Surayud: Khao Yai Thieng

If a tree should fall ...
Supara Janchitfah
8 February 2009
Bangkok Post

Long-time residents of the verdant southern forestlands facing eviction wonder if the authorities can hear their pleas Song Kongmuang of Tapan village, Si Banphot district in Phatthalung province witnessed the destruction of her para rubber trees at the hands of forest rangers, with the district chief presiding over the ''ceremony''. The 0.47 hectare para rubber plantation had been cultivated by her family for generations. After cutting down the white-barked trees, the forest rangers and forestry officials planted various types of small trees.

''I felt sad seeing my trees cut down,'' said Ms Song, adding that the small trees would ''need many years to grow before they can protect the soil and yield any benefit to the natural environment''.

Jien Bamrung, a villager in Huai Yoi district of Trang, talked of the day scores of men with axes and saws came to wipe out his plantation: ''More than 100 national park officials came to my land. I asked them not to cut my trees as they were planted before the declaration of the Bantad National Park. But the officials didn't listen to my pleas, they cut down more than 100 para rubber trees and then planted little trees,'' Mr Jien said with bitterness.

These villagers and their neighbours speak with dismay of the apparent double standards applied when resorts, hotels and influential persons are the ones accused of encroachment in Trang and other nearby provinces.

Indeed, it's hard to imagine NPD officers coming with bulldozers to remove a hotel located off a beautiful white-sand beach in what locals say was formerly a pristine part of Trang's Chao Mai National Park. Presently the hotel's owners hold a title deed for the plot of land, something that causes a lot of raised eyebrows in these parts.A vendor who lives less than a kilometre away from the hotel is not alone in believing that she has been discriminated against by the authorities. ''I have been living in this area since before the declaration of the national park, but I have no land document. Why do they?'' she asked, pointing in the direction of the hotel from her shabby hut.

A state school teacher who lives across the road from the vendor came to join our discussion. He said that his palm-oil trees had been destroyed by the national park officials. ''I lived here for 28 years before the declaration of the national park, and I have a [Sor Kor 1] land occupancy document, but I was not spared,'' he said, adding that he had submitted the application many years ago to upgrade his documentation status to a land title deed, but he is still waiting.

A case involving land claimed by former interim prime minister Surayud Chulanont which overlapped a forest reserve area at Khao Yai Thiang in Nakhon Ratchasima province attracted considerable notice when it was brought to the attention of the public back at the end of 2007, but it appears to have been put in the inactive file. Two months ago I asked the Department of Forestry about the progress of the investigation. I got no clear answer.

Somchai Pienstaporn, the department's director-general did talk to me, but advised that I direct my questions to a committee that had been set up to do the investigation on March 20 last year. He gave me a list of members, but after several weeks I have not heard from any of them. Setting up committees to take the spotlight off a scandal is a popular ploy in Thai administrative circles, as the scandal soon fades away when no one follows up.

Such an outcome is highly unlikely for villagers who are accused of encroachment in protected areas. They will be haunted to the finish.

CHARGES LEVELLED
Part one in this series described the case of a man accused of encroaching in a national park who was ordered by the National Park, Wildlife and Plants Conservation (NPD) to cut down para rubber trees on land he says his family has cultivated for generations, long before the declaration of the national park. With help from a grassroots network involved in such cases in the Bantad mountain region, Prapan Thongtai has so far been able to resist efforts by the NPD to cut down his trees and force him off the land.

Mr Prapan, from Khaopai village in Trang province, has seen a series of charges levelled at him by the NPD. Khopu-Khaoya National Park (KKP) officials first came to the land he cultivates para rubber trees on in 2003 after charges were filed at the Ratsada district police station. After two years, in 2005 the Office of Trang Public Prosecutor decided not to prosecute him.

In 2006, park officials nevertheless twice ordered Mr Prapan to destroy the para rubber trees and leave the plot of land. In 2008, the NPD filed a civil lawsuit please do not cut the word civil against Mr Prapan asking him to pay compensation for destruction of the environment and forcing him off the land. Mr Prapan said he and his local citizen's group are ''now in the dialogue process with concerned agencies''.

Kamjay Chaithong from Si Nakharin sub-district in Phattalung process has had to face both civil and criminal charges. She was convicted of encroachment in a criminal court and ordered to pay a 20,000 baht fine, given a two-year suspended sentence and ordered to move off the 1.3 hectares in Bantad National Park she claims as hers. Moreover, in a pending civil summon, she is asked to pay 1.67 million baht for encroaching on the land.

In most cases locals don't dispute that their land lies within forest reserve or national park boundaries. What they maintain is that they were on the land before such areas were designated and that the land has been under cultivation for generations and hence never belonged within a national park or forestry reserve boundary in the first place.

