Regional News
Four Murders and a Bloody Battle for Land Rights in Surat Thani, Thailand
The Agricultural Land Reform Office (Alro) needs to step up efforts to solve land disputes to avoid further attacks on community-based human rights defenders, Surat Thani land rights activists say
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SURAT THANI – Supot Kalasong was driving home one afternoon in April when he heard a bang and assumed he had blown his newly-patched tyre.
Then he heard more bangs and realized gunfire was piercing his pickup truck door, hitting him six times on his right leg and twice on his right arm.
He was lucky, suffering only minor wounds. Since 2010, four people have been killed in Klong Sai Pattana, a small community in southern Surat Thani province, that has been locked in a bloody battle for the right to use government land.
Supot Kalasong, 41, shows a scar from a gunshot wound he suffered in April during an interview with Thomson Reuters Foundation at Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission office in Bangkok, Thailand May 19, 2016. Photo Alisa Tang
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“It is the worst case for land rights defenders – each place has people who are killed, but it’s never this bad. And the state is never able to catch the perpetrator and prosecute them,” said human rights lawyer Sor.Rattanamanee Polkla, of the Community Resource Centre Foundation.
A court had granted the government legal ownership of the land after a lawsuit over a palm oil company’s expired concession. Villagers, who have occupied the land for at least eight years, say they helped the state win its case.
Now, however, the villagers face eviction as officials seek to redistribute the land in a convoluted dispute showing what little power small-scale farmers wield over land, as well as the bloodshed they suffer in defending land rights.
“The villagers sacrificed their blood, bodies and souls – with people losing their lives – to get this land back,” said Pongtip Samranjit, director of Local Action Links, a Thai non-profit focusing on farmers’ and peasants’ rights.
The community blames the violence on mafia linked to the plantations. Over the years, three men were arrested but subsequently released on bail. One of the three was charged with murder but was acquitted in March.
Nobody has yet been convicted for the murders, Songsak Raksaksakul, deputy director of the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Meanwhile, the government agency overseeing land redistribution for farmers is preparing to ask the ruling junta to use article 44 of the interim constitution – dubbed the “dictator’s law” by the media – to drive the villagers off the 160-hectare plot.
The villagers and rights activists say they worked closely with the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) on the case against the company accused of occupying the area illegally.
But despite the court victory in 2014, the ALRO now says the villagers themselves are illegal occupants and must also leave.
Nathaphan Saengthub, Prateep Rakangthong and Pianrat Bunrit (L-R) of the Southern Peasants Federation of Thailand (SPFT) meet with their lawyer in the office of Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission in Bangkok, Thailand May 19, 2016. Photo Alisa Tang
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“The ALRO is stabbing them in the back and going back on the deal with the villagers,” Pongtip said.
The ALRO says the villagers had been allowed to stay on the land until the legal issues were resolved. But now that the court has ruled, ALRO Secretary General Sunsern Aggutamanus says the villagers must go so the land can be distributed fairly.
“They like to tell the media that they have chased the company out, but the fact is that a court ordered them out. They say they chased the bad people out, and now they should get the land,” Sunsern said.
“I said no, that’s not how it works. You have to register to be considered, along with other villagers. There are no privileges for these people … If we can reclaim the land, then we will distribute it, but we have to do it fairly.”
LANDLESS FARMERS
Agriculture accounts for a tenth of Thailand’s economy, with half the country’s land used for farming, and more than a third of its workers employed as farmers.
Yet about a quarter of Thailand’s 5.9 million farming households do not own land. Many are tenant farmers, mired in debt.
The ALRO, set up in 1975 to acquire land for farmers, has allocated about 5.6 million hectares to nearly 2.2 million people.
Sunsern says the ALRO has another 640,000 hectares it has been unable to distribute because of land conflicts, such as in Klong Sai Pattana.
Frustrated with the snail’s pace of reforms, landless farmers from across Thailand banded together in 2008 to form the Southern Peasants Federation of Thailand (SPFT) to fight for a community land title, whereby they would collectively manage and use the ALRO allocated plot.
SPFT members moved into Klong Sai Pattana and worked with the government to become part of a pilot project to secure a community land title.
But first, the government had to oust the palm oil company whose concession had expired and was accused of trespass.
In a 2009 letter to the Surat Thani governor, the ALRO said a committee under the prime minister’s office allowed the villagers to temporarily live on the land in Klong Sai Pattana “while the problem is being resolved”.
According to Sunsern, the 2014 court verdict against the palm oil company was that resolution.
“The government said they could stay temporarily, until the court decision,” he said.
An ALRO list shows nearly 20,000 people have registered for land allocations in Surat Thani province alone, and Sunsern says they all have equal right to vie for Klong Sai Pattana.
PILOT PROJECT FOR COMMUNITY TITLES
Further complicating this dispute is a pilot project for community land titles, which included Klong Sai Pattana.
