The Provincial Court of the northeastern province of Sakon Nakhon sent two villagers to prison for encroaching into national parks while six others received suspended jail term.
According to Esaan Land Reform News, the provincial court of Sakon Nakhon Province on Wednesday 9:30 pm, 21 October 2015, sentenced Surat Sriswasdee to six-year imprisonment and Kong Phonsakban, Surat’s aunt, to two-year and six-month imprisonment for encroaching into Pa Dong Chom Phu Phan and Dong Kracher National Park in Sakon Nakhon Province.
The two are villagers of the embattled Chad-Rabeab community of Phu Phan District in the province, where 31 villagers, including the two, have been charged under the same offense.
Boonsom Phonsakban, Kong’s husband, also received similar jail term, but the court granted him bail with 270,000 baht bond. Surat and Khong, however, were sent to prison after the verdict was read because the family could not find enough money to request for bail for the two.
As for Surat, the court, however, halved the jail term from six-year imprisonment to three-year.
Six other villagers were also sentenced to imprisonment. Nonetheless, the court suspended the jail term for two years.
About 50 people from the embattled village came to support the accused at the verdict hearing on Wednesday morning.
Earlier on 12 June 2015, the Provincial Court sentenced Pakdee Sriswasdee, another Chad-Rabeab villager accused with the same charge, to nine months in jail and 10,000 Baht fine. However, the jail term is suspended for two years.
According to Chai Thongdeenok, a member of Thai Ban Phuraisit Sakon Nakhon, a local group which promotes land rights for the locals in the northeastern province of Sakon Nakhon, since the enactment of the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO)’s Order No. 64/2014, a lot of villagers’ rubber plantation in the province have been cut down by the authorities as the rubber farmers have been accused of trespassing into protected areas.
He mentioned that in August last year the authorities cut down the rubber trees on 20 Rai (0.032 sq.km) of land in the area which he planted.
After the junta issued Orders 64/2014 and 66/2014 to protect and reclaim Thailand’s protected areas in June 2014, many poor communities countrywide have been evicted by the authorities.
According to the NGO Coordinating Committee on Development (NGO-COD) of the Northeast, since last year, 103 small-scale farmers have already been accused of encroaching on protected areas and almost 1,800 in the Northeast have now been prohibited from using their farmland and are about to receive court summons for alleged encroachment.
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