Bangkok Post : Land group says govt reform 'silences voice of the people'

Land group says govt reform 'silences voice of the people'
The Thailand Land Reform Network has called on the next government to stop legal action against those who try to protect their land from state management policies.

The TLRN is a non-government organisation working with villagers to encourage them to fight for land and community rights,

TLRN coordinator Pongthip Samranjit said her organisation understood there were about a thousand cases of people who had been accused by the state of encroaching on public land.

The legal process could not serve as an effective tool in the fight against the alleged encroachment but rather was seen as an attempt to silence the voice of people trying to protect their land ownership rights, Ms Pongthip said.

She said the government's policy to declare public land as protected forest areas was creating problems for people who had been living in communities in those areas previously, as the state would accuse them of encroaching on public land.

Ms Pongthip yesterday addressed the problem of villagers who had been allegedly accused of occupying public land at a seminar titled "Community Rights and Land and Forest Disputes".

The seminar, jointly hosted by the TLRN, the Environmental Litigation and Advocacy for the Wants and the Human Rights Lawyers Association at Thammasat University's Faculty of Law was aimed at proposing solutions for public land disputes.

Ms Pongthip said the 2007 Constitution stated community people should have their rights to participate in managing, preserving and using natural resources and the environment.

MR Akin Rabibhadana, a former member of a defunct National Reform Committee led by former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, proposed that members of each community should be juristic representatives in the sense that they would have the right to claim ownership of their land and sue the government if issues arose.

TLRN lawyer Somnuek Tomsuphap said there had been 33 criminal and civil cases on land and forest disputes last year. There were 223 residents involved in the cases who were alleged to have trespassed on public land.

Boonrit Pirom, a representative from the Southern Farmers Network, called on authorities to be fair when dealing with cases of villagers accused of public land encroachment.