Govt 'should respect right to criticise'

ACADEMICS have called on the government to respect people’s rights under Section 4 of the interim charter and give citizens the freedom to criticise government policies that affect communities. 

They also suggested that the government amend minor laws on natural-resource management to boost public participation and reduce bureaucratic limitations. 

A discussion on community rights was held at Kasetsart University yesterday, during which the participants attacked the government for suppressing community rights to defend the environment and ensure the well-being of their community. 

They also attacked the powers-that-be for using force to retake forests and for supporting capitalists in exploiting the country’s natural resources. 

Decharut Sukkumnoed, a professor at Kasetsart’s faculty of economics, said the interim charter’s Section 4 still granted people rights, freedom and equality, hence they could legally demonstrate peacefully to express opposition to policies or development projects that have a direct impact on their lives and well-being. 

“We are protected by the [interim] charter to express our opinions peacefully and defend our rights, but the government is ignoring this,” he said, citing the fact that members of his group – “Energy Walk Thailand” – had been arrested while trying to protest against the government’s energy plan. 

“Why can’t we share information with the public? All we want to do is ask the government at least to respect people’s right to freedom of expression,” he added. 

Lerdsak Khamkhongsak, a coordinator of the Cultural Ecology Group, supported this by saying that the people should have the right to express their opinions on the government policies.

“The government’s recent moves to allow capitalists to exploit natural resources by suppressing communities who try to protect the environment, as in the case of gold mining in Loei or petroleum drilling in Khon Kaen, only shows that the government is not interested in protecting people’s rights,” Lerdsak said. 

Decharut pointed out that the interim constitution ensures people’s and community’s rights, though some minor laws do not support public participation. 

“I suggest that the government modernise outdated natural-resource-management laws to allow greater public participation and community rights to manage their resources,” he said.

He said this would help ease problems in applying community rights and public participation at the implementation level, which can be quite difficult as laws are outdated and only authorise the state to manage natural resources. 

As for the dispute over forest-reclamation policy, Surin Aunphrom, a professor with Kasetsart University’s faculty of forestry, said this was a chronic problem caused by the fact that the authorities had ignored the rights of communities in the forests for a long time. Surin said even forest-conservation movements in Thailand overlooked these communities as they paid attention to preserving forested land and campaigned to push encroachers out.