) conducted by the Prince of Songkla University illustrates this middle-class dominance. A majority of the broadcasters are tertiary-educated — 57.3 per cent have a Bachelor's degree and 13.5 per cent even have a Master's degree — while 12.5 per cent have a secondary education, and around 7.3 per cent have completed only primary school.Footnote ³⁷ Middle-class dominance of community radio is also reflected in broadcasters' occupations. A relatively large percentage of the sample, 23.4 per cent, are either teachers or university lecturers. Business persons and officials follow closely at 18.2 per cent and 17.9 per cent each. Unfortunately, the survey does not mention farmers or labourers as distinct categories.Footnote ³⁸ These numbers do, however, imply that the latter categories are underrepresented in community radio.

In other words, local communities are hardly taking responsibility for establishing, managing, and producing content for these radio stations. The monopolisation of community radio by a few people is not unique to Southern Thailand; it seems to be the case in other parts of the country, where interest in running these stations is often more commercial than socio-political. An estimated two-thirds of Thailand's community stations are commercial in orientation, run by local businessmen to advertise their own or other local companies' products and services. Allegedly, many stations are used by music and media companies to reach a grassroots audience. This can be partly attributed to the lack of regulation before 2005.Footnote ³⁹

Although Thai law forbids radio stations that are registered as community radio stations to air advertisements, many stations breach this law regularly. Some construction companies, traders, and other business people have established ‘community radio stations’ in order to promote their products or services. The NBTC is well aware of this phenomenon, but it does not have the capacity to monitor how the stations are being used. Furthermore, it is often hard to distinguish between commercially and politically-oriented community radio stations as some political activists also draw on advertising to finance their political programmes.Footnote ⁴⁰

Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, a prominent Malay intellectual and newspaper columnist for the national newspapers, argues that community radio largely fails to attract more grassroots attention due to its elitism. He points out that the decentralisation measures introduced in the 1990s, such as the elected Provincial Administrative Organisations and the Subdistrict Administrative Organisations, did not lead to the expected democratisation of local politics, but instead facilitated the domination of these institutions by corrupt local elites (e.g. construction company owners). With some exceptions, community radio broadcasters, local politicians, and local businessmen, who are often also community radio station owners, are, according to Ahmad, part of the same elite group in Southern Thailand, and have a certain level of disregard for the rural and less-educated population. Accordingly, community radio fails to play its role as a critical watchdog:

A related problem is the patronising attitude of many middle-class broadcasters, who consider the rural population to be uneducated and in need of leadership from intellectuals. As one anonymous Malay community radio activist from Yala province expressed it:

Language appears to be a crucial issue in the social distinction between broadcasters and the local community. Instead of seeing community radio as a means for the reproduction of Patani Malay, intellectuals tend to regard broadcasters who use the local dialect or an ‘unprofessional mix’ of standard (Malaysian) Malay and local Malay, as ‘uneducated’. In this elitist view, community radio does not represent a means for local communities to gather and spread their knowledge. Instead, local knowledge is connoted as being unmodern and unscientific and thus has to be replaced by the rational knowledge that the middle class acquires in universities.

However, there are exceptions to this rule of commercial and middle-class domination: stations that represent community ownership and are based on collective participation. One station in which the local community was involved from its inception in 2003 is the Taawun community radio in Moo Nueng, a village in Bangpoo subdistrict, Ampoe Muang Pattani. When Lateh Mahamah, a local NGO activist, approached the villagers and the Imam of Moo Nueng with the idea of establishing a community radio station in the village, the Imam and others initially opposed the idea, fearing that the station would attract the attention of the security forces.

It took Lateh Mahamah almost a year to convince them of the new opportunities that radio would offer and of the fact that, as it was based on the 1997 Constitution, the Thai government supported the project. Eventually, the Imam, a women's group, a group of university students from the village, and the local elementary school joined in to build the station.Footnote ⁴³ The mosque provided around THB150,000 for technical equipment, as the radio station would include regular programmes on Koran recitation, translation, and interpretation. A number of outside actors were also involved in establishing the station. For instance, Ja Ahli, a prominent media activist in Southern Thailand, initially assisted the villagers by providing training for the equipment and on the organisational structures of community radio. Staff from the Prince of Songkla University Radio support the station's technical maintenance.

