Land Reform in Northern Thailand

My job here is supposed to be about helping with management issues, but I do need to understand what the organization does to help out. Plus, one of my functions is to help with networking with related organizations. As part of that, I've been checking the internet for information on sustainable farming, land reform, etc. in Northern Thailand.

I've talked about land reform issues before, always with the disclaimer that I don't really understand very much about the context and details. The same disclaimer applies here.


As I got to work today, there was a large group of people in the compound, many villagers of a hill tribe group I didn't recognize. I was told they were Palong. (I'm having trouble finding non-tourist oriented websites that discuss the hill-tribes, this one seems relatively neutral.) Further questioning of people at the office revealed that a ruling on a land dispute from 2547 (it's now 2551, that that would have been 2004) was handed down this morning and these villagers were found to have violated law when they occupied the land around 2500. There was a meeting going on in the meeting room and I asked if I could listen in. It turned out that Mi - who sometimes uses the other desk in my office - was running the meeting. He invited me in, and later during a break said I could take pictures, but I pushed for him to ask the people in the room first before I did.

The talk was of how many rai (.4 acres) of land, money, number of families. It is so easy to slip into filling in the missing details with my own preconceptions, but I'm trying hard not to let that happen and focus on the objective things I know or what people tell me. Even then I have to double, even triple check to make sure I understood the Thai correctly.

Our brains naturally try to make sense of things and put them into context. My most immediately related brain cells clicked onto what I know about when American Indians' land was made available for sale. Outsiders could buy the land destroying the community and unity of the tribes. People were tempted with quick cash, and as some tribe members sold their land, the tribes soon became alienated from the land. Is that what was happening here? It sounded like they were talking about selling prices and that Mi was talking about the necessity of the group holding together. But maybe I was imagining all that. I'll try to talk to him after they end the meeting today.

Later: So before pushing the publish post button I went back out and asked more questions. The court found that they occupied the land illegally, but they will be able to stay on the land. They've been there over 40 years and there really is no place for them to go. Furthermore, the land belongs to the government, not to corporations or other individuals who are trying to claim ownership of the land. So, I asked, if they get to stay on the land, why are they appealing? Answer: So that they are not ruled to have violated the law. My informants are gone and so I can't ask the other questions I still have. I'm assuming this is in hopes of setting precedence for other land disputes, but I'm not sure.

In my networking internet search, I did find this report on land reform in Northern Thailand which matches the issues I wrote about earlier. Then I was trying to give some context to the land conflict issues and this report does that. Here's an excerpt:

Misappropriation of land in Baan Hong district
As the economy grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s, financiers began looking for secure long-term investments for their accumulating capital and found that buying up rural land areas was an ideal investment. Such land could be acquired cheaply, issued with title, with every likelihood in the economic climate of the times that it would swiftly rise in value. In Lamphun province, titles for extensive areas of land were issued during the height of the economic growth period in 1990-1993 without the knowledge of local communities who became aware of the alienation of their community lands only when fences started appearing in the fields.

The land conflict I witnessed before was in Lamphun and this sounds very much like that situation. (It turns out that it should sound familiar because it was written by two people - one Thai, one foreign - who worked here in the past. But no one here even knows this English report about their work exists. So, one thing it turns out I'm helping out with is putting together a set of articles in English that relate to what they are doing. A few people here can read these with difficulty, but if they have volunteers like me, they should get these to bring them up to speed a little faster.)

The entire 15,000 râi in Baan Hong District described above, that was previously held in common by local communities and that was supposed to be allocated to local people, is now titled under the names of non-resident companies and wealthy individuals from outside the community. Local farmers have vigorously challenged the legality of the title deeds. Villagers state there was no notice of intention to survey the area and issue title either posted in the village or announced over the village loudspeaker. Research into the title deeds shows that many were issued on the basis of incomplete survey information, sometimes under false names, and from non-existent or long dead sellers (in at least one case, the space for the name and address of the seller was simply left blank).
Thus, villagers in Baan Hong were prohibited from using their community land, around which fences were constructed in or around 1990. Seeing such fences and boundary markers appearing in the lands they had traditionally claimed for village use, people from Sritia village rose up in protest at the illegal transfer of this land to outsiders. A youth leader involved in the protests was shot and killed by unknown gunmen.

I realize that you could say, OK, that's one side of the story and it seems a little extreme. My sense is that in the past (and I did work in rural Thailand forty years ago so my sense isn't totally imaginary), poor farmers, particularly hill tribes, had no power whatsoever and if they got to the courts they were sure to lose. And today's decision was only partially in favor of the villagers and wasn't filed by people who were claiming to own their land. So things that happened until recently were pretty blatant because those in power never expected to be challenged. But local activists, supported by international NGOs have come onto the scene to help the victims.
My organization, the Northern Development Federation, is working with the farmers to secure the rights to the land. The people in the pictures above and in the Chiang Dao series of posts are the people whose rights to the land they farm - and in many cases for a couple of generations - are challenged.