The National Library of Australia is currently acquiring copies of the Burma Law Reports (BLR) and Myanmar Law Reports (MLR) from 1948 to the present. The BLR running to 1962 contain Supreme Court and High Court rulings. From 1962 to 1973 they variously contain Chief Court rulings, Court-Martial Appeal Court rulings and Special Criminal Courts’ Appeal Court rulings. From 1974 to 1988 they contain Central Court rulings, and after that time, Supreme Court rulings. The reports are written in either English or Burmese up to 1962, then increasingly in Burmese. From 1970 onwards they are exclusively in Burmese.

The reports are a valuable new addition to the library’s Asian collection and are hoped to be of use not only to researchers concerned with the law of Burma/Myanmar but also with its politics, government and modern history, as well as with those of other countries sharing Common Law traditions.

[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]

In the Critical Asian Studies article we outline the available evidence for recent evictions in northern Thailand.  Here is a brief extract:

Our search of primary and secondary sources uncovers only a very small number of cases of eviction in the uplands of northern Thailand over the past twenty years:

Akha and Lahu villages in Chiang Rai Province: A number of Akha and Lahu villages in Chiang Rai Province were burned and their inhabitants deported to Burma, according to press reports. Some of these incidents appear to have been linked to a major watershed rehabilitation and rural development project closely associated with the Thai queen. Later expansion of the project led to the seizure of land from three Akha villages in the same area. …

Doi Luang in Lampang Province: Another famous, and much discussed, case took place in 1994 when four upland villages in Lampang Province were moved out of the newly declared Doi Luang National Park, despite claims that they had lived there for forty years prior to the declaration. … National park officials started putting pressure on them to move from about 1990. Development and welfare budgets to the village were cut; new house construction was forbidden; agricultural expansion was curtailed; farmers leaving the village to sell produce were harassed and maintenance work on the road to the village was halted. Considerable funds were spent on establishing a relocation site but farmers found that the agricultural land was poor quality and incapable of supporting their expectations of a reasonable livelihood. …

Tungpaka village: In 1999, journalist Julian Gearing wrote about the destruction of the Lahu village of Tungpaka in Chiang Mai Province by forestry department officials. In this “unreported raid” on a small Lahu village “thirteen houses, as well as crops were destroyed…leaving 60 people homeless.” Gearing quotes one Tungpaka resident as saying that the village was evicted so that the area could be cleared and a resort built. Gearing goes on to state that the villagers “live in fear they may now be ousted from their refuge at the foot of the hills, an hour-and-a-half’s walk from the remains of their 60-year-old village.” Plodprasop Suraswadi of the RFD (mentioned above) publicly denied that forestry officials had played any part in the destruction of Tungpaka.

Hmong villages in Nan: Some of the most potent symbols for the vulnerability of upland residents have come from incidents in Pua district in Nan Province. In mid 2000 lowland villagers complaining about downstream water contamination, destroyed the orchards, field huts, and sprinkler systems of Hmong farmers who were accused of having established their orchards within the boundary of a national park. Forestry officials reportedly played a part in the raids: “Witnesses reported that the demonstrators were also guarded by over 200 border patrol policeman, who were fully armed with machine guns. All of the demonstrators were provided with machine saws, fuel and food.”

Lahu in Lampang Province: In 2003, three hundred Lahu were forcibly evicted from four villages in Pha Thai Cave National Park in Lampang Province. Local authorities justified the eviction on the basis the villages had served as staging points for drug smugglers.

Harassment and arrest: There have also been reports of the arrest and legal harassment of villagers farming in conservation forest zones. Pinkaew quotes a Northern Development Foundation statistic that “in the year 1998 alone, there were more than 20 cases of people being charged as ‘illegal encroachers’ by forestry officials in Chiang Mai.” The village of Pang Daeng in Chiang Mai Province is a prominent case of legal harassment. Pang Daeng residents have been arrested and charged with conservation forest encroachment on a number of occasions since the late 1980s. According to one account, up to twenty villagers were detained for three years in the early 1990s. A later case brought in 1998 was dismissed when the villagers satisfied the court that they had not destroyed the forest. In 2004 almost fifty villagers were arrested and faced similar forest destruction charges. There are similar cases of Lawa arrested, reportedly for taking firewood from the forest.