As the radio is nonprofit, its staff is not compensated for their work; activists in Muuban 1 invest their own time and some of their own money in the station. Local actors such as the Imam or university students produce their own content, depending on who is available and what topic is on the agenda. The local women's group, for example, produces programmes on traditional Malay medicine or the role of women in Islam, whereas the village mosque committee is responsible for other religious content. A group of university students from the village goes on air for one hour every Saturday and Sunday, providing important information on matters of education such as on local schools, scholarship opportunities, English language camps, or other youth matters. Pupils from the local schools are also allowed to produce their own content. The district office has also joined the radio station and is allowed to make important public announcements. In other words, the existing organisations, both governmental and nongovernmental, are highly involved in the community radio station. The radio's committee also draws on the mosque and donations from the local population to finance its day to day expenses.

Fear and (self-)censorship

A central feature of Thailand's media has been the nexus between the mass media and (national) security; state censorship and self-censorship by journalists have been ever present. In 1955, the above-mentioned Radio and Television Act established the state as the sole owner and authoriser of the airwaves, thus enacting a form of ‘structural censorship’.Footnote ⁴⁴ This tight control was also legitimised by Thailand's anti-communist struggle.

In Southern Thailand, the much-criticised Emergency Decree has allowed the military to expand its operations into the civilian realm, allowing the arbitrary use and abuse of power. Legally, the Emergency Decree also allows officials to close down any community radio station, in case they threaten the ‘state's security or public order’.Footnote ⁴⁵ There have been no — or at least no known — cases where security officials closed a station for criticising the state or otherwise used physical violence against community radio broadcasters in order to intimidate them.Footnote ⁴⁶ Usually officials use softer tactics in dealing with ‘too critical’ journalists. In one reported case in 2006, soldiers visited a community radio station owner in Narathiwat and asked him to ‘choose a softer tone’ (phut bao bao) or refrain from ‘escalating the situation’ for the sake of a ‘peaceful and harmonious society’ (sangkhom santisuk).Footnote ⁴⁷

Malay community radio station broadcasters point out, for example, that local army units have visited them after they aired programmes that reported on the state's human rights violations.Footnote ⁴⁸ In terms of ‘national security’, there seems to be some insecurity among radio activists about what can be broadcast:

Other Malay broadcasters also complained in interviews that the Thai government officials do not distinguish between insurgents and non-insurgent Malays and they therefore consider local journalists as a potential security threat, as one community broadcaster explains:

These practices are perceived as forms of control — some would even argue censorship — employed by local Malay journalists who want to use community radio as a political platform. Aware of the danger of appearing too critical, they refrain from criticising the Thai state and avoid appearing ‘too political’. In a climate of fear and mistrust of a state that has a strong record of human rights violations in dealing with Malay insurgents as well as civilians in Southern Thailand, such visits are, however, well remembered and communicated among Malay community radio broadcasters. Although some Buddhist community radio broadcasters might be aware of these practices, they do not appear to be affected by them.

For their part, officials argue that they just want to restore stability in the region. The Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), a unit responsible for national security, asks local units to ‘keep an eye’ on community radio stations located in their area of command. If a radio station is suspected of airing ‘hate speech’ or calls for separation from the Thai state, soldiers have to report to the ISOC command in Pattani. According to an ISOC officer responsible for such monitoring, however, there was only one such report in 2012, about the Prince of Songkla's University Radio.Footnote ⁵¹

In March 2012, it was reported to ISOC staff that during a programme called ‘Kampong (village) on air’, Wanmahdee Wandaud, a well-known local Malay politician, played a Patani nationalist song, criticised the presence of the Thai military, and argued for a ‘Special Administrative Zone’ (khet pokkhrong phiset) in Southern Thailand. During the investigation, ISOC officials asked the PSU campus radio for a copy of the programme, which they then transcribed. Later, officials talked to the station director and asked him to avoid airing ‘separatist songs’.

