The Call for Justice: From Bang Kloi’s Fallow Fields to Ka Boer Din’s Rice Paddies

For more than a decade of struggles and generations away from home, the Bang Kloi community are ethnic Karen people who have been living within the Thai state since possibly before the state became Thailand itself. The uses of the term ‘indigenous’ are still questionable by institutions, yet it has been widely accepted that indigenous people are often on the frontlines of where we must all re-consider our own actions, given the consequences of climate change. They are also recognized as people who hold knowledge of how to address some of these issues. 

Climate justice and environmental rights in Thai contexts need further scrutiny, to explore the political transitions where forests and mountains are demarcated, and the adoption of the Western conservation paradigm without regard for the pre-socio-economic contexts that existed within the sub-region, where people have been living in the forests and mountainous landscapes before the modern nation state came to claim the land.

This photo essay takes the reader on a journey through some recent struggles, of cases related to the conflicts between what we might call or question as ‘justice’. Are the forests (the protected status of certain areas designated by the state) impeding people’s lives, or is it the people who have invaded them? If we talk about the ‘just’ in climate crisis contribution in the sense of what and how we manage to live in the city through modern life facilities and technologies, what if we, the city dwellers, get to enjoy what we have because of the consequences and tradeoffs of someone else’s suffering somewhere else all along?

Whilst that question is still under debate as well as being explored by many academic studies and campaigns, the Bang Kloi people are not fighting alone, as many civil society organizations (CSOs) banded with Thai environmental and political activists and allies have launched a series of campaigns in the ongoing conflict between indigenous forest defenders and National Park/government officials tracing back to 1996. This is the year which can be considered as the baseline for understanding the relocation attempts by the state where many other notable concurrent events occurred afterwards [1], and many cases before that in the context of the Thai conservational paradigm. 

Events related to this case include the lawsuit of violence rendered by the state, where Kaeng Krachan National Park officers had burnt Karen houses and rice silos[2] in order to force and displace “forest-encroaching people” from their homeland, called Jai Pan Din (the ‘heart of the land’ in English), demarcated through annexation of the national park in 1981. More recently, the ongoing case of Mr ‘Billy’ Porlajee Rakchongcharoen, a Bang Kloi Karen former leader and activist, whose enforced disappearance demonstrated another form of ‘justice on hold’. The recent judgment [3] has taken a heavy toll on the family members of the disappeared.

The juridical processes in Thailand related to these issues are still ongoing with emerging questions. In the beginning of 2021, the Bang Kloi people carried out another attempt to go back to their homeland, but this was hijacked by the state in an initiative called Yuthakarn Pitak Pa Ton Nampetch (‘Operation Nampetch Watershed Defense’ in English), where the people who went back to cultivate their lands have been seized from the upper watershed by a coordinated operation between national park officers, the Thai military, and the national security sector. This shone the spotlight on the conflict between the government and the people, as well as drawing public attention during February and March 2021, which also coincided with Thailand’s youth movement uprising.[4]

Conconcurrent echoes: city actions to raise awareness

Within the environment of aligning political interests in Thailand, the campaign enabled many political/environmental activists to band together with allies across Thailand, under the hashtag #ภาคีSaveบางกลอย (Pha Khi Save Bang Kloi or ‘People’s order to Save Bang Kloi’), to mobilize and demonstrate about the issues at a time of peak political interest from the public.

As illustrated in the photos above, apart from the speech and music show to attract passers-by, there was also performance art representing how Bang Kloi people were arrested on the operations and within the demonstration area there were also installation art pieces exhibited from allied artists/activists. 

The most notable (left) one is of a half-cut red oil barrel with a paper mache human body inside, with the sign ‘Who killed Billy?’ in Thai, along with a performance at the climax of the demonstration – the burning of a straw doll (right), designated as the dummy for the government officer who was in the position of Thailand’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE).

In Chiang Mai province where ethnic studies and advocacy initiatives tackled ethnic and indigenous peoples’ issues, the province served as the hub to address its surrounding community issues on land, rights, and natural resources in northern Thailand for indigenous/ethnic minorities.

As the masses started gathering, those who participated in the demonstration joined in writing down the message for solidarity with Bang Kloi people (top left). For the climax activity, participants lit candles and arranged them into a heart shape which represents the word jai or ‘heart’ in Thai as in JaiPan Din, or ‘Heart of the Land’, which is the name Bang Kloi people call their displaced home (lower left).

Performance art in Chiang Mai included showcasing the situation Bang Kloi’s people have faced, with a gloomy atmosphere and some installation art pieces representing the artists’ expression and solidarity with other Bang Kloi people cluttered around the area (top right).

Chiang Mai environmental, ethnic, and grassroots activists delivered their speeches, with the proposition for the state to stop all ongoing violence against people of Bang Kloi (lower right). This ended the demonstration without any interruption from the police or officers.

