One woman's fight to save her village

Chicago Tribune

(KRT)

LAEM POM, Thailand - The woman struggles to the front of the room on her knees, always keeping lower than the government officials seated before her.

Ratree Kongwatmai's demeanor is deferential, but she also is at war. Since the tsunami just over a year ago, she has led the fight for her village, battling a powerful company that claims it owns the valuable beachfront property on which Laem Pom sits.

"We really want to keep our land safe for the next generation, since we have all risked our lives tremendously," she tells the country's interior minister. "Unless you wish to see us risk our lives any further."

The interior minister laughs nervously, along with villagers in the audience. Ratree smiles and adds, only half-joking: "If you can't negotiate nicely with company officials, could you please harass them?"

The battle over this ocean property pits Thailand's past, including a tradition of squatters' rights, with its future, expected to rely on foreign tourists spending money at trendy beachfront playgrounds. Disputes between villagers and developers have been common in Thailand and Sri Lanka since the December 2004 tsunami.

The disaster exacerbated these existing tensions in the tiny village of Laem Pom. Villagers accuse developer Far East Co. of preventing them from looking for their loved ones the day after the tsunami. Ratree, 32, who lost her daughter, father and sister in the rush of water, shifted anger over her loss onto Far East, which reportedly wants to build a resort on the land.

So reviled is Far East that villagers have named stray dogs after company officials.

Laem Pom was founded almost 40 years ago, when Thais moved here to work in a tin mine; after the mine closed, villagers stayed. Laem Pom remained small, with only 52 homes and a few dirt roads.

No one objected until the mine sold the land to Far East Co. in 2002. The company tried to evict the villagers but had little luck - until the tsunami washed everything away.

The dispute over Laem Pom is in court, but a legal battle could drag on for years. The government is trying to reach a compromise sooner. Complicating the issue are Thai laws allowing squatters to claim land rights after 10 years, even if someone else owns the land on paper.

The government, obsessed with protecting Thailand's international reputation, would like such disputes to be settled. The struggle over Laem Pom and other villages is one of the only remaining tsunami-related controversies dogging the country since the disaster. In many ways, recovery in Thailand has been successful and relatively swift.

In Phang Nga province, which suffered 4,255 of Thailand's 5,395 confirmed deaths, officials already have rebuilt the 2,000 homes destroyed by the tsunami. Foreign volunteers have helped clean up beaches and build new boats. Fishing is almost back to normal. International money has paid for a tsunami memorial, including a wall with victims' names.

But Laem Pom's dispute shows no signs of abating. Not with Ratree keeping the pressure on the government and developers.

A former fish vendor with a 6th-grade education, she has marshaled international support to rebuild homes on the disputed land. Diplomats and foreign volunteers have flocked to help Ratree. And this month, she even won a meeting with one of the top officials in Thailand, the interior minister.

Ratree and other villagers accuse Far East workers of setting up a barbed-wire fence before the tsunami that ended up strangling several villagers as the water rushed ashore.

They accuse company security guards of continual harassment, of poisoning dogs, making threatening phone calls and firing guns into the air. They call company workers "the mafia" or "gangsters."

Far East officials have declined to comment on specific charges, although security guards deny harassing villagers or preventing them from searching for loved ones. The company offered to move the villagers to smaller parcels of land, farther from the ocean. But most villagers declined.

The company's lawyer says the courts will decide the case. He and other company representatives refuse to say anything else.

Tracing ownership of the land or the company, allegedly based in Thailand, is almost impossible through public records in the country. But several officials and villagers say the company is owned by an influential member of parliament known to use intimidation and violence.

At one community meeting, Opas Svetamani, the vice governor of Phang Nga province, swore when another official told him the name of the parliament member who allegedly owns the land. Opas then pulled Ratree aside.

"You have to be careful from now on," Opas told Ratree in a low voice. "I know you are a good person, helping the community and leading people to be a strong team. But I don't want to lose a good person like you."

Before the tsunami, Ratree never attended a protest. Now she organizes demonstrations, speaking with a microphone and wearing T-shirts with messages such as "distribute the land fairly."