Nonetheless, there is room for critical public discourse about the state. More daring Malay broadcasters turn to other means in order to scrutinise the state's policies in the South. They either use the Malay language to express critical views, which is often successful as neither the security agencies nor the NBTC can vet all content, especially when it is in Malay. Another example is Media Selatan (Southern Media), one of Pattani's best known politically-oriented community stations.Footnote ⁵² This Malay community radio produces a programme during which the audience confronts state officials with critical questions. The programme is divided into two parts. In the first part, which is primarily conducted in Malay, the host asks members of the audience to phone in and pose questions they want to ask Thai officials, without giving their full names. During the second part, Thai officials are invited and asked the phone-in questions in Thai, and given a chance to reply to them on air.

The programme's design has two advantages. First, the questioner can remain anonymous and this provides more potential that critical questions will be asked. Second, she or he poses the question in whichever language they are most comfortable with. When the author of this paper was interviewing the owner of the station, for example, a Malay woman called in and asked why Thai Buddhist officials always consider Islamic schools a source of unrest, suspecting all students and teachers of being rebels. These and other questions are written down by the host and in the following part of the programme, which might be broadcast the next day, an official, who could be from the police force, army, district authorities, or any other relevant state agency, is invited to respond.

A second illustration of how community radio enables Malays to express their resistance to the Thais is Radio Nasser in Yala province. The station is run by the Amir Al-Mu' Minin Foundation in Yala, an Islamic nonprofit organisation that seeks to care for children orphaned by the political violence. The foundation uses its own radio station to air portrayals of orphans (or half-orphans). A crucial part of these portrayals are interviews with the children themselves, in which they are asked to talk about how they lost their parents during the insurgency and how this affects their lives. Officially, the foundation makes no distinction between ethnic Malay, Thai-Chinese, or Thai Buddhist children. Therefore, on some level, these children's stories appear ethnically neutral. Nevertheless, while these stories appear, at first glance, to be legitimate expressions of the suffering of all groups in the South, at a deeper level, it reveals a disguised form of resistance against the Thai state. In reality the station only airs stories about Malay (half-) orphans, whose fathers have been allegedly killed by Thai security forces. Stories of Buddhist or Malay children orphaned by insurgent violence are deliberately omitted. Interviews with the children are conducted and aired in Malay, aiming at an emotional effect on the audience, as one producer anonymously explained:

In this sense, community radio enables more daring broadcasters to bring at least parts of what could be called a ‘hidden transcript’ among Malays into the public sphere — that the Thai state has a long history of subordinating and committing human rights violations against the Malay Muslim minority.Footnote ⁵⁴ For many Malays, the forceful subordination of the formerly semi-independent Sultanate of Patani under Thai rule in 1909 is an act of quasi-colonial oppression, something which they are not allowed to publicly mention or read about in school books. In this sense, the stories of Malay children who are victimised by the Thai state is a manifestation of suppressed collective trauma.

Questioning the legitimacy of violence is not only directed at the state, however. Other Malay community radio stations are equally critical of the violence against civilians and government officials committed by separatist insurgents. Yet, directly questioning the legitimacy of the separatists' cause and the means they choose to achieve this cause, such as daily attacks against security forces and even government schools, can itself be dangerous and is therefore mostly avoided, as it could get community radio stations, especially Malay broadcasters, in trouble. Muslim radio broadcasters are very much aware that insurgents or their informants are listening to them: publicly opposing the insurgents could be a threat to their own safety. Malays and non-Malays in Southern Thailand alike are well aware of the fact that insurgents threaten and, if necessary kill, fellow Malays who pose a threat to them.Footnote ⁵⁵ In 2006, for example, Rosmin Nijah, a female Malay radio host, was killed by insurgents after she regularly supported and cheered the Thai army on the radio. She had received warnings and was asked to stop talking in favour of the Thai army, but refused to give in to the demands.Footnote ⁵⁶

