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Police
to protect Thai-Malaysian pipeline
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - On top of fighting crime and directing traffic, Thailand's national
police force will soon have another beat - the support and "protection" of the
development of a long-disputed gas-pipeline project with neighboring Malaysia.
Thailand's police chief affirmed this new combination of the police and
development following a meeting this week with senior police officials in the
southern Songkhla province.
The police will provide security to ensure that the construction of the
pipeline, which is due to commence soon, will be hassle-free, national police
Chief Sant Sarutanond was quoted as having told Friday's Bangkok Post, an
English-language daily.
The estimated 400 police who have been assigned this task will also have
another duty - dealing with the groundswell of opposition to the Thai-Malaysian
pipeline project from local communities.
But this pattern of development - using the police to protect a disputed
project - has already prompted worry among some quarters in Thailand, and they
are expected to grow.
"This will add to the atmosphere of fear among the communities affected by the
pipeline," said Parichart Siwaraksa, a member of the Environment Impact
Assessment Panel, a national body. "Sending the police does not help solve the
discontent that started at the beginning of this project."
It will also cement the dispute that is at the heart of this issue - "a clash
between the national interest versus the local way of life", she added during
an interview. "This has not been addressed seriously, and from the current
efforts there are no signs it will."
As troubling for some activists is the prospect of the police provoking the
affected local communities in Songkhla to demonstrate violently, as opposed to
the largely non-violent methods they have pursued so far.
"There is a fear that the police will try to instigate the villagers, make them
turn violent and then arrest them with a number of charges," said Penchom
Saetang, coordinator of the Campaign for Alternative Industry Network, a
non-governmental environment lobby.
"We have already noticed signs of this psychological pressure, mental violence
in some villages," added Ananta Boonsopon, a medical doctor and community
leader in Hat Yai, a town in the south that has seen anti-pipeline
demonstrations. "In some villages like in Ban Nay Rai, the police do it at
night, flashing lights into homes, showing who is strong."
These worries are not unfounded given a clash that erupted in December last
year, when a peaceful demonstration of community leaders and grassroots
activists in Hat Yai provoked a harsh police crackdown. More than 30
demonstrators and 15 police officers were injured.
The attempt by some government leaders and the police to pin blame on the
pipeline protesters has not stuck. This month, for instance, two highly
respected bodies delivered a scathing judgment on the "force" and "suppression"
pursued by the police.
The Hat Yai police chief and a government minister must be held responsible for
the violence against the villagers who were out protesting, stated the Thai
senate's committee on public participation. Both men had violated the law and
ignored the orders of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to deal with the
demonstrators peacefully, it added.
After its own investigations, the National Human Rights Commission declared
that the force used by the police to drive away the unarmed demonstrators was
"disproportionate" and "unjust".
Such realities were also not lost on Hina Jilani, the United Nations special
representative on human-rights defenders, during her assignment in late May to
investigate the conditions under which Thai human-rights activists work.
The threats and intimidation against activists opposed to the gas pipeline is
very clear, she told the media.
These developments were the latest in a sequence of events that go back to
April 1998, when Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur signed a contract - followed by
another in October 1999 - to build the pipeline as a joint venture between
Malaysia's Petronas and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT).
This venture, which also includes a 225-kilometer offshore pipeline, will see 1
billion cubic feet of gas being carried a day from the Gulf of Thailand into
Malaysia. The pipeline project, which will also have a two-unit gas separation
plant in Songkhla, is due to be completed in 2005 at an estimated cost of
US$565 million.
Little of that has impressed the local communities in Songkhla. After all, the
people living in the 23 villages that the pipeline will pass through see more
damage than gain to their lives as a result of the pipeline.
Available reports point to some 10,000 lives being affected by the pipeline and
the nearby sea and marine life, which the villagers depend on for their living,
being polluted.
"It was very clear from the beginning that this project would have an impact on
the local communities, but they were never considered or involved in the
decisions made," said Parichart, whose environment panel reviewed this project
from the outset.
The rage that such a reality produced among the villagers refuses to abate.
Community leaders and grassroots activists have made it known they will
continue their opposition to the pipeline by staging demonstrations along its
route.
"We will do so peacefully. We have no guns, we only have our rights," said
Ananta, the community leader. "For violence to happen or not will be up to the
police. The people will not start it."
(Inter Press Service)
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