…

Overall our conclusion is that upland residents in northern Thailand currently face a very low risk of actual eviction. The cases we summarize above probably account for fewer than five thousand people over a twenty-year period (or about 0.5 percent of the estimated upland population living in forest reserve areas).

We acknowledge that this list may be incomplete. To continue the conversation about this issue we would like to ask New Mandala readers if they have evidence of other village evictions from northern Thailand (upper and lower north). We are hoping to put together a consolidated list of cases where villages in the north have been forced to relocate. We recognise that this is also an issue in other parts of the country and if our current data collection proves productive we will be expanding our efforts to other regions. In order to keep the task manageable we are interested, at this stage, in cases from 1980 onwards.

If you want to contribute some data it would be good to include information on the following:

• Province, district and village (where known); 
• Date or dates of eviction; 
• Number of people, or number of households, evicted; 
• Reason for the eviction; 
• Government (or non-government) agency or agencies involved; 
• Background to the case; and
• Any sources (online or otherwise) that provide further details.

Official statistics and its critics

Numerous academics and activists have criticized official statistics as over-estimating forest areas. The true forest cover (meaning old-growth forests?) has been regularly said to be somewhere between 10 and 20% of the country. Now, even forest officials and members of the Cabinet are critical of official statistics.

In 2001, Thailand’s forest authorities published, with little enthusiasm, the results of their 2000 remote sensing forest survey.  All previous surveys had consistently shown a decline of forest cover: 1991: 26.64%, 1995: 25.62%, 1998: 25.28%. The rate of deforestation was slowing down, but the trend was still there. The 2000 forest survey however concluded that forest cover occupied 33.15% of the country. Had forest areas jumped from 25 to 33% in just two years? Forest officials, member of the Cabinet and academics quickly pointed out that the 2000 survey used a different methodology from all previous surveys: the Landsat TM images that were visually interpreted by technicians were now printed at a scale of 1:50 000 instead of the usual 1:250 000. The logical conclusion was simple: there was no real expansion of forest cover. It was simply that the numerous small patches of forest could now be detected and mapped. Officials also pointed out (and made sure that it be printed in Forestry Statistics of Thailand) that the 2000 survey was only preliminary and no ground checks had been conducted. Even after ground checks were conducted, the results remained preliminary!

Since 2000, yearly surveys have been conducted. So far, only the “preliminary” results of the 2004 survey have been made public. They show that forest areas stood at 32.66% and thus have resumed their rather slow decline (appx 0.3%/yr). They also show that significant areas have been reforested, particularly in Phetchabun and Loei province.

Reforestation: an artefact?

Most authors have so far assumed that the apparent reforestation is simply due to a methodological artefact. Is it really so? The artefact thesis predicts that most of the area mapped as reforested will be comprised in patches of very small size or of such geometry as they could not be previously detected. Comparing the 1995 and 2000 forest maps reveals, however, that large and easily detectable patches of apparent reforestation do exist (figure 1). Indeed, 55% of all reforested areas are in polygons larger than 2 km². It is reasonable to believe that patches at least 2 km² in size were mapped in previous surveys. Patches this small are easily detected by the human eye at a scale of 1: 250 000. Moreover 3% of the forest cover in the 1995 forest map is comprised of polygons smaller than this. Clearly the artefact explanation does not hold water.   

Figure 1. Lower North and the margins of the central plains: change of forest cover between 1995 and 2000 according to official forest maps mapped a 1: 2 000 000 scale (8 times the scale of forest surveys prior to 2000). Notice the very large size of some of these patches.