Contesting images of the state: Counterinsurgency radio

Armies around the world have long used radio for counterinsurgency purposes. In Southern Thailand, the Fourth Army Area, which has a special unit for local radio, has been trying to use radio for its counterinsurgency. Two types of counterinsurgency community radio stations are evident in the region: first, there are 23 local radio stations fully run by the Thai military in Southern Thailand, each with an approximate range of coverage of 20 to 30 kilometres; second, the army collaborates with around 40 privately-owned radio stations.Footnote ⁵⁷ In the latter case, the military approaches a community radio station and offers to buy airtime from them. Although the price varies from station to station, it costs around THB3,000 per month for three hours of airtime per week. Some stations just sell three hours; others allow army personnel to go on air up to ten hours per week. In some instances, a programme host from the military will come to the station and go on air live, while in others, the military sends written news programmes or announcements to the station and asks the local host to read them.

For some stations, especially those that are more commercially-oriented, this cooperation offers a much-needed regular income. However, a number of Malay community radio stations have rejected these offers because they fear that the military will interfere with their ‘broadcasting sovereignty’ and misuse their station for psychological operations. This, for many Malay broadcasters, would undermine their audience's trust in the station's core function as an authentic voice of the people, which ought to be independent of the state. Others subscribe to the view that open collaboration with the Thai military will lead to retaliation from insurgents, although there is no evidence that this has ever happened. The army argues that this cooperation does not enter the realm of ‘psychological warfare’, but is only intended as a public relations measure to ‘foster understanding between the people in the South and the state’.Footnote ⁵⁸ Still, many stations reject the offer or stipulate conditions for the cooperation: (1) that the military presenter does not speak about issues of religion or the insurgency; and (2) that the military is not openly supported or propagated during the programme. Being aware of its limited ability to monitor all stations, other community radio stations simply do not present all the material the ISOC sends them, leaving out news or army announcements that they consider inappropriate, particularly news that directly concerns security or propagates the achievements of the army, which is routinely omitted from programmes.Footnote ⁵⁹ As one community radio activist from Pattani, who wants to remain anonymous, reports: ‘We can't simply tell the insurgents “Stop it!”. What we can do is to report on the problems of society.’Footnote ⁶⁰

Another example of the danger that speaking out against the insurgency presents is the Thai security forces' failed attempt to win over an imam or popular Islamic scholar to discuss the question of militant jihad on radio or TV. The combined idea of Patani nationalism and jihad is central to the legitimacy of and mobilisation attempts by Malay separatists groups in Southern Thailand.Footnote ⁶¹ Therefore, Thai security forces have been trying to use this issue for their counterinsurgency campaign, largely to no avail. Many imams in Southern Thailand admit in private that the insurgent violence is illegitimate in the sense that it is not a jihad. For them, one of the main justifications of violent jihad, namely Muslims being prohibited from freely following their religion, is not the case in Southern Thailand. However, all imams who were asked by the Thai military to discuss this topic openly rejected the offer, fearing retaliation by the insurgents — whom the army could not protect them from.Footnote ⁶²

A basic problem is that the military is largely clueless about the actual impact of radio stations on the audience, as an ISOC officer admits:

Another officer from Thaksinsamphan, an army psychological warfare unit, assesses that out of the twenty-three military stations, only about ten stations are well connected to the local Malay audience and can achieve a certain impact. For him, that impact is merely the simple fact that the Malay population would have a different source of information about the Thai state that could counter rumours spread by insurgents:

Reporting on violence

A basic problem for the Southern news media is that since violence broke out in 2004 little information has been garnered about the perpetrators, as the description and the interpretation of data is impeded by a cloud of ‘nameless’ violence that renders an understanding of the actors, their organisations, and their interests difficult. Furthermore, although scholarly observers, state agencies, and the local population attempt to make sense of these violent acts, they all face the problem of uncertainty: Who are the perpetrators of violence on the ‘Malay side’? What are their motives? Are they simply the victims of harassment or the failed policies of the Thai nation-state who are responding with a bloody campaign of revenge? In contrast to the insurgencies in Northern Ireland or in Basque country, no insurgent groups claim responsibility for attacks in Southern Thailand.

