Hotline Asia Urgent Appeals -- UA000720(12)

Action Requested || Sample Letter || Background
update

Summary

On 17 July 2000, leading scholars and social critics urged Bangkok residents to support villagers protesting against the Pak Mun Dam as violent clashes took place outside Government House. About 200 villagers who used wooden ladders to scale the fence of Government House and entered the compound on 16 July were arrested. More than 10 people were injured during clashes with police while trying to deliver food to those inside the compound. Police used batons and tear gas on the crowd.

Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai defended the police action, saying that the protesters had no right to breach the compound walls. Protesters defended their actions, saying they were necessary because the government has ignored their plight for a long time. Villagers claim the construction of the Pak Mun Dam, which was completed in 1994, has disrupted their livelihood - fishing - by preventing the migration of fish upstream to spawn.

A few weeks before the protest took place, as requested by the villagers, a committee of academics, biologists and engineers was appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister to investigate the possibility of opening the dam's flood gates to allow fish to swim upriver. The committee recommended the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) should open the floodgates for four months during rainy season to allow fish from the Mekong River (border between Thailand and Laos) to feed and spawn in the Mun River. However, EGAT and the Government have not responded to the committee's recommendation.

About 500 villagers travelled by train from Ubon Ratchathani Province (in northeastern Thailand where Pak Mun Dam is located) a week ago, and rallied opposite Government House over the past few days to demand that the Government open the dam's eight sluice gates to allow fish to swim upstream to replenish depleted stocks.

Please write polite letters to express your concern on this case, urging the Thai Government to uphold the right to livelihood of Pak Mun villagers.

Sample Letter

Background

According to UA930316 (4) issued in March 1993, the Pak Mun Dam project was first proposed to the Royal Thai Government by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) on 8 April 1989. Two weeks later, 500 villagers from two districts of Ubon Ratchathani Province held a protest rally against the project. However, on 15 May 1990, the then Cabinet approved a budget of Bht3,880 million (US$155.2 million) for EGAT to build the Pak Mun Dam. Protests against the dam has continued intermittently up to the present because of its violation on basic human right to livelihood and the destruction of the environment. Located in northeast Thailand, 6 km upstream of the Mun River's confluence with the Mekong, reliable information about the impact of the dam was never provided to local people living along the Mun River, the vast majority of whom are artisanal fishermen and agriculturalists.
(visit www.irn.org/pubs/wrr/9404/case.html for more information)

Opposition to the dam was supported by a report in August 1991 by the US Agency for International Development. The report recommended against the building of the dam because of 'probable irreversible...potential environmental and social impacts'. As a result, the World Bank decided to delay handing out a US$22 million loan to the Thai Government for the construction of the Dam.

Villagers, local and international environmental organisations have continuously protested and attempted to keep open dialogue with the Government. Nevertheless, in the annual World Bank/IMF meeting held in Bangkok in mid-October 1992, the World Bank's executive directors, under strong pressure from the Thai Government, voted to fund the project despite the opposition from the US, Germany and Australia.

Construction of the 136 MW Pak Mun Dam began in May 1991 and was completed in November 1994. The EGAT and the World Bank designated the 17 meter-high Pak Mun Dam as a 'run-of-river' design, to which a fish ladder, the first of its type to be built in Southeast Asia, was added in 1991.

However, the fish ladder constructed to permit fish to swim upstream into the reservoir appears to have failed, as independent fisheries experts, and every villager forewarned. According to the fisherfolk of the Mun River, the great migrations of fish occur from December to February, late May to July, and late August to late October, depending on the volumes of water in the Mun and Mekong Rivers. Local people, and the fish upon which they depend, clearly require the Mun River to be free flowing all year round.

Recent Protest:
On 17 July 2000, some 200 villagers who broke into the Government House compound were charged with trespassing. It was the second time the villagers had used the tactic in their efforts to pressure the government to open the Pak Mun Dam's sluice gates.

A total of 224 villagers -139 men, 84 women and a child - were rounded up. The women, the elderly and the child were taken to a city police training school in Nakhon Pathom province (west of Bangkok). The rest were detained at the Region 1 Border Patrol Police headquarters in Pathum Thani province (north of Bangkok). Under articles 364 and 365 of the Penal Code they are liable to up to five years in jail. The core protesters would be additionally charged with inciting unrest.

Representatives of the Campaign for Popular Democracy, the Union for Civil Liberty, the People of October Network, Friends of the People Organisation, the NGO Coordinating Committee on Development and the Student Federation of Thailand accused the Government and the police of using excessive force, called for an immediate investigation into the operation and demanded that the protesters be unconditionally released.

More than 1,000 villagers were expected to arrive from Ubon Ratchathani Province and other northeastern provinces to join their fellow protesters.

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Thank you for Your Continued Support!!