In 2010, Thailand’s cabinet passed a law on the issuance of community land titles, which legally allows collective community management and use of state-owned land for their livelihoods.
Villagers and activists say they worked closely with the governments of former prime ministers Abhisit Vejjajiva and Yingluck Shinawatra, and Klong Sai Pattana was slated for the pilot project, but it never got the community land title.
Over the course of Klong Sai Pattana’s struggle since 2008, the ruling government changed hands from one party to another, and finally to the military junta after a 2012 coup.
“The government is like this. When the government changes, they don’t respect the old memorandums of understanding signed by the previous governments,” said Pongtip of Local Action Links.
The committee in the prime minister’s office overseeing the Klong Sai Pattana dispute was scheduled to visit the community this month to resolve the issue, but officials declined to be interviewed for this story.
In Klong Sai Pattana, villagers are coming to terms with the possibility of eviction if the ALRO succeeds in getting them kicked off the land.
Despite being shot, Supot, 41, does not see himself moving.
“I can’t change my way of life anymore. I’ve always been a farmer, even my parents were farmers … and I don’t have the knowledge to do anything else,” Supot said in an interview at the National Human Rights Commission in northern Bangkok.
“All of us in Klong Sai Pattana – we’ve always been farmers. And we ask the ALRO, ‘Where will you put us, and who will look after all that we’ve built and planted?'”
By Alisa Tang – Thomson Reuters Foundation
Dditing by Paola Totaro and Belinda Goldsmith
Thailand’s Immigration Police have detained approximately 26,000 illegal migrant workers from Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia during an eight-day operation in Bangkok and surrounding regions, according to a Royal Thai Police spokesperson.
Mr Adisorn Keudmeuangkhon of the Bangkok-based Migrant Working Group said the drive was in response to an increasing number of concerns about an influx of illegal migrant labor.
“Some Thai people see that many illegal workers are competing for their job positions in the past few months,” he told me. “That’s why the ministry has to take tougher action.”
Civil strife in Myanmar and the recent implementation of a military conscription have driven thousands of Burmese into Thailand, while severe inflation and limited job opportunities in Laos have also encouraged an influx of workers from that country.
Between June 5 and 12, officials detained and checked 20,111 Myanmar laborers, 1,659 Laotian migrant workers, and 3,971 Cambodian workers, according to the Ministry of Labor.
It marked the start of a 120-day campaign to audit workplaces and arrest unlawful migrant workers, according to the government.
Migrant Workers to be Deported
According to Keudmeuangkhon, undocumented workers face fines ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 Thai baht (US $136 to $1,365), deportation, and a two-year prohibition on re-entering Thailand.
Authorities did not intend to file criminal charges, he claimed.
Authorities raided 1,774 workplaces, according to Moe Gyo, chairman of the Joint Action Committee on Burmese Affairs, which advocates for Myanmar labor rights.
He stated that since the military junta activated conscription, there has been an upsurge in the number of arrests of Myanmar citizens in Thailand who do not have a work permit identity card.
All men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 must serve in the military for at least two years. The first group of 5,000 conscripts summoned by Myanmar’s junta will start duty at the end of this month, military sources told AFP on Monday.
According to Keudmeuangkhon, the bulk of Lao migrant workers in Thailand work as fresh market shopkeepers, restaurant servers, and mall salespeople.
Most people visit Thailand as part of ASEAN’s visa-free policy for tourists, but they stay longer than the 30-day restriction once they find job.
“Employers like to hire Lao migrant workers in the service sector because they can speak fluent Thai,” he told me.
Immigration Police Detain Illegal Migrant Workers
The Thai Cabinet may approve an enhanced program for Thai employers to register their unauthorized foreign workers in July or August. Keudmeuangkhon explained.
Last month, the Thai Ministry of Labor’s Foreign Workers Administration office announced that 268,465 Lao migrant workers were officially working in Thailand.
Baykham Kattiya, Lao Minister of Labor, told Radio Free Asia earlier this month that there are 415,956 migrant workers in other nations, the majority of whom work in Thailand.
According to her, the Lao government believes that over 203,000 persons working outside of the nation lack proper work documents.
However, a Lao official familiar with the labor industry informed Radio Free Asia, a BenarNews-affiliated news station, on June 20 that the number of illegal Lao migrant workers in Thailand and abroad is likely significantly greater.
“They go to other countries as illegal migrant workers through different types of methods – as tourists or students,” said the politician. “Thus, it is hard for the immigration police to collect data on these people.”
Government Officials Responsible for Smuggling in Migrant Workers
Government Officials Responsible for Smuggling in Migrant Workers
Thailand’s Office of Basic Education Commission has initiated an investigation into the electrocution of a 14-year-old student by a water dispenser in a high school. The event happened at noon on Friday, during the high school’s sports day. The victim was a Grade 8 student.
According to local media in Trang Province, the incident occurred when a teacher instructed the pupil to turn off a water dispenser amid a heavy rain.