In everyday conversations between Buddhists and Malay Muslims, the topics of insurgency and its causes are typically avoided, especially among women who are not considered to be involved in politics because such talks are believed to lead to personal conflicts.Footnote ⁶⁴ Thai Buddhist civilians, as well as Malay Muslim civilians who oppose the insurgency, have become major targets for Malay insurgent violence seeking to drive out the Buddhists from Southern Thailand.Footnote ⁶⁵ Malays, on the other hand, have often found themselves victims of Thai state violence. In other words, the lack of knowledge about the insurgents stands in stark contrast to knowledge about the Thai state's human rights violations, exemplified by excessive state violence in Tak Bai and Kru SeFootnote ⁶⁶ and a myriad stories about the state's abuse of power and discrimination experienced by Malay Muslims. These different perceptions between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims are reinforced by their separate languages (most Thai Buddhists cannot speak Malay), school systems (Thai government vs the Islamic educational systems), books, web sites, and online chat rooms.

News of violence is mostly transmitted by rumours communicated along ethnic lines. In contrast to news, rumours cannot be falsified; their origins or sources are typically not traceable.Footnote ⁶⁷ The lack of information about the perpetrators, their motives, and the background to the violence, both by the state and the rebels, lead to rumours as a form of ‘mass communication under conditions of a limited public sphere’.Footnote ⁶⁸ Information is highly relevant for making sense of and coping with the unpredictable violence. The lack of reliable information is hence replaced by rumours, which are built on plausibility structures that identify responsibility for and causes of the violence based on existing value systems, cognitive structures, and past experiences.

As a consequence of the lack of a local public sphere, contradictory explanations of violence are not pitted against each other, which would provide opposing versions of the violence and thereby counter the rumours. This is coupled with the fact that very few local Malay Muslims express their opinions publicly on national TV, radio, or in the print media.Footnote ⁶⁹

How does community radio report on the insurgent violence that has become such a part of everyday life for both Malay Muslims as well as Buddhists in the area and has caused rifts in the social fabric by increasing mistrust between both communities? From content analysis, it seems that community radio stations usually restrict the coverage of violence to news items; comments or background analysis are rarely broadcast. Stations mention the violence in their daily news with more or less detail about the time, place, the kind of violence (murder, bomb, arson, assault, etc.) as well as the number of victims. Perpetrators are sometimes referred to as chon (‘bandits’), but are more frequently called neutral terms like phu ko khwam mai sangop, which might be translated as ‘instigators of unrest’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Typically no reference is made to specific groups or the motives for the attacks. Instead the reports tend to mention the impact that the violence has had in terms of numbers of casualties.

In general, community radio stations avoid the topic of insurgent violence and its impact on Buddhist–Muslim ethnic relations. Comments and analysis are rare for several reasons. First, stations that want to cover violence in detail face the covert nature of Southern Thailand's insurgents, which makes information about the perpetrators and what motivates them rarely accessible to journalists. Furthermore, community radio stations usually lack the financial resources, knowledge, and manpower for investigative journalism; instead broadcasters rely on the Internet and personal contacts as sources of information.Footnote ⁷¹ This weakness in reporting the news can partly be compensated by freely accessible news services for journalists providing information on the rebellion, such as the Isara News Agency run by the Thai Press Development Foundation or Deep South Watch, a Pattani-based information platform and civil society forum, which provides special reports and news items as well as statistical data about deaths and injuries.Footnote ⁷² Second, however, many community radio stations concentrate on entertainment and therefore avoid politics altogether since the broadcasters fear that the audience does not want to listen to such information. As one radio host from Narathiwat explained, ‘If I talk too much on certain topics and like go into details, people will be easily bored and turn to another station. I must try to entertain them in this bad situation.’Footnote ⁷³ A loss of audience would be accompanied by a loss of revenue from the advertisements on which most stations depend. Third, a number of the Thai Buddhist as well as the Malay Muslim broadcasters that I interviewed saw it as their duty to avoid increasing the distrust between Muslim and Buddhist communities in the three provinces. As such, they intentionally avoid reporting on the rebellion and counterinsurgent violence in detail. Patchara Yingdamnun from the Prince of Songkla's University Radio in Pattani is a case in point;Footnote ⁷⁴ even in cases where it is evident that insurgents or state officials committed a murder, she refrains from naming the perpetrators directly, arguing that ‘I don't want children in Pattani to grow up with the suspicion that all the people around them kill or commit violence.’Footnote ⁷⁵

