News

Indigenous rights deserve a break

Exactly a year ago this month, a group of indigenous Karen forest dwellers left their resettlement village in Kaeng Krachan National Park to go back to Bang Kloy Bon and Jai Paen Din, their ancestral homes deep in the jungle. They were immediately arrested and ...

Bangkok Post Reporter

Karen activists lash out at singer’s defence of former park chief

Activists fighting for the rights of the Karen ethnic group took aim at a popular singer Thursday for taking the side of a former park official who has been implicated in burning down a local village and charged with the murder of a community campaigner.“How ...

Govt calls talks on Karen row

The government has pledged to solve land conflicts between the Ministry of Natural Resources and ethnic Karen villagers now dwelling in Kaeng Krachan National Park within 30 days, Thamanat Prompow, deputy agriculture minister, said.“We will solve this problem by using constructive dialogue. Both sides need ...

Bangkok Post Reporter

Bang Kloi saga continues with rights groups accusing the government of not doing enough

The government is continuing, this week, to play down the situation in Bang Kloi as ethnic Karen people protest their displacement from their ancestral homeland and continued persecution by the state.Activist groups representing the Karen have said that the government is not doing enough to ...

DNP surveys growing Karen population

The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plantation (DNP) has begun verifying the number of Karen people living in the Bang Kloi community in the Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi.The department ordered a committee to run a verification process.This comes after an unusual increase ...

Apinya Wipatayotin

Indigenous Karen villagers arrested after returning to ancestral land

87 members of the Bang Kloi indigenous Karen community, who travelled back to the location of their former village in the Kaeng Krachan forest, have been forcibly taken out of the forest and arrested by park officials, police, and military officers.The community members were taken ...

PM: Government won't use force in Bang Kloi

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Tuesday said his administration won’t use force against ethnic Karen villagers living in Phetchaburi’s Kaeng Krachan National Park as past governments did.Instead, this government will take care of those living in Bang Kloi by ensuring they have proper jobs and ...

Mongkol Bangprapa

Displaced Karen demand land back

A civic group protested in front of the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry building on Friday as part of a campaign to pressure the government to resettle ethnic Karen villagers displaced from the Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi over a decade ago.Twenty activists and ...

Apinya Wipatayotin

Thai parks’ protectors must recognise ethnic group's rights, experts say

Thailand must follow the example of neighbouring countries and honour the constitutional right of Karen people in Phetchaburi’s Kaeng Krachan National Park to live on what has been their ancestral land for centuries, say academics.Kittisak Prokati, a law lecturer at Thammasat University, said the Constitution ...

Pratch Rujivanarom

Thai campaigners urge change to forest law after indigenous verdict

Campaigners are calling on Thai authorities to amend a law they say violates the rights of indigenous people, after the country’s top court ruled that a group of Karen evicted from a national park had no legal right over the land.Keep reading ...

Rina Chandran

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