Last month, a number of villagers from the community were led by Ronhem Sangkhao to Provincial Hall to file a complaint at the Damrongtham Center about a business person who claims to hold a Chanote for the land on which they live and is trying to expel them from the land.
The villagers also claim that the person had also sent unknown men to threaten them and had taken a backhoe to the land to remove houses.
A few days after their visit to Provincial Hall, the person who claims to own the land, Suluk Kunaruk, also paid a visit there with his lawyer to show his Chanote. At the same time he also filed a complaint to the Damrongtham Center stating that residents were encroaching on his land.
He denied sending anybody to the land to threaten the villagers.
Mr Ronhem, acting a community leader, explained that the land previously had a mining concession and that if that concession has expired the land must belong to the government.
“We thought that a tin mining concession can only be issued for government land. About 50 houses belonging to the villagers of the Sa Ton Po community have lived on this land since 2003. Now they have had a warning from a man who claims he got the land in 2012,” said Mr Ronhem in the meeting.
“We just want to know where the land is that got the concession. We will leave this land if the land deed is valid. We learned from the concession document that the tin mine covered 72 rai of forest land and 13 rai of mangrove land, and that it was not private owned land.”
It was announced by a land officer at the meeting that the land deed covering the Sa Ton Po community is valid and it came from five different land deeds issued from 1913.
“The paper for this land was issued legally. The cases where houses were destroyed by the ownerʼs backhoe are now under court consideration and a team from the Royal Forest Land Department and Thai Industrial Standards Institute in Phuket, who are responsible for tin mine land, will visit the land and check exactly where the area is that received a tin mining concession and to see where the forest and mangrove areas mentioned in the concession paper are.
“However, this does not guarantee that the villagers can live on the land,” concluded V/Gov Somkiet.