NAKHON RATCHASIMA - Disgruntled villagers used their bodies to block army engineers from excavating land for a fence at the centre of a dispute with Suranaree University of Technology in Muang district on Thursday.
About 50 people from Nong Bong village in tambon Suranaree stopped engineers from the 2nd Development Division using a backhoe to prepare the land for the fence that would demarcate the boundary of the university campus.
The confrontation became very tense as representatives of the villagers spent 30 minutes explaining the land dispute. The soldiers finally agreed to stop work and then drove the backhoe back into the university’s compound.
Charas Pathumbucha said residents and the university are in dispute over 174 land plots covering 878 rai. For years the villagers had occupied the land which he claimed was part of a degraded forest.
The Royal Forestry Department later allocated 6,911 rai of degraded forest land to the university for its use, but it over-lapped the land the villagers had occupied, Mr Charas said.
Various agencies had been involved in negotiations over the disputed land, hoping for a solution. When the soldiers moved in to level some of the ground to build a boundary fence, his group knew they had to take action, he said.
A committee verifying rights to the disputed land resolved on Jan 15 to ask the 8th foresty resource management office to put up an announcement detailing the boundary of the forest land, and to take action against those digging up soil in the area.
The panel also asked district and local authorities to notify residents who claimed rights to the land to submit land documents to the provincial Damrongtham complaints centre for verification.