Phuket sea gypsy mass sit-in wins expanded walkway to religious shrine

Darawan Naknakhon

PHUKET: More than 50 officers from the Chalong Police, Royal Thai Navy and defense volunteers were once again called in to keep the peace between villagers and construction workers at the sea gypsy village in Rawai yesterday (Mar 4) as a mass sit-in prevented the workers from building a wall at the site.

More than 150 villagers, mostly women and children, gathered near their ceremonial Balai shrine, located on land claimed by Baron World Trade Co Ltd, after workers moved into the area with a backhoe.

The workers began moving large rocks into place that would have prevented the villagers direct access across the land that Baron World Trade is trying to build 33 villas on, but would have left the sea gypsies unfettered access via the two-meter-wide walkway along the beachfront as ordered by Phuket Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada.

Full story: http://www.thephuketnews.com/phuket-sea-gypsy-mass-sit-in-wins-expanded-walkway-to-religious-shrine-56477.php

-- Phuket News 2016-03-05

The fastest way for local people to actually get the local authorities to do what is needing to be done is to "block" something. Roads are the best of course. The do-nothing guys and the police will hustle right out there and wai everyone and will agree to about anything to get that road open again.

This was not a "road" of course but the effect was the same and the people got what they needed. I don't know why the Thai's don't do this all the time!

I thought they had already been offered a walkway along the beach front, but had rejected it because they wanted to walk through the middle of private land owned by others? (Caveat - The land may yet be proven to have been obtained illegally)

The gypsies never had a real claim on this land, it is not part of their traditional village, they just used it for recreation and to pass through to claimed sacred sites.

The gypsies never had a real claim on this land, it is not part of their traditional village, they just used it for recreation and to pass through to claimed sacred sites.

Most indigenous people don't have formal claims on land they have been using since the beginning of time.

The Urak Lawoi (อูรักลาโว้ย) are no different here.

The gypsies never had a real claim on this land, it is not part of their traditional village, they just used it for recreation and to pass through to claimed sacred sites.

Most indigenous people don't have formal claims on land they have been using since the beginning of time.

The Urak Lawoi (อูรักลาโว้ย) are no different here.

How did you decide they have been using this land since "the beginning of time" ? You should try researching the history of these people as I have.

This is not the land where burial sites up to one hundred years old have been found, it is next door on the abandoned Piscina Resort land.

The fastest way for local people to actually get the local authorities to do what is needing to be done is to "block" something. Roads are the best of course. The do-nothing guys and the police will hustle right out there and wai everyone and will agree to about anything to get that road open again.

This was not a "road" of course but the effect was the same and the people got what they needed. I don't know why the Thai's don't do this all the time!

Blocking the roads is the French farmers' answer to any problem - works for them!

Most indigenous people don't have formal claims on land they have been using since the beginning of time.

The Urak Lawoi (อูรักลาโว้ย) are no different here.

How did you decide they have been using this land since "the beginning of time" ? You should try researching the history of these people as I have.

Dear Mr Croc,

Thank you for your interest in the matter and my apologies for the rather imprecise nonscientific wording.

With regard to the presence of the Urak Lawoi’ in the region, I am refereeing to authors like Johnjud (1982) and the Thai Royal Academy (1969) who respectively have been arguing that the Urak Lawo’ have been on the coast of the Andaman Sea (in the what is nowadays the Southwest of Thailand and Myanmar) since ‘ancient times’ [sic.] and first migrants to the Peninsula more who arrived there than 1500 years ago. This is a very long time before Tai people, the decedents of modern Thai people had left their mountains in a place that we nowadays call Guangxi, indeed a very very long time before the said Piscina Resort.

In more recent time, I specifically refer the works of Kongmuenpet et al. (2001) and Granbom (2005) who have argued that the Urak Lawoi’ have been the first people living on Lanta Yai, and their history there dates back more than 500 years. These are place that were neither a part of the Sukhothai Kingdom and the Ayutthaya Kingdom.

It has been shown that the nomadic nature of the historic Urak Lawoi entailed the usage of coast areas within the region. In Puhket Urak Lawoi settlements that are a result of a various colonization efforts by the Siam state are more than 200 years old and can easily be understood as a perpetual encroachment of indigenous spaces. This has been exorbitant intensified since the 1990s, as demonstrated by Wongbusarakum in her PhD thesis submitted at the University of Hawai'i.

For further studies, I recommend Wongbusarakum (2001) as a starting point.

Best wishes,

M

I thank you Mr Morakot for your well mannered and well researched reply.

I don't dispute your claims that the Urak Lawoi’ people have been in the general region for a lot longer than the Thais and certainly much longer than any westerners. And I thankyou for providing various reference works to illustrate your words.

My knowledge and experience with indigenous peoples didn't arise from studying other peoples writings in University. Instead, I worked for more than 6 years with the, then, Australian Aboriginal Affairs Department. During this period I visited every major Aboriginal community around Western Australia, made many friends, received gifts of artifacts, attended ceremonies and took part in discussions about land rights.

Later, in 20+ years working with Immigration, I came in frequent contact with the Indonesian version of the sea gypsies, the

Sama-Bajau people. I've been aboard traditional fishing vessels, and have travelled from Australia's north to their homelands in West Timor and Sulawesi. I became quite familiar with their lifestyles and customs.

Returning to the discussion at hand, I am looking at it from a microcosm point of view, with regard to current rule of law.

I consider these people have no right to the land next door to their village. (current investigations into title legalities aside)

You seem to be asserting that an age old right of occupation (land rights) supersedes that law and the sea gypsies should be able to claim any parcel of land in the region that takes their fancy. Using that ideology 24 million non-Aboriginal people should leave Australia and return it to the Indigenous people who arrived from elsewhere many years earlier.

I've started the exodus.

Warmest Regards

OC

Returning to the discussion at hand, I am looking at it from a microcosm point of view, with regard to current rule of law.

I consider these people have no right to the land next door to their village. (current investigations into title legalities aside)

You seem to be asserting that an age old right of occupation (land rights) supersedes that law and the sea gypsies should be able to claim any parcel of land in the region that takes their fancy. Using that ideology 24 million non-Aboriginal people should leave Australia and return it to the Indigenous people who arrived from elsewhere many years earlier.

I've started the exodus.

Not at all. This is not what I'm saying so ever.

I am saying that these are incompatible logics. Historically for indigenous people "land rights" is an unknown concept, because in their logic a "legal" claim to land cannot made. Land can only used. This is very similar to pre- Enlightenment" times in the Western world when people saw themselves merely as custodians of the land.

Solutions are absolutely not straight forward. They need to be tailored to each locality and above all need to be based on a sound and well-founded understanding of the past as well the broader historical events.