Thailand Petition

[outsider]

ADD YOUR NAME in support of the

SOUTHERN PEASANT FEDERATION OF THAILAND
which faces MURDER and EVICTION by CORPORATE LANDGRABS

The Global Women’s Strike was recently invited to Thailand to speak on a living wage for women at a Women’s Exchange / MAP Conference in Chiang Mai. We met representatives from the Southern Peasant Federation of Thailand (SPFT) who are doing outstanding work against great odds. Watch what they are saying here (23 min).

SPFT is in court on 3-4 May.

We urge you to support their right to land. Please add your name as a concerned individual or organization to the demand below by emailing back to us at gws@globalwomenstrike.net or calling 020 7482 2496, and circulating this widely.

DEMAND
We urge the Thai authorities to:
1) implement the Supreme Court ruling in such a way that the SPFT Klong Sai Pattana farming community in Chaiburi district, Suratthani province, is allowed to stay on this land.
2) thoroughly investigate, arrest and prosecute the perpetrators of the murders of four SPFT members and the recent attempted murder of a fifth member.

BACKGROUND



Except for land preparation and spraying chemicals, rice operations are largely undertaken by women. Women contribute around 60 % of the total labour used in production and are largely unwaged. 57.26% of farming land is State or public owned. 1.5 million families rent the land that they till; 811,892 families are subsistence or landless farmers.

The Southern Peasant Federation of Thailand (SPFT) is formed by six farming communities totaling about 500 members. They are demanding their legal right to land in Chaiburi district, Suratthani province, on which they have been living for eight years. The land is managed by the Agricultural Land Reform Office. They share the land so that each family has one acre to build their house and 10 acres to cultivate communally. They grow rubber and palm oil as well as vegetables, banana, pineapple and sugar cane, which they can eat or sell in the market. Three previous governments agreed that the farmers are entitled to stay on this land. But multinationals are occupying the land illegally and local officials have gone along with this instead of defending the rights of the farmers. People are being intimidated and even killed. Four members of the SPFT have been murdered in the past five years, two of them women. They were shot by M16 weapons and stabbed in the back of the head – a symbolic gesture aimed at destroying their spirit. A fifth member was shot and nearly killed in April this year. SPFT is demanding a thorough investigation and the arrest and trial of the perpetrators.

Women are central to this movement. They do the caring and farm work that ensures the survival of the community, as well as the work normally expected of men, such as security at night and dealing with the authorities, especially when the situation is desperate.

A recent Supreme Court ruling in favour of the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) ordered the Jiew Kang Jue Pattana Co. Ltd. and its “dependents” to vacate the land they were illegally occupying. But through an illegitimate interpretation of the ruling, ALRO is now pressing for the farming community (the Klong Sai Pattana) to be evicted by considering them “dependents” of the company. The 83 community members are asking the Krabi provincial court to order their right to stay by acknowledging that they are not “dependents” and are entitled to land titles from ALRO. The next court hearing is on 3-4 May 2016.

Section 44 of the interim constitution brought in by the military junta which took power in 2014, grants the government absolute powers and impunity: civilians have no right to free speech, to organize or assemble, can be detained in secret locations, tried in military courts, and cannot file complaints or appeal. The local authority wants to use these powers to evict the farming communities. SPFT has submitted an open letter to the authorities urging them to consider the impact of Section 44 on the rights and survival of subsistence farmers. If evicted they will be landless and homeless.


SPFT speaks for subsistence farmers worldwide whose survival is threatened by profit driven multinationals which are destroying our livelihoods, communities and environment.