Thailand: NHRC warns land redistribution plan will lead to conflicts

The Treasury Department's plan to reclaim one million rai of idle land from state agencies and allocate it to landless farmers could lead to severe land use conflicts, the National Human Rights Commission has warned.

The cabinet in June instructed the department to reclaim one million rai of its land leased to state agencies and distribute it to needy farmers.

About 98% of the department's 12.5 million rai of land is occupied by state agencies. Most of the land is in the hands of the Defence and the Agriculture and Cooperatives ministries. The scheme is aimed at increasing the amount of land available for plantations of fuel crops for the production of ethanol.

However, human rights commissioner Sunee Chaiyarose, said the idea would only worsen land disputes between the farmers and the department. Instead of going ahead with the land distribution, she said, the department should settle disputes over land ownership with the villagers first.

''Ownership of many land plots is unclear and allocating these problematic land plots will only worsen the conflicts,'' Ms Sunee told a seminar on the land policy held by the Senate yesterday.

The NHRC had received a number of complaints from villagers about the Treasury Department's occupation of land. Of all land right-related complaints submitted to the agency, 49% involved conflicts between villagers and the Treasury Department, followed by conflicts with the Defence Ministry (42%) and the Transport Ministry (6%).

Boonlue Charoenmee, chairman of a farmers' cooperatives in Nakhon Pathom province, said that farmland could fall into the hands of non-farmers under the scheme because the department lacked the proper mechanisms to screen eligible farmers.

''Rich people will likely be able to rent farmland from the department since they have money,'' said Mr Boonlue. The farmland rental rate would also probably jump once the land was reclaimed by the department, he said.

The department recently reclaimed land from the Agriculture Ministry and it increased the rental rate sharply from 180 to 1,400 baht.

Prapas Pintoptaeng, a lecturer from Chulalongkorn University's faculty of political science, warned the government not to rush the implementation of the scheme. The mechanism should be designed to ensure that the land would go to landless farmers, not wealthy people or politicians.

The academic said the scheme could end up repeating the mistake of the Sor Por Kor land distribution project for farmers, under which many plots ended up in the hands of the rich.
Veeravut Sripariya, of the Treasury Department, defended the scheme saying that it had already come up with a reliable system to ensure that the land would go to needy farmers.

Regarding land rights disputes between the department and the villagers, Mr Veeravut said it would follow the court rulings in each case.

''If a villager wins a case, then the department will return the land to them,'' he said.

Date: 10 September 2008

Source: Bangkok Post