The long path of struggle: lives on the crossing margins

But everyday life has to carry on. Many of Billy’s descendants and relatives still live, or in some sense must live on, with what they currently have. Some have chosen to stay as is, some still continue fighting for the better, and through all of the matters people still have to survive. This set of photos from Bang Kloi presents their road of struggle. 

In Bang Kloi community (which locals call Bang Kloi Lang, or ‘lower Bang Kloi’), people have been relocated to the post-cultivated area of the pre-existing ethnic community of Pong Luek. The Pong Luek people have given up their lands to the national park as part of their relocation for the newly-relocated Bang Kloi comers. This bridge is the only way Bang Kloi Lang people can access the island – the new village for Bang Kloi relocation is surrounded by the Phetchaburi River, where the only methods available are to cross the suspension bridge either by foot or motorbike for their daily life activities.

People are living further from the city, yet are close to malaria here. The local public health service officer applies mosquito repellant on a traditional Karen wooden wall house made of entwined bamboo. As per traditional Karen building, even though this method seems ineffective for such a structure, it appears to serve the idea that “the state has taken care of everyone” effectively (as part of its obligations to provide basic human rights in Articles 25 and 26 of the UDHR), showing that they are following protocols.

While a small malaria health center has been established across the river at Pong Luek community, during the rainy season, mosquito-borne diseases are quite contagious. Bang Kloi parents whose children are affected must carry their child a long way to access health care, as the hospital is located far beyond, and this requires more time and expense on the dangerous and muddy road to reach proper health services.

It is also the state’s duty to provide basic education to its citizens. Here in the school in the wilderness is where people usually learn their life lessons. But it appears that uniforms are still required. The students were too shy to talk to a stranger and were busy washing their uniforms for them to attend school. There are some houses without access to direct household water, and these students need to wash their clothes and clean themselves in the river. In 2023 there was a small infrastructure development project which enabled people to access water pumping and pipe systems for household usage. To address basic education for these new Thai citizens, a small remote school was established by Tor Chor Dor, the Thai border patrol police, with subjects such as Thai language, math, and civic subjects.

Here in Bang Kloi Lang, every moment in daily life asserts the sense of bordering, even the area itself is considered as the wilderness border, extending across the western forest complexes of Thailand and Myanmar. Yet the national border has been established everywhere, even embodied upon the soma of people who live here. Every morning, relocated community members who do not own land to cultivate work as sewing laborers for a ‘livelihood improvement project’ conducted by a foundation originally founded under the name of the Thai ruling class. This photo (above) portrays the everyday morning routines where workers are required to recognize their existence as part of the state by pledging allegiance to the Thai flag before reporting to work.

The state apparatus tends to work both within and without the marginalized on the multiple layers of their states of mind and body. Compared to urban dwellers and/or rural dwellers, hours of work usually do not require this kind of ritual or treatment. Whilst claiming that the pledge is for its citizens to re-recognize their bonds to the state, at the same time, it creates an alienation that emphasizes living on the margins.

Louder calls for justice

The rise of the youth movement occurred as part of the people’s demands for a just society and political transformation in Thailand after more than almost a decade since the 2014 military coup. The demand has not only increased public interest and the acknowledgement of democracy, but also occurs with the demand for a just society including regarding differences on culture, gender, and identity. The rising peak of human rights and democracy in this climate had become the main dialogue entailing countless conversations across every street corner and public spaces. The voices calling for justice in environmental affairs were yet to be raised at the same time as the dialogue for a better Thai society.

Whilst most of the demonstrations occurred in central areas where new voices and statements could be heard, people who live at the margins are yet unable to maintain their lives, becoming the most vulnerable people from impacts of the climate crisis. Mr. Jor Ka Bu, a father of five and defender of human rights and the right to maintain their livelihood as indigenous people, has to do whatever he can to keep himself and his family alive. The modern world will regard him as ‘unskilled labor’ or one among many that should not be considered to get paid well enough, despite his knowledge of agriculture, even though he (and many others) have potential and skills if supported by a more conducive and just environment. This photo was taken of him and his family harvesting rice grown in their small home garden patches. The enforced displacement does not allow them to cultivate enough crops for their living in the national park anymore.

Zooming out from Bang Kloi community, where the climate change frontliners still have to face the unequal treatment projected onto them in the name of development, Ka Boer Din community is another remote Karen ethnic community located in northern Thailand, in Omkoi district, Chiang Mai province. Ten years ago, their area had been surveyed and marked as a potential site for coal mining, as the state passed on the concession to a company. In 2018, the company claimed that the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) had been completed and they had the full right to conduct mining activities, adding that it would create a lot of jobs and opportunity for the locals. 

The photo (above) shows the view alongside the road towards the Karen community. Whilst it is the place for many who called it home, there are also those who wanted to turn 45.4 hectares of this beautiful land into coal mine quarries. 

The extrapolated landscape arise from the economic activities of Ka Boer Din people, whose identity has been described by ethnographers as tied to their ‘rotational farming’ cultures. They have described themselves as people who make their living by growing food from the soil for generations.