According to a witness, the child collapsed while strolling with his friend near a water station. The friend claimed he attempted to assist but was also shocked by electricity.
According to reports, the friend then recovered, left the site, and requested assistance from teachers. A teacher ran to the scene and used a towel to pull the boy away by the ankle. He was taken to the hospital, but it was too late, they claimed.
The event sparked criticism from parents and netizens over school safety, as well as the slow response to aid the young youngster.
Mr. Chainarong Changrua, head of Trang-Krabi’s Secondary Educational Service Area Office, told local media on Sunday that forensic officers from Trang Provincial Police had visited the area. They discovered the blown breaker switch behind the water dispenser, he explained.
The breaker was burned out, thus the authorities assumed the disaster was caused by a short circuit that allowed energy to spill to a neighboring power pole. The student also appeared wet and was not wearing shoes when electrocuted.
According to the Office of Basic Education Commission, a probe team will complete its investigation this week.
The student’s father, Mr Pornchai Thepsuwan, 53, claimed he was saddened when he saw his son’s body. The boy (Wayu), was the youngest of two boys, he explained. He stated that following the tragedy, the school director and staff gave financial assistance to the families.
Mr Pornchai also said he would not seek charges against the institution because he believed it was an accident.
Electrical accidents in Thailand
Electrocution instances in Thailand have increased alarmingly in recent years. Many mishaps occur as a result of improper wiring and inadequate maintenance of electrical systems.
Public locations, such as schools and markets, frequently lack adequate safety precautions, putting individuals in danger. In rural areas, antiquated infrastructure exacerbates the situation, resulting in more frequent and serious events.
Although several high-profile cases have brought these challenges to light, genuine progress has been gradual. Furthermore, the rainy season heightens the likelihood of electrical accidents, as water and exposed wires do not mix well.
The government has made steps to strengthen safety standards, but enforcement is patchy. More education on electrical safety could help to reduce these accidents.
Unfortunately, better infrastructure and tougher rules may have prevented many of these incidents. The loss and injuries caused by electrocution are avoidable, emphasizing the need for immediate action.
Over 200 High School Students Facing Sedition Charges in Thailand
Over 200 High School Students Facing Sedition Charges in Thailand
Thailand’s Tourist Police said it is collaborating with embassies from five countries to combat tourist scams and ten criminal gangs in Pattaya. The Tourist Police Bureau, convened a meeting on Thursday Pol Lt Gen Saksira Phuek-am told a press briefing.
Pol Lt Gen Saksira Phuek-am, the Tourist Police bureau commissioner said the participants included ambassadors from South Korea, Ukraine, Russia, India, and Switzerland.
He told the briefing the he had ordered a crackdown on tourist frauds, such as fraudulent or low-quality tour operators and unfair sales of goods and services. Stepped-up operations began on June 19 and will continue until June 25.
He stated that the agency was working with numerous organisations to increase tourists’ confidence in visiting Pattaya.
Gen Saksira spent time on the famed Walking Street speaking with officers on duty and assigned them to seek for members of ten criminal groups known to operate in Pattaya.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin will visit Chon Buri on Saturday to assess the tourism situation. He intends to visit the site of a future Formula One racecourse near Khao Phra Tamnak in Bang Lamung District.
Prime Minister Srettha recently met with Formula One organisers in Italy to examine the potential of including Thailand on the race schedule in the future.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister will pay a visit to Rayong’s U-tapao airport to discuss development on the airport’s land, with the goal of encouraging investment in the Eastern Economic Corridor.
Police Chief Reinstated
In other police news, Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol has been reinstated as national police chief following the conclusion of an investigation into a highly publicised quarrel, according to Wissanu Krea-ngam, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s counsellor.
Mr Wissanu released the investigation’s findings on Thursday, after the prime minister formed a fact-finding committee chaired by Chatchai Promlert to investigate into the quarrel between Pol Gen Torsak and his deputy, Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn.
The four-month study revealed conflicts and disorder at all levels of the Royal Thai Police, but it was unclear whether these issues arose from a single cause or several causes, according to Mr Wissanu.
The findings revealed that both Pol Gen Torsak and Pol Gen Surachate were involved, with each team contributing to the tensions, he noted.
Mr Wissanu indicated that Pol Gen Surachate was reinstated as deputy national police head on 18 April following his relocation to the Prime Minister’s Office on 20 March. A disciplinary committee was formed to investigate Pol Gen Surachate, and he was ordered temporarily suspended from the police force.
Because there were no further difficulties to explore, it was decided to restore Pol Gen Torsak. He plans to retire on September 30.
On March 20, Mr Srettha abruptly transferred both top police officers to the Prime Minister’s Office in an effort to address the growing schism within the police service.
Kitrat Panphet, Deputy National Police Chief, was subsequently named Acting Police Chief. According to sources, Pol Gen Surachate could face money laundering charges related to online gaming networks.
Source: Bangkok Post
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