Surin Pitsuwan

Surin Pitsuwan (28 October 1949 – 30 November 2017), full name Surin Abdul Halim bin Ismail Pitsuwan, was a Thai diplomat and politician of Malay descent. He served as Thailand's minister of foreign affairs from 1997 to 2001 and as the twelfth secretary-general of ASEAN from 2008 to 2012, the first holder of that office with significant political experience. ^{1 2}

Surin was born on 28 October 1949 at Nakhon Si Thammarat. He studied political science at Thammasat University and graduated cum laude from Claremont Men's College, California, in 1972, then took a master's degree at Harvard University in 1974 with Rockefeller Foundation support. He spent a year and a half studying Arabic and researching at the American University in Cairo, worked as a researcher at Thammasat, and completed his Harvard PhD in 1982 with a dissertation entitled "Islam and Malay Nationalism". ^{1 3}

Elected to parliament for Nakhon Si Thammarat in 1986, Surin was assistant secretary to the minister of interior, then deputy minister of foreign affairs (1992–1995), then foreign minister under Chuan Leekpai (1997–2001), chairing the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1999–2000 and advocating a policy of "flexible engagement" towards Myanmar. Alongside politics he taught at Thammasat University and wrote for two Bangkok English-language dailies. ¹

Endorsed by the Thai cabinet and confirmed by ASEAN's foreign ministers in 2007, Surin took office on 1 January 2008. His five-year tenure was praised for making ASEAN a more active global player — the grouping set up its own human rights commission and managed Myanmar's opening and rising South China Sea tensions — and The Economist and the Jakarta Post marked him out from his predecessors. After handing over on 1 January 2013 he joined the boards of The Asia Foundation and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. He died of heart failure in Bangkok on 30 November 2017, aged 68, while preparing to address the Thailand Halal Assembly; his Islamic funeral prayer was held at the Tha It mosque the next day. The Indonesian article's infobox files his religion as Sunni Islam, a single structured filing which this collection does not treat as settling a school; no source read for this record names a school for him in prose, and this record records none. ^{1 4 5 2}

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