Patchara and other community radio hosts considered it a problem that their fellow Buddhist community radio hosts too often express anxiety and animosity against Malays openly in the three provinces, risking provocation of communal conflicts. As Sukri Jintanon, a Malay Muslim community radio host from Pattani, comments: ‘They talk about ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘us’ meaning Buddhist and ‘them’ meaning Muslims. At times, they express their anger and say ‘another one of us has been killed’. And if Malays are killed, they don't mention it on the radio. Although Sukri himself thinks that Buddhists in Southern Thailand are being indiscriminately attacked and driven from the area, he, like Patchara, tries not to mention it while he is on air: ‘What I do to control my feelings on air is to write everything down before I speak on the radio. This way I can better control what I say. Others, however, don't do so and thus cause rifts in the communities.’Footnote ⁷⁶

This form of sensitive journalism, the restriction of violence to news items and the choice of the right tone, is not simply a matter of professional journalism, but is considered a crucial element for not widening the rifts between Buddhist and Muslim communities, and a necessary condition for a peaceful coexistence. The subject of conflict is still avoided by the majority of radio stations as Prachya Pimarnmana, a Malay community radio and school owner in Narathiwat, points out:

In other words, journalists are not expected to follow their professional responsibilities and hence become troublemakers in the local community. Ahmad Somboon Bualuang argues similarly that community radio's capacity to provide a degree of critical self-reflection is avoided in the search for communal harmony or simply because ‘community radio stations are not professional enough’. He is very critical of middle-class community radio activists: ‘Some activists talk for about a half hour on the radio without any content. And even the activists at the Prince of Songkla University Radio in Pattani have more technical rather than political knowledge.’Footnote ⁷⁸

He provides an example of a discussion about Mahanakornpattani, a version of decentralised rule for Southern Thailand that is currently being discussed: ‘So the programme host talks about Mahanakornpattani, but it is only a fashionable term that expresses local identity and the desire for self-rule. He does not explain what it really means.’ Ahmad Somboon Bualuang admits that decentralisation might be a positive step towards more self-determination and that simply talking about decentralisation or autonomy publicly is in itself an expression of local Malay identity. However, he remarks that the consequences and crucial details are not given deep consideration: ‘Who pays for Mahanakornpattani? Who will get the power position in it? Intellectuals and media people have a duty to discuss this, but here they fail [to do so].’

Quest for peace and intercultural communication

To some degree, this community radio silence about the insurgency and particularly solutions to violence was broken in 2013. Since the Thai government entered into talks with BRN-Coordinate, the region's largest rebel group, topics like possible scenarios for a peace process have been taken up by community radio stations like the Prince of Songkla University Radio or ‘Media Selatan’ in Pattani. On 18 June 2013 the latter also aired a 38-minute long interview with the leader of BRN-Coordinate's negotiation team in Malaysia, Hassan Taib.Footnote ⁷⁹

As it appeared in national headlines, this interview boosted the popularity of the station and its owner, Wan-Ahmad Wan-Kecik. Such an interview with a leading member of a rebel group would not have been possible before 2013 for several reasons. First, BRN-Coordinate did not communicate directly with the outside world before entering the negotiations. Although the group was known in the region, its leaders remained a mystery outside the organisation, had not given any interviews, and did not have a web site that could be accessed for information. Second, the Thai government recognised the existence of Malay Muslim rebels as political actors for the first time by sitting at the negotiating table with BRN-Coordinate and other groups. Prior to entering into the negotiations, the Thai security forces would have considered any publicly aired interview with rebels an open instigation of rebellion. Adding to the increased discussion of the conflict, Wan-Ahmad Wan-Kecik launched a radio programme in Malay called Dunia Hari Ini (World Today) in March 2013, in which listeners can voice their views on the ongoing insurgency. In other words, the current negotiations have not only opened up space for civil society in the South significantly, as publicly talking about autonomy would have hardly been dared before late 2012, they also illustrate the potential role community radio can play as part of a local public sphere.

