Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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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.
“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.
Four Murders and a Bloody Battle for Land Rights in Surat Thani, Thailand | Chiang Rai Times English Language Newspaper
They got screwed over badly.
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.
“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.
Four Murders and a Bloody Battle for Land Rights in Surat Thani, Thailand | Chiang Rai Times English Language Newspaper
They got screwed over badly.