As part of my dissertation research on changes of forest cover and agricultural land hectarage, I visited and reconstructed the history of numerous patches reported as having recently undergone deforestation and reforestation (i.e. according to the 1995, 2000 and 2004 forest surveys). To do this, I relied on interviews with farmers and local officials as well as aerial photos and satellite images. The region of study is located in northern Phetchabun and surrounding areas (portions shown in lower right of Figure 1). My results demonstrate that natural forest expansion occurred in the 1990s and early 2000 (and not of course only between 1998 and 2000). This reforestation took the form of natural secondary forests (mostly deciduous forest, figure 2) regenerating in rainfed areas on land previously logged and/or dedicated to maize cultivation (Figure 2 and 3). Tree plantations have also expanded but they were often not classified as forest cover in official forest surveys. Without going into details and subtleties, it appears the key factor leading to this expansion of forest cover is the decline of the profitability of maize cultivation. Losing money and time, many lowland farmers decided to stop cultivation and this led to natural regeneration. (I have also found abandoned farmland under natural regeneration in Hmong communities, but the cause is different and this cover smaller areas). This voluntary “abandonment” created opportunities for forest authorities to permanently seize the land and create new protected areas.

Figure 2. Former maize fields (uncultivated since the early to mid 1990s), Lom Sak District, piedmont of the Western Phetchabun Range. Picture taken at 50 cm from the ground.

Figure 3. Secondary forests growing on former rainfed maize fields in the surroundings of a village in the hills northeast of Lom Kao town, Lom Kao district. Since ~ 2006, abandoned fields in the area have been reclaimed and cleared to cultivate rubber, maize or establish teak plantations.

Since approximately 2006, a second wave of deforestation is under way in the study region. Contrary to official forest reports and media articles, this does not involve old-growth or perfect forests (paa sombun), but rather secondary forests, often established on previously cultivated land. This wave has been so far driven by middle and upper class individuals who have bought abandoned land and financed its clearing to establish large rubber and teak plantations for productive or speculative purposes. This is, however, not occurring on all land recently reforested as it is concentrated in non-demarcated legal forest land (paa thamada), outside protected areas and national forest reserve areas. In such areas, land titles can be emitted if you have the right connections.

Assumptions and their revision

Officials in the RFD, DNP and the government are unhappy with the results of their forest surveys. This can be seen in numerous ways. As mentioned earlier, since 2000 all results have been labelled preliminary. Also, to my knowledge, Ploprasop Suraswadi is the only official who has publicly said that forest areas have expanded, and he did so on only one occasion. All other official statements I have heard have instead emphasized methodological problems or the continuing decline of forest areas. Moreover, I was told that on two occasions, the discovery of an expansion of forest cover led to a second analysis of the data. It appears that in one case, it was made clear to the technicians that net deforestation should be found. If these decisions were effectively taken — and I am not sure about that — I am convinced they were taken in good faith, officials were truly convinced that forest areas could not possibly expand in Thailand. However, before labelling forest surveys as biased, readers should note that during my fieldwork I have found official maps to be reasonably accurate. While errors were found, I could not detect any systematic bias. In some cases, I also had a look at the Landsat images and could understand why the error was made. In any case, one can easily understand why some government or forest officials would be tempted to influence the results of official surveys. Publishing results nobody believes would greatly affect the prestige and credibility of their institution. Forest authorities are competing for financial resources. High forest officials are probably worried that such apparently positive news could also lead to a reduction of their budget. Remember that the latter has been significantly reduced from 1998 to 2005. 

Our assumptions regarding the evolution of forest areas need to be re-evaluated. As I have shown, forest areas (including secondary forests) have expanded during the 1990s and early 2000s, at least in parts of the country. This recent reforestation, as well as the second wave of deforestation which followed, deserves to be better studied in order to evaluate its causes as well as the various social and environmental implications. My results and the comparison of official forest maps strongly suggest that the areas where most recent forest cover change occurred are not located in the highlands of the North, but rather in rainfed, hilly areas of Central Thailand, the lower-North and Northeastern Thailand. By focusing all attention on highland areas where ethnic minorities reside, academics, activists and officials are perhaps missing changes of much greater magnitude and social significance.