The difficulties of actively engaging in the peace process can be illustrated by the attempt to initiate a community radio peace movement in August 2012 by Deep South Watch. The radio station invited more than a dozen community radio activists who regard their media as crucial in a possible peace process, not least because it is the only local mass media that can serve as a platform for the local population to publicly express their views on peace in Southern Thailand. Other crucial functions of community radio in the peace process that were discussed were the active dissemination of knowledge, e.g. civil rights. However, when it came to concrete collective action, most activists showed a degree of reluctance. Rifts between activists became apparent, especially when it came to finding a common definition of peace and a common analysis of the violence. Some, especially Malay radio broadcasters, saw the root cause of the conflict in the region's historical subjugation to Thai rule and the long history of human rights violations, and the cultural suppression that followed. Others, however, felt that the root of violence lay in the Malay Muslim insurgency. They excused the Thai state for its actions by arguing that it has provided religious freedom and immense development funds, which amount to more than what is being extracted from the region. These perspectives not only underscore the divisions between community radio broadcasters, but represent those within Buddhist and Malay communities themselves.

Another example of the limitations to intercultural communication that community radio in Southern Thailand faces is the Prince of Songkhla University Radio in Pattani, one of the most professionally run local stations in the region. Its director prides himself on the fact that his station, in contrast to others in the region, represents a platform for variety (khwamlaklai) and in-depth reporting. The station offers regular programmes for Malays, Buddhists, women, young people, professionals, and other social groups in the South. Special news programmes are offered both in Malay and Thai. In addition, the radio also presents news from the world of science to the population of Pattani city. At the same time, however, the director, Phirakan Khai-nunna, stresses that cross-cultural communication is limited, when it comes to talking about the causes of the insurgency and its solution: ‘Once we tried to organise a discussion between Buddhists and Muslims scholars about the killings of Malays by the Thai military at Kru Se mosque, but it was very difficult, because emotions easily run high and a rational discussion was hardly possible.’ He also attempted to foster cross-cultural understanding by finding a Buddhist monk or scholar who would explain the basics of Islam to Buddhist listeners. This attempt failed when he was unable to locate anyone suitable for the job: ‘Religious questions are so sensitive these days that no one dares to talk about it.’ In other words, even an intellectually-oriented local radio station like this university radio risks reproducing cultural exclusion.

One exception is the Network of Civic Women for Peace in the Deep South, which has gathered Buddhist and Muslim women in Southern Thailand to produce a radio programme, ‘Voices of Women in the Deep South’. The network aims to, on the one hand, ‘demonstrate the potential for women in the role of radio hosts and the value added by the civil society workers who join the radio programme’. On the other hand, the network specialises in raising awareness about the victimisation of women in Southern Thailand's insurgency. Accordingly, the group produces reports on various aspects of the insurgency such as the plight of women whose husbands or sons have been killed. In 2012, the network's programmes went on air at 47 stations. Each report lasts about 17 minutes, with 15 minutes in local Malay language and a 2-minute Thai language summary.

The group's other radio reports focus on topics such as the effect of drugs in villages or the economic situation of fisherwomen. The network also organises training courses on radio broadcasting for women. All members of the group who produce radio content have to pass these courses and regularly exchange their experiences of producing radio content. The Network of Civic Women, one of the higher profile and better-funded civil society networks, is supported by, among others, Oxfam and the European Union. It can afford full-time staff. Since the Voices of Women in the Deep South have no station of their own, they depend on other community radio stations to broadcast their content.