The disappearance of ethnic Karen grassroots activist Porlajee Rakchongcharoen has put the spotlight on not only the lack of safety for human rights defenders but also the use of violence in forest management which violates both the constitution and human rights.
The 30-year-old unsung hero, Porlajee, aka Billy, represents a group of indigenous Karen forest dwellers in their fight to live on their ancestral land which has now become part of Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi province.
The constitution allows traditional communities the right to preserve their way of life and co-manage their natural resources. For forest settlements, traditional communities are interpreted as those that existed before the areas were officially designated as national parks.
For Karen forest dwellers, their right to preserve their cultural identity and traditional rotation farm systems were also endorsed by an Aug 3, 2010 cabinet resolution with clear guidelines for forest authorities and other agencies to follow.
These two legal mandates follow decades of forest communities’ struggles against draconian forest laws which outlaw all human settlements with heavy jail sentences.
These laws, written by forest authorities themselves during military regimes, define all lands without title deeds as forests to be owned and managed by the then Forest Department, thus making it the biggest land owner in the country.
With dwindling forest cover — as a result of logging, the military’s programmes to destroy the communists’ jungle hideaways in the 70s, the expansion of farmland into forests following state promotion of cash crops for export, and land grabbing by land speculators — the forest authorities responded by expanding the areas of protected forests which often overlap with forest settlements. Their use of force to evict indigenous peoples and small farmers led to land rights conflicts nationwide.
The constitutional mandate on community rights and the Aug 3 cabinet resolution are legal efforts to defuse such conflicts. However, they have been ignored by the forest authorities who insist that people and forests cannot co-exist.
They also ignore the Democrat and Pheu Thai governments’ policy on community land ownership to allow forest communities to stay in exchange for forest conservation.
In Kaeng Krachan, the forest dwellers’ huts and rice barns were torched before they were forced to relocate to a low-lying area without enough land and other support, leading to much hardship. They then sought legal help to take the park chief and his forest agency to court for violating the constitution and their rights.
One of their key supporters, local politician Tatkamol Ob-om, was gunned down in 2011. The park chief is facing a murder charge in a pending court case. Last week, Mr Porlajee disappeared after being taken by the park chief for interrogation. He insisted he had already released the grassroots activist with two interns as his witnesses.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment refuses to move the controversial park chief to another post to facilitate the course of justice, a departure from the norm when officials face a murder charge. The ministry’s support for his violent forest evictions violates the highest law of the land. This is not acceptable. Nor is the double standard regarding the forest officials turning a blind eye to illegal logging backed by local "godfathers", and forest encroachment by corn and oil palm plantations backed by agro giants.
The dictatorial forest laws allow for widespread abuse of power not only at Kaeng Krachan but in many other forest areas. They must be revoked and new ones must be put in place to respect community rights. The forest cannot be protected when the authorities in charge are themselves breaking the laws and the constitution.