Jean-Philippe Leblond is a doctoral candidate at the University of Montreal

Amnat phunthi lae attalak thang chatphan: kanmuang watthanatham khong rat chat nai sangkhom thai 2 (Power, space and ethnic identity: cultural politics  of the nation state in Thai society) (2008) by Yot Santasombat et al (ISBN: 9789740541387). Published by the Princess Sirinthorn Anthropology Center, this 339 page volume is the result of field work by a new generation of researchers whose ideas challenge existing orthodoxies in Thai thinking. Here is the contents page and introduction for interested readers.

[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]

Yet, the “success” of the Projects are more discursive than an actual manifestation of villagers’ everyday experiences. Based on the fieldwork for my MA thesis, conducted in a Royal Project site in northern Thailand in Summer 2007, I suggest that the Project successes should be understood as being constructed through two moments of blindness: blindness on the financial and agricultural-related distress of host farmers/employers, and on the chronic poverty of migrant workers onto whom the employers; financial burdens are off-loaded. In my research site, which I refer to by the pseudonym of Doi Soong or Doi Soong Royal Project, “local” farmers belong to the Hmong minority group who increasingly hire Shan migrants/refugees from Burma for a majority of the work.

Public discourse in Thailand uncritically represents the upland peoples’ lives as “improving”, giving credit to highland development schemes. For instance, the Bangkok Post (July 2007) quoted Paul Michael Taylor from the Smithsonian Institute as saying, “Thailand has had great success in abolishing opium cultivation… while respecting the culture of traditional opium-growers and offering them appropriate alternative sources of income…The Royal Project is worthy of study by everyone interested in sustainable development…”. Similarly, Peter Cummins wrote in the Chiang Mai Mail (November 2002) in relation to Royal Projects that “For the youth themselves, the former degradation and exploitation through drugs and other evils are now but evaporated smoke from some distant ‘pipe dream’!”. Various market researchers also echo such beliefs, many of them writing within the framework of orthodox development based on the assumption that increased annual sales/income of the Project improve villagers’ livelihoods. Very little attention has been paid to the everyday experiences of villagers, and the migrants who now constitute a major part of the Royal Project work force.

My findings reveal that the Hmong villagers in thisRoyal Project areas are in financial distress; about 75% of them are in debt. Although rural indebtedness is not a unique phenomenon, this sheds light on the gap between public representation of the Project and the villagers’ experiences. Moreover, many villagers express discontent over the Project’s policies, or rather policy failures. These policy failures include the Project’s arbitrary refusal to buy vegetables from the villagers in the name of environmental safety standard called Good Agricultural Practices, inconsistent buying practices, often lower price than market price, differential provisions of advanced technologies in villages within the project area, land use restrictions, and late payment to the villagers, which usually leaves the villagers with inadequate money for re-investment. Increasing insistence on organic farming, which is more labor-intensive and costly, is adding to the farmers’ distress, especially when input prices and family expenses are raising. (Note: I hope to post to New Mandala on these policy failures in more detail soon).

Despite disappointments with agriculture, many villagers do not leave farming or diversify income sources because the exit seems to have been blocked by discrimination against minority groups in urban areas, as well as the farmers’ unfamiliarity with non-agricultural livelihoods.

Yet, the already uneasy relationship between the farmers and the Project has not turned into hostility, and the farmers’ distress does not appear much in public discourses for two reasons. The first is the construction of the Hmong as “governable subjects” through the naturalization of Royal Project authority. That is, the Hmong in Thailand have historically been constructed as non-Thai immigrants; a hill tribe who are destroying Thai forests. This sets up a political relationship in which the Hmong are treated as “outsiders” and “problem markers” whose modes of thought and action need to be governed. In response, the Project comes as a national institution to protect the nation, whereas the Hmong as “outsiders” are to obey the Project. Moreover, the Project has been historically established as a hegemonic institution to the extent that going against its current is politically limited. Thus, politicians, researchers and the media rarely publicize any Project shortcomings. Consequently, the villagers’ distress hardly appears in the public discourse. This relationship, however, is not that new.