The candid shot taken from the beautiful verdant rice paddy fields in the rainy season is located within the valley near Ka Boer Din community, where many streams flow through. Whilst people here perceive that land as part of their lives, others only see the value of this land for the sub-bituminous rocks lying beneath.

For more than four years, the community have been fighting for the cause, protecting their home, facing prejudices and being called ‘stubborn people’ who stood against what is so-called ‘development’ defined by those who do not even reside here. The community, together with civil society allies, has now managed to file the case upon the false claim of the EIA, which outlined that “the forests here are already degraded and hence are suitable for mining activities”. This ongoing counter-discourse also draws media attention. Similar to Bang Kloi people, Ka Boer Din people expect to live peacefully on their lands, performing their preferable economic activities of rotational farming, paddy fields, and so on for their living and well-being.

These issues cannot be seen as unrelated and distant from the political climate in Thailand over the past decades, the decline of democracy, and the rise of the junta government(s) passing many schemes dedicated to sustaining power for its elites and the military government itself. This coal mine is also against the people’s will. Teung Khen Pheun Pha, or ‘Forests Reclamation Project’ led by former Prayut Chan-O-Cha’s government also affects many people’s lives who live in the margins. The Ka Boer Din activists joined the uprising youth democratic movement and used tomatoes grown from their homeland and the hands of the Karen people as their sign for protest.

Many youths nowadays have to spend their lives fighting against things they did not ask for. For Ms Pornchita Fahprathanprai, 24, nicknamed ‘Duang’, the Karen youth leader has faced big changes and challenges as she decided to become an activist to protect her rights, her people's livelihood, and her home.

Together with CSO allies, in April 2022 the Ka Boer Din movement sued the false claims within the outdated EIA, and the judicial process is ongoing. In the fourth year of the struggle, the community banded with its allies to launch an event on 28 September 2023 with a demonstration march and statement on continuing the fight until Thailand follows the coal phase-out trend other countries are undertaking, until they stop threatening the land and livelihood of the people. They demand their full rights to have quality lives and well-being.

The resounding need for justice on the front lines of climate change

The issue of climate change is a common cause we all contribute to, but not in the same amounts. Many of the worlds’ largest climate and environment forums have called these communities ‘frontliners’ in this fight, being the first affected by the climate crisis, but also as the key people with the knowledge to solve it. Whilst Ka Boer Din people can be seen as lucky enough to be able to have good allies and issues which many civil society organizations have contributed to, the Bang Kloi people’s situation might not be as lucky, as what they have been facing is threatened, rooted and stigmatized, deep down to their rights to living and even to their own bodies. They have had to fight and struggle starting from accessing basic necessities.

How are they able to have the energy to fight for their rights, whilst being hung to struggle upon basic human rights and are still not yet able to regain their human dignity? How come we pass on this duty and leave them alone to fight, those who contribute the least so-called carbon footprints, to keep going like this? How come we can ignore the situation of oppression right before our eyes? 

Justice in climate cannot be achieved without the world seeing that all people deserve the same recognition and understanding of what should be considered as ‘just’.
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Jarik Krobtong is a Master’s degree student in the Social Science Faculty in Chiang Mai University’s Ethnicity and Development program. He has been pursuing research on the issues about the conflict and contestation of the different ways of defining nature and the Thai conservational paradigm. This photo essay is part of his ethnographic journeys.


Disclaimer: This published work was prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. The views and analysis contained in the work are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the foundation.  The author is responsible for any liability claims against copyright breaches of graphics, photograph, images, audio, and text used.
 

Notes

[1] See the Cross Cultural Foundation for more on assorted cases of human rights violations.

[2] The case between the Bang Kloi Karen leader Mr Ko-i Meemi and the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) was finalized in 2018, with the Supreme Administrative Court’s decree that the DNP must pay compensation of approximately THB 50,000 to Ko-I Meemi along with 6 villagers from burning their houses and rice silos. Ko-i Meemi passed away in the same year at the age of 107 years old. 

[3] Activist Mr ‘Billy’ Porlajee Rakchongcharoen disappeared in 2014 and the former chief of Kaeng Krachan National Park, Chaiwat Limlikhitaksorn, was found guilty of corruption and misconduct, and sentenced to 3 years in jail from 3 out of 5 accusations. Charges of enforced disappearance were dismissed against him and other national park staff, with statements of insufficient concrete evidence from the prosecutor. DNA found in remains in April 2019 could not be comprehensively identified as Billy’s. 

[4] During 2019–2021 and in the midst of 2022 after the disappearance of Thai human rights activist Mr Wanchalerm Satsaksit who sought refuge in Cambodia, waves of Thai student youth movements rose to demand change. Initially named the Free Youth Movement and conducting big political demonstrations at Democratic Monument after a long period of stagnant politics from the most recent coup, this event led Thai society into a state of continual agitation from many sprouting movements.