BANGKOK (UCAN) -- Visitors to a recent art exhibition in Bangkok saw the need for peace and interreligious harmony in troubled southern provinces through the eyes of local children.

Killings are reported almost daily in the ongoing violence that primarily affects the Muslim-majority provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, near Thailand's border with Malaysia.

Close to 3,000 people, almost 60 of them aged 14 or younger, have been killed since January 2004 in the conflict, which involves some Muslim separatist groups but defies easy analysis.

"I feel fear when I travel around. I don't want violence like this to happen. I wish to see peace and unity among people," Sirichat Chumuy, 11, told UCA News recently.

A painting by the boy, who attends Church-run Charoensri Suksa school in Pattani town, 770 kilometers south of Bangkok, was displayed in a special exhibition in Bangkok. Reflections of My Mind: Colours for Peace ran April 4-11 at the Thai Health Promotion Foundation office.

The 100 paintings were chosen from more than 1,000 that Steffen Paul Ruholl, 40, a doctoral-degree candidate from Hamburg University in Germany, collected from students in the three provinces. The German Catholic is researching interaction among Buddhists, Chinese and Muslims in the region.

Ruholl told UCA News at the exhibition that he had found it difficult to get people to talk about the situation. A friend suggested art might be a better approach, he recalled, and they thought that getting children to express themselves would provide a perspective different from that of politicians and security personnel.

"The violence had taken its toll on people of all age groups, especially children, who are afraid to talk about their true feelings among themselves," Ruholl said.

Sirichat was one of a few students who depicted interreligious harmony. His painting shows a Buddhist temple, a mosque and a church coexisting peacefully. "I believe that while we have different beliefs, we can live together peacefully," he said.

Ruholl asked students from the primary to university levels to put on paper what they thought about life in southern Thailand. He spent one year collecting their paintings. Some had written brief descriptions on the back.

Most of the paintings reflect the violence explicitly, with burning houses, schools and rubber trees among common images. Others drew paintings of a parent's funeral or soldiers covered in blood.

One thing that stood out for Ruholl was the specificity of many paintings. He cited examples such as a soldier shot because a gangster lied to him, a school burning at a three-way intersection or two soldiers in a bunker with a man hidden in a bush shooting at a third soldier, standing in a garden.

"I have the feeling these are true, real stories well communicated in the family or the school. This is too specific to be just images, there are stories behind these paintings," he explained.

The project, he said, aimed to help the children come to terms with fear and anxiety, while the exhibition was staged to let the public know about these feelings.

Veera Sritadan, 15, a Muslim student at Charoensri Suksa, told UCA News of his wish for peace: "I feel sad about what is happening in the south and I feel sorry for the families of the victims. I wish to see peace and don't want people to divide the land. I wish all religions would help solve southern problems."

Sister Nitaya Josarnnuson, the school administrator, reported that more and more people are moving out of the area because of the violence.

"We have to take care of our students closely and help them understand what they should do or not do in the situation," the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary nun told UCA News.

"I feel most for the Muslim students," she continued. "Many people think the violence has happened because of Islam, so many Muslim students feel bad. In fact it is not about Islam, but arises only because of some people."

Around 95 percent of Thailand's 65 million people are Buddhists. Surat Thani diocese covers all 15 southern provinces, where 7,419 Catholics comprise 0.08 percent of the region's 8,992,328 people, according to available statistics.

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