On September 18th, insurgents set off a series of bombs in a red light district in the Southern Thailand border town of Su-Ngai Golok, killing five people and leaving roughly 110 survivors wounded. Ethnic Malay-Muslim insurgents have previously targeted Thai government school teachers, Buddhist monks, and Thai-Buddhist villagers, presumably because all of the aforementioned targets symbolized the dominance of Thai-Buddhist culture in the area. However, on September 18th, the targets of the insurgents’ violence were Malay-Muslim sex tourists who had crossed the border to indulge in a night of debauchery in the town’s brothel scene. That the attack occurred in a red light district also marks a significant break from the norm; in the past the militants have targeted government buildings and torched schools as part of ideological attacks on Thai dominance.
This bombing marked a potential shift of the insurgents’ attention away from targets that are ideologically significant, towards targets that are culturally abhorrent to their conservative Muslim cultural ideals: brothels, bars, and sex tourists. Such a change could potentially spell danger for the thousands of foreign sex tourists who pour into Thailand each year, and also for the massive tourist industry dedicated to serving them. In the past, the insurgents have largely ignored the hoards of merrymakers and sex tourists enjoying themselves on the beaches of Southern Thailand and in the nightclubs of Bangkok. Should the militias become focused on ridding Thailand of “un-Islamic” institutions that they feel justified in attacking, foreigners frequenting brothels, karaoke bars, full moon parties, and nightclubs on Phuket, Koh Samui, and Koh Phi Phi might well find themselves exceptionally visible walking targets. Even Bangkok, in a worst-case scenario, could potentially become a target for a new, uncontrolled breed of Southern Thai militants focused on eradicating vice.
Thailand has long been seen by many as a world apart from the Bali nightclub bombing of 2002, or the terrorist groups active in various areas of the Philippines. Sex tourists should be aware that beyond merely running afoul of Thai sex laws, they may someday be in danger of targeted violence from insurgent groups, as the very locations that sex tourists seem to frequent – the brothels of Phuket, the ping-pong shows of Bangkok’s Patpong district, and the karaoke bars of Pattaya – are precisely the locations that the insurgents of Southern Thailand might find most deserving of attack.
{ 0 comments… add one now }
{ 1 trackback }