Parks bureau ex-chief faces complaint over alleged encroachment

Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn, the task force chief, held a press conference yesterday to explain the controversy over the land located on Khao Misakok hill.
The task force went to inspect the plot of land belonging to Samak Donnapee a year ago, claiming it had received a complaint from some locals.
It found a concrete house sitting on a three-rai plot, before it was expanded by nearly a rai for a garage area and a water tank. 

The task force alleged that the area was still a forest defined under the 1941 forest law. It filed a complaint with the police, accusing Samak of illegally encroaching upon the forest and public land as the land was also covered by the Land Department’s law.
Chaiwat said the plot of land was ruled on by the first court and the Appeal Court in 2000-2001 as being guilty of violating the 1941 forest law. However, the convict at that time was not Samak, but a woman who confessed to the crime.
She was sentenced to jail for eight months with two years suspended and a fine of Bt20,000.
Chaiwat said he had confirmed with the forest officer and the police who were in charge of the case at that time, after they went together to inspect the land on Monday, that the land ruled on by the court was the same location his task force had seized and lodged a complaint against in late September.
Samak, meanwhile, did not confirm whether the plot of land in the past court case was the same as his. 
He said the plot at that time was found violating the forest law because the woman had confessed to the crime. It was not proved yet whether it was in the forest area protected under the 1941 law, Samak claimed.
Samak said he would be ready to prove the facts in court this time, but he personally believed that it would not reach the court because his plot of land is subject to the land right verification process, secured by the 1998 Cabinet resolution, a pre-condition he claimed. Samak said physically the land cannot be considered as forest under the 1941 law because it has been extensively developed into farm areas and communities although some 20 plots, including his, have not yet had land documents issued.
Samak also cited the military map, which marks these plots as agricultural areas, pending land right verification that may have missed the process years ago. 
He said there was an attempt to malign him due to work-related conflict as he keeps exposing irregularities of the department on his Facebook page. 
Chaiwat, however, said he would like society to learn about ill-intentioned acts to claim state forest land.