What seems to be new, or perhaps, to attract little public and academic attention in this specific spatial and eco-political context is the role of the migrants. As mentioned earlier, the Hmong hire Shan migrants/refugees as cheap labor (100 Baht a day to the Shan as opposed to 150 Baht for Karen,
Lisu and Hmong laborers), with extremely short terms of employment (daily, 2-3 days to a week, on call, hire-and-fire, etc as opposed to a the more secure employment of other laborers). By employing migrant workers, the farmers have intensified agriculture, growing crops more times a year (2-3 times as opposed to 1-2 a year). In a way, the Hmong off-load their financial burden onto the Shan in their struggle to capture enough profit to survive.

What is intriguing here is the way the nation-state incorporates people differently. In particular, in the discursive construction of the Project’s success, the Hmong are incorporated into the nation-state (although outsider status is maintained in other contexts). Yet, the Shan are treated as mere “outsiders”, which justifies the second blindness. That is, the Shan’s poverty and even their labor contribution to the Project’s operation is completely erased from the representation of the Project. Given that the Shan are treated as “extra-legal” subjects, the existence of the Shan is not supposed to be talked about (in order to keep off the police radar).

As such, the Shan are erased from the economic relations between two official parties — the Hmong and the Project, the latter exporting/marketing the formers vegetable crops. If the Shan laborers were brought to the fore as part of the production process, the “success” of the Royal Project would be devastated, as the Shan are living in the conditions that the Hmong used to live in the past — the reference point against which today’s Royal Projects claim their success.

For instance, an information booklet from the Royal Project states:

The people living in the highland areas, Thailand’s “hill tribes”, were desperately poor. Whether or not they were growing opium, they did not have enough food to eat or proper shelter. They were uneducated and permanently sick with the diseases of poverty… People who visit the highlands now will find peace and prosperity…. The senses of abject poverty are gone. Visitors to some hilltribe villages can find families living in well-made housing with electricity and satellite television with a new pickup truck parked outside… their children are attending secondary schools and university in town, can drink clean water… (p.4, no date).

This kind of narrative is reflected in various policy papers, reports and even academic studies as well as Hmong respondents’ narratives of village life in the past and present. While the Hmong now live in better houses, have electricity and televisions, and their children are having better educations, the reverse is true for the Shan.

If we bring the Shan, as actual producers of vegetables, into the picture, or if we take into account the presence of the Shan and their labor as part of the production process, we can see that the Project’s framework of poverty (not enough food, proper shelter, education, etc) is still there, which raises all manner of interesting questions about the reputed “success” of the Royal Projects.

Khwamsamphan chao muang nua lang kap thahan yipun samai songkhram lok khrang thi 2 (Relations Between Residents of the Lower North of Thailand and the Japanese Army During World War 2)  (2007) by Jiriporn Stapanawatana (ISBN: 9789749939550). The author studied history at Monash University. The present work reflects research in 2006 and 2007 at Naresuan University in Phitsanulok. Although not voluminous (186 pp.), the substantial bibliography and appendices are very useful. The book is also well illustrated with black & white photographs. Here is the abstract in English.

[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]

A scientific team, consisting of members of the Gibbon Conservation Alliance based at Zurich University and the Kunming Institute of Zoology, as well as staff members of the Nangunhe National Nature Reserve, carried out a survey in all Chinese forests reported to support white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) during the last 20 years.

The species was last observed in 1988 in the Nangunhe Nature Reserve in south-western Yunnan province, and their loud, melodious calls were last heard in 1992. After two weeks of field work, the 14 member Swiss-Chinese team realized: As a result of continued forest destruction, fragmentation and deterioration, as well as hunting, this gibbon species is no longer part of the Chinese fauna.

- Extracted from “White-handed gibbons extinct in China”, Innovations Report, 19 May 2008. 

This report got me thinking. 

