Asia Times: Hill tribes' anger boils over



	July 29, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Hill tribes' anger boils over
By Boonthan Sakanond

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - A long-simmering conflict between highland ethnic groups, lowland farmers and state authorities over the use of natural resources is coming to a boil in northern Thailand.

The tensions are such that without sincere government efforts to address the grievances of the hill people, there is danger of violent confrontations in the near future, analysts warn.

There have been more than enough signs of the impending trouble. In May, more than 10,000 members of various minority ethnic groups staged an unprecedented protest in the northern town of Chiang Mai, and nearly clashed with forestry officials and groups of lowland farmers opposing their demands.

Hill tribe demands are two-fold. First, the highlanders want an end to eviction by Thai forestry officials of their people from agricultural plots in the forests, and a clear policy on granting them permanent access to forests. The ethnic minorities also want a settlement to the long-pending problem of their being denied their promised Thai citizenship despite living in the country for generations.

In the conflict over land usage, hill tribes have found themselves attacked on two fronts. The lowland farmers accuse the hill tribes of destroying ecologically sensitive watersheds in the uplands and threatening water supply to those living downstream.

The Thai Royal Forestry Department (RFD) blames the hill tribes for destroying forests through shifting cultivation. Under this practice, people cut and burn a given forest area, farm it for 1-3 years, and leave it fallow and move to a new area, usually returning to the old plot after 10-15 years.

In their defense, the ethnic groups say they have co-existed with forests for generations without destroying them, and accuse corrupt state officials of harassing them and violating their human rights. "They [officials] have threatened to make arrests, saying we are tribal migrants, even though they know we settled in our villages more than 30 years ago," a tribal leader at the site of the protest was quoted by Thai media as saying.

Joining the fray on behalf of the hill tribes are a group of well-known social science academics from Chiang Mai University, whose research on the subject of community forestry supports the highlanders' claims.

"There is a lot of recent research that shows that shifting cultivation, with certain precautions, can be an ecologically sustainable form of agriculture," asserted Pratuang Narintrankool Na Ayudhaya of the Chiang Mai-based Center for Ethnic Studies and Development.

Pratuang says the hill tribes play an important role in preserving biodiversity in the forests and preventing annual forest fires.

Social science academics say that the highland people are being made into scapegoats for the deforestation of Thailand that has been wrought mainly by timber companies and state-funded activities like road and dam building.

Thailand's forest cover has dwindled from more than 60 percent a few decades ago to just 27 percent now. The forestry department has designated the remaining forests as national parks - and now wants the highlanders living there to vacate the areas.

Apart from the conflict over use of forest resources, ethnic highlanders are also butting heads with state authorities over the slow process of granting citizenship to their people.

Since the adoption of government policy to grant Thai nationality to ethnic minorities along the country's borders in the mid-sixties, only 26 percent of the tribal population of nearly 800,000 has received national identity cards.

Thailand's ethnic peoples are divided into nine tribal minority groups and account for more than 1 percent of the country's 62 million people. Without proper citizenship papers, ethnic minorities are subject to harassment and extortion by police officials. Their movement between different provinces of Thailand is restricted.

Government officials blame the slow pace of granting citizenship on the influx of large numbers of migrants from neighboring countries, which they say makes it difficult to distinguish new-generation highlanders from older ones. The major ethnic groups like the Karen, Hmong, Yao, Lisu, Akha and Lahu are found in Burma, Laos and southern China as well.

Academics blame these problems on the "racist" tendencies and policies of successive Thai governments, which they say treated ethnic minorities as "uncivilized" and only looked upon them as a problem to be solved.

Historically, Thai government policy relating to ethnic groups in northern Thailand has been framed with a view to preventing them from becoming a threat to national security, curbing cultivation of opium in the hilly terrain along the Burmese and Laotian borders, and preventing deforestation.

Given this treatment as second-class citizens, highland ethnic groups face major problems.

These include the inability to participate in the larger Thai socio-economy on an equal basis, limited access to government services, lack of land rights and citizenship, and increasing disruption of social systems, leading to drug addiction, prostitution and gradual loss of cultural identity.

"In the process of development, it is always the small people, the powerless people, such as women, children, and ethnic minorities who have to sacrifice and suffer," noted Dr. Chayan Wattanaputhi, director of the Ethnic Studies Center at Chiang Mai University.

He says that although many government officials have good intentions, they do not have enough respect for the indigenous knowledge and ways of the highland people. "For them, development means economic improvement, law and order, and the integration of these ethnic communities into the modern state. It means the expansion of state control over natural resources," he explained.

The tension generated by the highlanders' protest has been defused for the time being by assurances from the Chuan Leekpai government that a new community forest policy, allowing them to live in the forests, will be put up for public debate soon. The government has also promised to finish by 2001 the process of granting citizenship to eligible highlanders.

Still, there is apprehension that none of these promises may be implemented properly. "There are nearly a million ethnic minority people living in the forests of northern Thailand. If anyone tries to throw them out there is bound to be resistance," stated a Thai political analyst in Bangkok.

Unlike neighboring Burma, where ethnic groups have been fighting for autonomy and even independence, he points out that in Thailand the agitation has been only for greater acceptance into Thai society. The Thai government, he says, would be wise to sort out the problem of the highlanders well before they start imitating their brethren across the border.

(Inter Press Service)

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