Because of the pouring rain it was difficult to say whether there were tears on the faces of the forest "encroachers" in Krabi's Plaipraya district as they faced a crackdown by about 800 armed personnel on Monday.
As around 100 landless farmers stoically watched their shacks torn down before being rounded up to board prisoner transport vehicles, forest officials proudly announced to the throng of news media about a seemingly difficult mission accomplished "peacefully".
Their beaming pride was understandable. The landless farmers of Krabi's Plaipraya district are among their fiercest enemies. In past on-and-off battles, officials had never claimed victory. That changed when the junta came onto the scene. The show of force was not meant for Krabi only. It sent a clear message to occupants of state land countrywide: Get out, or else.
The Plaipraya forced eviction ended a year-long conflict that has left about 10 dead and injured. But it won't end longstanding land rights conflicts between forest agencies and villagers. Not until the centralised agencies give up their monopoly on exploitation of forests.
I see no chance of that happening while we're still wrapped up in forest agencies' false rhetoric on forests and their roles as forest protectors.
We don't have to dig very deep for examples. The Plaipraya eviction itself is a case in point.
For starters, the forest officials call the area in question forests. This is a lie. The areas are actually oil palm plantations.
If the area is not a forest, the people there are not "forest encroachers" as the authorities and media call them.
The area might once have been "national forest reserves" some 30 years ago, but not now. Not after the forest agencies destroyed them by leasing the areas to oil palm plantation investors at the rate of 10 baht a rai — a farcically cheap rate that invites speculation of money changing hands elsewhere.
Many locals were evicted so that oil palm investors could move in. Locals' calls for the right to lease the land were rejected. The same thing happened in the Northeast with eucalyptus tree farms, triggering violent land rights conflicts.
The forest authorities refused to stop granting lease concessions despite the villagers' and environmentalists' protests. They actually count these tree farms as forest cover and the concession as part of reforestation. The more tree farms, the more green cover, they say. Another big lie, I say.
Now the concessions have expired, the landless in and outside the vicinity want the right to use that land through leasing. They move in to make their case. The investors refuse to leave. The local landless hate their peers from other provinces who want a piece of the pie. They fight. They kill each other. The forest authorities occasionally flex their muscles with crackdown attempts.
In summary, it's a mess.
In Krabi alone, about 70,000 rai under tree farm concessions have expired. A 2003 cabinet resolution ruled that part of the area should be given to the landless. That never happened. But it has given the landless grounds to legitimately occupy the land as a way to pressure forest authorities to obey the cabinet order.
The Plaipraya eviction reflects the problem of landlessness in the country. We tend to focus on scandalous disparity in land ownership when talking about the landlessness problem; how could we not when the top 20% own 325 times more land than the bottom 20%?
It is little known that the Forest Department is actually the country's biggest land owner. This is because the forest law written by forest authorities has stipulated that land without a title deed is to be owned and solely managed by the organisation as its sees fit. If this is not cheating, then what is?
Around 10 million villagers end up living in so-called national forests, turned into forest "encroachers", facing arrest and imprisonment.
Do you think this is fair?
Decades of land rights conflicts have led to many legal solutions — community rights, community forests and community land ownership.
They remain on paper and not in practice, as the centralised forest agencies refuse to comply.
Meanwhile, they continue to paint locals as enemies of the forests and themselves as forest protectors. All governments keep buying the lie. Including this one.
When the military junta seized power, one of its promises was to bridge the disparity gap and bring about peace. Will this be an empty promise? The Plaipraya crackdown is a clear answer.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is editorial pages editor, Bangkok Post.