On Jan 13, Natural Resources Ministry inspectors Porntip Pancharoen and Nisanat Sathirakul visited the controversial Bang Saphan District for the first time in a year after the Mae Ramphueng Conservation Group had called on state agencies to look into land documents issued for the site of Sahaviriya Steel Group's planned smelting plant.

Chair of the Conservation Group Withoon Buaroi, former employee of the 8th Mangrove Forest Development Station, who together with local residents had called for the scrutiny and set up their own surveillance guarding the local peat swamp forest which was originally part of the construction site for over a year now, said that they wanted to ask the project developer how the land documents came about.

The company insisted the documents were issued legally, claiming to have received cooperation with authorities including the local land office and Bang Saphan District Chief. But the villagers had petitioned the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and Bang Saphan Land Department to conduct a probe. A land survey was conducted on Dec 7, 2007, and recently the Land Department Director-General issued an order to revoke one of the land documents.

Order 3413/2007 stated that the Land Department had examined land document Nor Sor 3 Kor No 417 for a piece of land of 36 rai and 51 square wah currently owned by Prachuab Pattana Development Ltd Co, and found that land document Sor Kor 1 No 94 for another piece of land had been forged for the issuance of the above Nor Sor 3 Kor No 417; therefore, the Nor Sor 3 Kor is illegal, and is to be revoked.

Withoon said that that was one of 17 plots of land which have the same problem, and the lands are part of the peat swamp forest, highly acidic and therefore unsuitable for agricultural use, which was a qualification claimed for the issuance of land documents. According to aerial photographs taken in 1976, 1992, and 2002, the area was a forest without previous traces of farming. And adjacent to this land is the 1,200-rai Mae Ramphueng National Park which is set to be declared a nationally significant wetland. The NHRC is in the process of preparing documents to be forwarded to the Land Department to consider more revocations, he said.

Supoj Songsiang, a resident in Mae Ramphueng, said that he made signs and banners for a living, and he was asked by other villagers to make signs and banners opposing a request by the company to rent the public cemetery [for the construction of the smelting plant]. So he came to know about the project, and he followed and studied it with other villagers; in the process, he and others were sued by the company for trespassing.

"For a year and 5 months now, we have been in trouble. No authorities or community leaders have ever taken care of the matter, but always claimed to be ‘neutral'. Bang Saphan District Chief said at a monthly meeting among village heads in this month that our people who were hurt in the scuffle at Mae Ramphueng TAO on Dec 19 last year were from Thab Sakae [another district]. The injured were from Mae Ramphueng, and on the contrary the attackers with red t-shirts were mostly from somewhere else," Supoj said.

"The conservation group has struggled to find irregularities with the lands, to study the smelting plant project and its EIA report for more than a year, and we are well informed of the adverse environmental impacts, especially to fisheries and agriculture. But those delinquents have been together for less than two months, with no obvious leaders, no content supporting the project. They just gather together, drinking, fooling about, and making spikes and wooden clubs to attack people. They call themselves Bang Saphan Development Group. The district chief called them ‘local project supporters'," said Supoj.

Related news:

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• Injured opponents of Sahaviriya's smelting plant complain with the National Human Rights Commission
• Sahaviriya Steel Giant's Supporters Attack Conservation Group
• Martial law imposed to stifle grassroots environmental movements in Prachuab Khiri Khan
• Conflict over Sahaviriya's planned smelting plant likely to escalate
• Strong local opposition to Sahaviriya's expansion
• Steel industry giant faces local opposition against its smelting plant in Prachuab

Translated by Ponglert Pongwanan