As supporting evidence of their claims, some villagers point out that they have been receiving funds from the Office of the Rubber Replanting Aid Fund (Orraf), a state funding agency. The Orraf has the duty of granting funds to para rubber growers so that they can grow more trees and boost Thailand's exports. The agency takes a portion of the revenue after the para rubber milk is sold.

LAND REFORMATION
A Trang Natural Resources and Environment Office (NREO) statement reads that ''with the increasing population, people need more land to cultivate, but as there is no unclaimed land they trespass in the forest''. However, the response of government agencies to this problem has been to increase suppression, rather than provide land to the people. The Trang NREO plans to spend five million baht to prevent encroachment in the forest.

There is a government agency which for the last 34 years has been charged with distributing public land to the landless _ the Agricultural and Land Reform Office (Alro) _ under the Land Reform Act (LRA), issued in 1975, but it has encountered many barriers. As of November 30, 2008, the ALRO has provided Sor Por Kor 4-01 land documents for 1,851,198 people, which amounts to a total of 4.79 million hectares of land distributed throughout Thailand. (see graphic)

The secretary-general of the Alro, Anan Pusittikul, remarked that there are many challenges in distributing the land, not least the revocation of forest reserve status. ''If people can prove they have been living on the land before the forest declaration, the next process is to revoke the forest reserve status and do the land reform for them, but this is a time consuming process,'' he said. He added that many who have been granted land titles do not keep the land for cultivation as the land reform programme intends, but transfer or sell it to someone else.

The determination of who deserves to be awarded reformed land has been an issue for quite some time throughout several government administrations. Some politicians have even applied for and received the Sor Por Kor 4-01 document under the rationale that they are descendants of farmers, without considering other criteria such as income and present occupations. When caught red-handed at their obvious deceit, they claimed ignorance of the letter of the law.

An Arlo official who asked not to be named said that in these cases it took a ''number of years to revoke the land rights''. The lack of cooperation among state agencies and the tremendous number of people applying for land distribution are other big challenges. The Thaksin government initiated efforts for the poor to register with the Ministry of Interior, and between Dec 3, 2003 and March 15, 2004 there were an astounding 8,258,435 people registered _ 1.85 million of the registrants were landless and 1.28 million claimed some plot of land but have no land rights document. The list of registrants has been handed over to the Internal Security Operations Command for some reason.

TWO INVESTIGATIONS, TWO OUTCOMES
Regarding the case of the hotel by Chao Mai National Park, when contacted recently a Land Department (LD) official said that it is the duty of the province to manage such troubles. There is a long history of involvement from the LD in the matter, however. On June 6, 1989, the Forestry Department sent a request to the LD to investigate application for land titles on 10 plots of land, two of which were later acquired by the hotel. It took nine years for the LD to give its decision on, June 9, 1998.

By the time of the ruling, some of the plots of land, including the two now claimed by the hotel, had already received title deeds, making it very hard for concerned agencies to revoke the land rights or to prosecute involved officials who might have retired or transferred to other areas.

Verification of whether land documents should be issued or have been issued properly and legally, has always been a sensitive and time-consuming matter. Said a Trang Land official who asked not to be named: ''If we revoke somebody's land rights, they will sue us, we are already facing many court cases by those whose land papers were revoked.'' A new LD committee was formed in 2002 to investigate the controversial land titles. In the same year the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also undertook an investigation into the mater.

The LD ruled last May to revoke some plots of land in the area, but not those claimed by the hotel. On the other hand the NHRC determined that titles for the land on which the hotel now stands had been issued improperly. The NHRC bases its findings on requirements under the LRA pertaining to land use, backed up by 1967 and 1974 aerial maps. According to the 1989 ministerial Land Regulations, item 12, the amount of land for a land title deed must be equal to the amount of land that has been utilised, and not beyond the amount of land that has been calculated to have been used. The NHRC's investigation, using the calculations of a court official who specialises in reading and interpreting aerial maps, found that only about 0.68 of a hectare overlapping between the two plots of land had been utilised prior to the construction of the hotel.

The NHRC ruling has no legal force, and the organisation can only make its recommendations and findings known to the Office of State's Land Trespassing and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. It seems likely that the matter will soon fade away in all but the minds of locals in the Trang community.

When I asked recently at the Provincial Land Office to see the hotel's title deeds, an official told me to go to the Sikao district office as the original of the land documents were issued there. However, the district office asked me to provide a letter from my office before showing the documents. When that was finally accomplished I was allowed to read the documents, but not photocopy them.

After going through more than 200 pages for each document, I found out that there were inconsistencies such as allowing land title documents to cover much more land than originally stated in the land occupancy document. Officials said this was because they were taking into account the natural landmarks on the plot of land rather than what was written in the document.

Contrast this bending of the rules with the complaints of people who live in Trang and nearby provinces who say they first submitted their Sor Kor 1 land documents to their respective land offices a number of years ago but have still received no word. If you mention this to officials at the land offices, they will likely reply that ''it is a time consuming process''. This is the second in a series on land rights issues.