Tsunami Survivors Fight For Land Rights

[churchill]

Thailand's Andaman coast was flattened by the tsunami that ravaged much of Southeast Asia in 2004. In the fishing village of Baan Nam Khen alone, some 2,200 of the village’s 4,000 inhabitants died when the village was washed away. The shocked survivors spent several weeks in inland resettlement camps, waiting to return to the places where their people had lived for generations.

When they finally returned to the places where their homes had been, however, they were in for a surprise. It wasn't the utter destruction of their villages—they had expected that—but the chain-link fences around their land.

In Baan Nam Khen, returning villagers were greeted with a sign that read "No Entrance-No Fishing-Do Not Take Coconuts." Armed guards stood nearby, ready to enforce these edicts. The villagers, who were still trying to deal with the loss of their homes, families, and friends, were now being forced off their land as well.

NGO representatives on the scene advised them to seek legal aid, but the villagers mostly saw the attorneys as the same type of urban, educated people who were trying to take their land. So at first they squatted on the land in direct defiance of the guards, fences, and signs.

For members of Thailand´s indigenous coastal communities, the tsunami accelerated a process of displacement that had begun more than two decades before, as longtime residents were pushed aside to make way for the development of international resorts and the infrastructure that supports them.

Despite generations of residency, the villagers lacked the legal knowledge to officially claim their land. But following the tsunami, the villagers were ready to make a stand. With the help of NGOs that assisted them with legal issues, they won back much of their land and gained legal rights to it for the first time in history.

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http://www.morungexpress.com/analysis/40522.html