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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

Here, issues of inequality are less related to land plot size and more to insecurity
and criminalisation of occupancy. The military regime installed by the 2014
coup d’etat implemented a “return the forest” policy, the latest in a long series of

broad-scale eviction programs that date back to the ill-fated khor jor kor program
of the 1990s (Hirsch 1993). While it has been suggested that evictions tend to be
more of a spectre than a reality (Walker and Farrelly 2008), the insecurity that such
a threat imposes is itself a recognitional inequity. Moreover, a number of high-
profile cases such as that of the Karen activist Porjalee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen,
who was abducted and later found murdered in Kaeng Krachan National Park,
are the tip of an iceberg of continuous harassment of those farming upland areas,
many – but far from all – being ethnic minorities. At the same time, encroachment
on forest land has seen high-profile figures such as the Italthai CEO Premchai
Karnasuta and the ruling party’s member of parliament Pareena Kraikupt
continuously evade incarceration for their hunting and ALRO and forest land
encroachment misdemeanors respectively (Wipatayotin and Chongcharoen
2018; Yonpiam 2019).

Region
The nature of land inequalities also varies between regions in Thailand,
and there is a wider regional dimension to land inequality beyond the country’s
borders. Northeastern Thailand (Isan), the poorest region of the country, has
historically had a relatively low degree of inequality in landholdings at the
village level. Rather, the land injustices behind movements such as the Assembly

of the Poor (Missingham 2003) have arisen as farmers have lost land through a
number of state actions, including the construction of dams, the granting of land
concessions in forest reserves to eucalyptus plantation companies (Lohmann 1990)
and, more recently, in a number of disputes associated with mining, such as the
Tunkham mining case in Loei province (Fortify Rights 2018). The average farm
holding in Isan is larger than the national figure, despite the fact that farmers here
are considered the poorest in the country.

In northern Thailand, there is a history of unequal land relations at a
more local level. The disputes of the 1970s over land rentals and associated
sharecropping were often between neighbours rather than between farmers and
absentee landlords, and these disputes escalated to violent retributions against
peasant leaders seeking justice and redress (Haberkorn 2011). More recently,

124 Land Governance and Inequality in Thailand:
The Need for Context

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