Parks’ protectors must recognise Karen rights, experts say

Parks’ protectors must recognise Karen rights, experts say

By PRATCH RUJIVANAROM 
THE NATION

A file photo shows National Park officers at Ban Bangkloibon inside Kaeng Krachan National Park, during the 2011 operation to burn down the village and forcibly drive the Karen villagers out of their ancestral land.

THAILAND must follow the example of neighbouring countries and honour the constitutional right of Karen people in Phetchaburi’s Kaeng Krachan National Park to live on what has been their ancestral land for centuries, say academics.
 

Kittisak Prokati, a law lecturer at Thammasat University, said the Constitution recognises the communal rights of all indigenous groups in Thailand. Forcibly evicting the Karen from their land in the village of Ban Bangkloibon violated that right, he said. The action was not rendered legal simply because the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department (DNP) was in charge, he said.

Kittisak made the comments at an academic seminar yesterday at Thammasat, sponsored by the Cross Culture Foundation.

Speakers discussed the “Communal Rights of the Karen Community in Kaeng Krachan National Park and the Supreme Administrative Court’s Verdict”. 

The court ruled last year that the DNP acted unlawfully in burning down Karen homes in Ban Bangkloibon and forcing them off their ancestral land inside the national park. It found that DNP officials failed to follow proper legal procedure and acted excessively harshly. 

Kittisak lamented that the verdict failed to acknowledge or order the preservation of the communal rights of the Karen.

Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn, then head of the national park, led officials in May 2011 in “Operation Tenasserim” to forcefully drive the Karen from the rainforest. It labelled the Karen, who had lived in the park for centuries, as “illegal migrant forest encroachers from Myanmar”.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30361940

 

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