When maverick forest chief Damrong Pidech ordered a lighting attack on a plush resort in the Tap Lan National Park by thousands of fully armed men last week, he was hailed as a national hero by the media and forest conservation NGOs.
When he backed his men to team up with the army to torch the huts and rice barns of indigenous Karen forest dwellers last year, the media also applauded the blitz as heroic while those green groups remained silent against these blatant human rights violations.
When the forest chief keeps challenging the constitution by denying the rights of traditional forest communities to live on their family lands and hitting them with violent evictions, arrests and imprisonment, the mainstream media simply goes along with it. So do those conservation groups which share the forestry authorities' deep belief that the forests must be free from human activities _ with exceptions made, however, for miners, tree farm plantation investors, big dam makers, other state agencies and the forest authorities, despite their many questionable projects which threaten the health of forests and biodiversity.
My question is not whether Mr Damrong is a hero. Rather, it's why the public is led to see forest conservation as a black and white territorial war game with forestry officials as the good guys and people they want to evict as the baddies.
Why does this simplistic story line still work when the forest agencies are notorious for inefficiency, corruption and power abuse?
Does the forest enemy myth come from the systematic brain-washing in our education system which demonises the hill peoples and the poor as forest destroyers? Is the media perpetuating this prejudice because it answers their appetite for sensationalism so perfectly?
In fact, I have several other questions.
No forest encroachment by resort investors is possible without help from corrupt officials from the land and forest agencies. Why aren't they punished? How can things improve when the culture of impunity in officialdom remains intact?
While the law says all forests belong to the forest and national park agencies, reality on the ground is not so clear-cut. Forest boundaries are contentious because they often overlap with public land, individual farmland, as well as other state agencies' properties. When this is the case, is there a better way to settle conflicts than using raw violence?
In the controversial Thap Lan and Wang Nam Khiew areas now targeted by the forest chief, where were the forest heroes when every government in the past decade was telling the locals and investors to turn the legally grey areas into new tourist destinations?
We must also ask if the laws are just. Forests are home to over five million farmers who have lived there for generations. Yet, they have been made into illegal forest encroachers by the top-down forest laws. Is this fair?
While hundreds of highlanders and small farmers are sent to jail each year because of draconian forest laws, massive natural forest areas are leased to tree plantation investors and mining companies at very cheap prices.
Is this acceptable?
Big dam projects that will destroy pristine forests are also received with submissive silence by the forest agency.
Following violent forest evictions which triggered fierce land rights conflicts nationwide, the grass-roots movements finally won the constitutional right to live in their traditional communities and to co-manage their forests in the 1997 and 2007 charters.
People's participation is the answer to forest conflicts, say both charters. But the forest authorities refuse to issue laws for community rights in natural resources management. Worse, in the past year, they have stepped up the crackdowns to arrest grassroots leaders in order to consolidate the authorities' old power.
There's a clear pattern of rising militarism in the forest and national park agency which has long been striving to have its own army to "fight forest encroachers". Can militarism and violence save our forests? Never. But if the men in charge keep pushing the wrong buttons, then brace yourselves for a new round of land rights wars.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.