She keeps pictures of her daughter's dead body in a binder, along with a plastic bag containing scraps of her daughter's yellow underwear, all that the girl was wearing when found.

She has turned her grief into revenge. "I've lived all my life on this land," she says. "I lost my loved ones on this land. I have to keep this land."

Her parents moved here almost 40 years ago for the same reason as everyone else - to work in the tin mine.

After the mine closed, villagers turned to fishing and farming, raising vegetables and pigs. The villagers had government-recognized addresses, phone lines and electricity.

But Thailand was changing. In recent years, the resorts that had swallowed Phuket, about 70 miles down the coast, started to move north. Five-star hotels gobbled up chunks of pristine beach. It's easy to see why any developer would be attracted to Laem Pom, with its secluded, white-sand beach framed by palm and pine trees.

The Far East Co. bought the land from the mining company in December 2002, villagers and government officials say. Villagers were sent eviction papers. Court cases were filed. The company set up a barbed-wire fence near the village.

Still, villagers did not worry. They believed that the law supported them because they had lived on the land without objection for more than 10 years.

Then the tsunami came, wiping Laem Pom off the map. The company moved in.

On that morning, Ratree had driven her motorcycle to a nearby village, trying to persuade a new resort to buy fish from her. Her husband had gone to his construction job.

After the monstrous wave struck, Ratree and her husband immediately thought of their 8-year-old daughter, Panipha, and what she had said before they left:

"Please don't go to work today," she had told them, hugging her father's legs. "Please stay with me."

Both Ratree and her husband made their way back to the village, but nothing was left. They found each other, but no one else.

The next day, according to Laem Pom villagers, the land was off-limits. "No trespassing" signs had been put up, and Far East security guards patrolled the area.

All told, the tsunami killed 43 of the 139 people in Laem Pom, including six of Ratree's family members.

Laem Pom villagers were not the only ones facing land disputes after the tsunami. Three other villages fought against private developers; the government said more than 50 villages would have to move from land it claimed was public.

"The tsunami wiped everything out," said Noppan Promsri of the Save Andaman Network, a coalition of Thai relief groups that has helped Laem Pom. "So for companies and the government, it was seen as the perfect time to go in and clean up and say to villagers, `It's time for you to move.' They thought the villagers wouldn't have the energy to fight anymore."

In Laem Pom's case, they could not have been more wrong.

At first the villagers stayed in a refugee camp. But Ratree and others plotted their return.

On Feb. 25 the villagers came back as a group, with foreign volunteers and the news media in tow. They set up tents. With international attention came money; the Thai ambassador to the United States sent about $50,000 in American donations to buy material to rebuild 10 houses.

"They have been living here for generations," said Kasit Piromya, who retired as ambassador in September. "It's tradition in Thailand. And suddenly, a big politician, a big baron, came up with the title. It should not have been allowed."

Over several months, villagers and volunteers built 33 new houses where village homes stood before. The company backed off any strong-arm tactics, likely because of the publicity, and chose instead to pursue its claim in court. That allowed the villagers to set up makeshift power poles and string lines to connect illegally into government power supplies. Villagers bought mobile phones because the government would not install phone lines. They dug wells.

Today, the threat from the company lurks everywhere, making it difficult for villagers to relax or go back to work. Security guards sit in a house just outside the village. Signs blare a variety of warnings: "This is private land. No entry ... This land is still in court." "No entry or building here." "Don't collect any garbage from this area."

Ultimately, there's no guarantee that the villagers will be able to stay. "Flip a coin," says Phiraphol Tritasavit, director general of the department of lands for the government. "In court, they have a 50-50 chance."

But at the meeting, Interior Minister Kongsak Vantana listens patiently as Ratree outlines plans for Laem Pom. He promises a crying woman that he will investigate her claims of intimidation by big business.

Kongsak tells Ratree that Laem Pom will get government power and phone service. After the meeting, Kongsak says he wants to help the community stay where it is.

Ratree seems satisfied with Kongsak's promises, but she plans to keep fighting. After a year of battle and trying to win help from the government, she says she does not trust people in power or anything they say. "He's fair," she says. "But I want him to stay that way."

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.