A Voice Unheard: Frustration takes its toll
May 17, 2004
Hai Khanjanta, 76, cannot estimate how many nights she has spent camping in front of Government House in Bangkok over the past 27 years, demanding compensation for the paddy fields she lost when waters from a government-built dyke flooded her family's land. The Thai government seized her land for the public[interest], but won't allow Khanjanta to stay on public space to seek compensation. . . . . Read More
| Pennapa Hongthong |
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| The Nation |
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| Bangkok, Thailand |
May 14, 2004
An elderly lady has smashed a govt-built dyke following 27 years of official refusals to compensate for her loss of land. Hai Khanjanta, 76, cannot estimate how many nights she has spent camping in front of Government House in Bangkok over the past 27 years, demanding compensation for the paddy fields she lost when waters from a government-built dyke flooded her family's land.
Most recent was last January when she joined villagers affected by the Pak Mool Dam. After 1,000 city officials led by Bangkok Governor Samak Sundaravej broke up the camp early on the morning of January
29, Hai promised that she would never again come within the city's boundaries.
"The claim by the governor that the land [in front of the House] we occupied belongs to the public, not us, was so fierce that it pierced my heart. The government seized my own land for the public[interest], but won't allow me to stay on public space to seek compensation," she says.
A mother of 10 and grandmother to 54, "Grandma" Hai then turned back to her homeland in Natan sub-district, Ubon Ratchathani, to reoccupy the land, which she says belongs to her.
Her family has harboured rage since 1978, when three paddy-field plots went under the water that had accumulated after the Office of Accelerated Rural Development (OARD -now defunct) built the dyke in
1976 to block Huay Ra Haa creek in Natan sub-district and provide tap water for three villages.
Hai had inherited a 14-rai plot from her parents. She bought a 16-rai plot as the result of sheer hard work with her husband, and the third 29-rai plot belonged to her brother-in-law.
About 400 rai of land owned by 21 villagers - including Hai's three family plots - were lost.
Officials claimed the villagers were willing to "devote" their personal land for the sake of the public interest, and they offered no compensation.
Moving on to April 20, 2004, and Hai left a pile of papers at home -empty promises from government committees in the double digits, and "meaningless" Cabinet resolutions related to her long fight for
justice.
Hai walked with hoe and hammer in hand to the dyke, followed by her kin.
She started digging away at the earth and breaking the dyke with the hammer.
The reason was simple.
"I just wanted to release the water from my farmland. I wanted to farm rice on my own paddy fields for the coming [harvest] season,"
Hai says.
"No more time waiting for the government," she says, insisting that she and her family had never agreed for the OARD to turn her family's three plots into a reservoir.
Hai and her extended family spent four days breaking the dyke and April 24 became the happiest day of her life as it was the first time in 26 years she had actually seen her land.
A huge volume of water was released through the gap.
Sitting recently on the partly demolished dyke that has been temporarily repaired by Natan's Tambon Administration Organisation
(TAO), she says 27 years of dialogue with the government brought her nothing but empty promises.
"The government only cheated me," she says.
For more than 10 years, Hai has travelled between home, Ubon Ratchathani's City Hall, and the Interior Ministry - which then supervised the OARD - demanding compensation.
The family sold 12 buffaloes and six cows and another small plot of land in the Mekong basin to finance the trips.
During the fight, the Khanjanta family made a living renting land plots from other villagers.
At times, Grandma Hai and her children have been construction workers in Bangkok.
The only answer she got was: "It is not the government's policy to compensate for any small-scale development projects."
Considering the fight for justice too big a task for one person, she joined the Assembly of Northeastern Small-scale Farmers in the early 1990s, and fought beside them for about six years.
Unfortunately, the situation did not improve.
Her membership brought her only more documents containing empty pro- mises from governments that her problem would be considered.
According to Hai, the assembly did not have sufficient bargaining power so she quit the group and temporarily stopped fighting her case to make a living instead.
In 1999, the third round of fighting began. Hai joined the Assembly of the Poor (AOP), a gathering of victims of mega-development projects from around the country.
She hoped the power of the AOP would help the government hear her voice.
Five years with the AOP, the largest grassroots organisation in Thailand, and Hai reached the conclusion that the assembly was not the answer.
Many issues fall under the AOP umbrella, and her problem seems small when compared to other people's dilemmas. When yet again her request for compensation was frozen out by the government, Hai quit the AOP.
Grandma Hai says the day Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the assembly's campsite for lunch during his early days in power was one of her most exciting.
"I saw him from the back and did not get to talk to him.
"But he is the first premier I have seen since I starting fighting for my rights during the administration of General Prem Tinsulanonda," she says.
The force of the city officials' crackdown on the AOP campsite on January 29 this year not only destroyed the camp, but also broke Hai's resolve to wait for the government any longer.
She returned to her village with documents that promised the Office of Land Reform for Agriculture (OLRA) would provide her with a new plot of land in substitute for her original tracts. The documents
said however that Hai must pay the OLRA for the land.
"The government took my land for free, but now I have to pay for the new land," she says. "That's unacceptable."
Hai says she was forced into find her own solution. The place where she belongs is not the House or the provincial city hall, she adds,but her farmland, and demolishing the dyke was the only way to take
her to where she belongs.
But the TAO has reported Grandma Hai to the police, seeking legal action against for destroying tambon property.
"I don't care. Before breaking the dyke we [her children and grandchildren] agreed that it was the only way to reclaim our land. I don't want the dyke. If it belongs to the TAO then the TAO must get it off my land," she says.
The Office of the National Human Rights Commission now handles Hai's case, and negotiations between state agencies continue.
The latest resolution is that the OLRA would provide her with a new land plot for free.
The dyke remains, and it will continue occupying Hai's land until she gets a satisfactory answer from the government.
"If the government can't provide me with new land for free, I will break the reservoir again," she says.
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