In 2011, the then park chief Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn led a team of armed soldiers and forest rangers to torch their bamboo huts and rice barns, accusing them of being drug racketeers, illegal immigrants and sympathisers of the Karen Army in Myanmar. Hit with empty promises and deprived of dignity and traditions tied with rotational farming, they went back home.
#TYRANNY SAVE GAME EDITOR FREE#
The officials had promised they were free to return home should they not receive enough land to till. In 1996, national park authorities started evicting the indigenous Karen forest dwellers from Bang Kloi and resettled them in a village downstream. The result is great suffering and strife nationwide. They are punished by law: eviction, arrest, and imprisonment. Insisting that the forests must be free of humans, the law outlaws millions of people who have been living in the rainforests here for generations. Under the forest law written by the forest authorities, all forest land in the country is under their sole control. The traditional rotational farming system is vilified as a form of slash-and-burn cultivation although it has kept Kaeng Krachan forest healthy for generations. Yet the Department of National Park, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation (DNP) outlaws them, accusing them of being illegal immigrants. Their isolation has made them one of the country's most primitive highland groups. Like ethnic Karen forest dwellers in other parts of the country, the Bang Kloi Karen subsist on a form of traditional rotational farming governed by nature worship that has become a source identity and pride. Jai Paen Din has been on the military's map since 1911. It was also an ancient maritime trade route across the peninsula. Archaeological evidence shows human habitation there since prehistoric times. The Bang Kloi indigenous people need to be saved, and so do we.īang Kloi is located deep in the Kaeng Krachan National Park in an area called Jai Paen Din, meaning the heart of the land. We and the forest dwellers are in the same boat. It's why the mandarins dread democracy and decentralisation and fully support the military and the status quo to maintain their own power. This bureaucratic authoritarianism is at one with the military dictatorship. The draconian forest law only applies to the poor and powerless, not the powerful agro giants with deep pockets. The annual toxic haze will be here to stay. There is no chance that the authoritarian, corruption-prone system can protect them and save us from an avalanche of natural disasters.įorget clean air too. We need forests to combat global warming, now humanity's greatest crisis. If this dictatorial system continues to prevail, there is no hope to free the country from the deep mess we are in. Why? Because the draconian forest law is part of the militarism and bureaucratic dictatorship that is oppressing the people and holding back the country. If the Bang Kloi forest dwellers face a crackdown, they are not the only ones who lose, but every one of us. The stakes are high for the autocrats so a forest crackdown against the Kaeng Krachan Karen is just a matter of when. If they fail to keep the usually meek indigenous forest dwellers in line, what to do with the other 10 million people in land rights conflict with the government? It is also a last-ditch effort to restore their cultural pride, identity and dignity.įor the forest authorities, it is a matter of face and power. It would have happened already to punish the forest dwellers' defiance had it not been for the #SaveBangkloi social media campaign in support of the indigenous people's ancestral land rights.įor the forest dwellers, returning home is not only a matter of survival. Right on cue, Kaeng Krachan National Park authorities denounced them with video clips showing patches of forest which they had allegedly cleared, to drum up prejudice against the hill people as forest destroyers.Ī crackdown is imminent. Given the lack of farmland, village lockdowns and a life of near-starvation, the pandemic has made it clear that going home is the only answer for their safety and survival. It's about time! The ethnic Karen forest dwellers made their exodus home in mid-January amid a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The photos of the late human rights defenders Tatkamon Ob-om (left) and Porlajee 'Billy' Rakchongcharoen (right) were exhibited during a ceremony in memory of their fight to protect the rights of indigenous Karen forest dwellers in Kaeng Krachan forest. Photo by Sanitsuda EkachaiĪfter two decades of hunger and hardship - and a life without dignity in a prison-like resettlement village - a group of indigenous forest dwellers decided to return to their ancestral home deep in the Kaeng Krachan jungle in Phetchaburi province.