Too often on New Mandala I’m sure we fail to account for some of the very important, and compelling, research done outside the social sciences and humanities in the broad area of Asia that we deal with.  This is unfortunate.  Serious research in all the sciences – but particularly in medicine, ecology, zoology, geology, meteorology, hydrology, agronomy and related areas – is of genuine interest to many New Mandala readers.  The recent and wide-ranging discussion of Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia is an excellent example of the way that open discussion of specialist fields allows everyone to learn something.

So, if there are scientists (of whatever stripe) who work in mainland Southeast Asia who would like to bring some of their research to a wider audience please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  We are always on the look out for guest contributions and there is no reason why we can’t incorporate scientific perspectives.

In my last post I discussed the decline of Chiang Khong’s Wat Luang port and the Wat Luang Boat Operators’ Association. How can we understand such change in the context of the subregional development of river trade? First, the large long-distance Lao cargo boats that cross the river to load at Chiang Khong do not conform to the regulation of the Association anymore. The power of “micro-regulation”, that Walker discussed, has now turned to the state-run Port Authority at a new deep-water port (above) with the regulations determined by its head office in Bangkok.

Prior to the completion of the new port, the Wat Luang boat operators already had some concerns. As Walker described in The Golden Boat, the operators were concerned that the future relocation to the new port may bring them into conflict with rival cross-river boat operators. Some, according to Walker, “reassured themselves with the thought that the new port would serve only the anticipated river trade with China and that relatively small-scale Thai-Lao trade would continue to pass through Wat Luang’s port.” However, what they could not foresee at that time, (and this was not mentioned in The Golden Boat) was that the power of border regulation would alter and shift from their hands. For the Lao and Chinese boats today, to moor or not to moor at the Wat Luang port is determined by the Port Authority’s decision and not the former monopoly-holding Wat Luang Boat Operators’ Association.

Though the regulating activities of border trade are no longer in the hands of local frontier authorities and may, to a greater extent, shift to a new regime of subregional development agencies, a period of readjustment has been occurring. This is characterized by stricter, rather than more lenient, state regulation. And, no doubt, new forms of collaboration could emerge. It is during this crucial time that we see the arrival of another new local agent deploying the changing pattern of trade into a more formal style to their significant benefit. That new agent is a local customs broker which will be discussed in my next post.

Before the construction of a new deep-water port, Wat Luang port was a significant location for the operation of local Thai cross-border boats between Chiang Khong and Houaysai (Laos). During the peak business period, the port would be filled with more than 40 small cross-river boats busy crossing the border every weekday carrying Lao traders to Thai soil and returning with loads of purchased products for sale and household use. The boat operators even established their own Wat Luang Boat Operators’ Association to increase their organisational efficiency and bargaining power with customers and state authorities. The Boat Operators’ Association, Walker argued, was a significant actor in regulating river-trade activities at the local border before the coming of the GMS regime of regulation. Walker went so far as to claim that the Wat Luang port can demonstrate the “micro-regulation” of the national border through which local actors can actively participate, collaborate and manipulate the intricately-woven and locally-specific relations with state authorities to the benefit of their local landscapes of power.

The picture of Wat Luang port today is, unfortunately, totally different from that portrayed in the good old days of the mid 1990s. From my observation and several in-depth discussions with the remaining local cross-border boat operators, it was found that the number of operators has dramatically decreased to only a few each day. Often I encountered only two to four boat drivers hanging around at the port waiting to cruise a random trip across the border. Most of the boat operators have given up their business and turned to find other ways of making a living. The port today is a very quiet and rarely socialized sphere, quite different to how it was previously described in The Golden Boat. And, of course, the negotiating power has completely evaporated. What made the Wat Luang port become merely a “legend” of “micro-regulation”? A brief explanation will follow in my next post.

(Go to Golden Boat update 1.)

Today, rubber trees have mushroomed along the border on the Lao side as well. Rubber, with its high economic potential, is expected to bridge the gap between “modernizing” China and “underdeveloped” Laos. Yet, it is still too early to celebrate such optimistic predictions.