"I have to travel a lot to Bangkok. However, I thought I will have to stay more at the monastery since we have prepared a place for training. We have to keep each other company here. We cannot afford to stay alone or with few people. It is too risky."

Phra Maha Cherdchai Kawiwangso

Suan Metta Dharm forest monastery

"...I was at the hospital and saw Phra Supoj's mutilated body with several hack wounds. I felt he had suffered more severe torture than that inflicted on Charoen (Wat-aksorn). From his corpse, I believed his death was pre-determined. It was planned to look like the result of a personal dispute rather than a conflict over land of the Suan Metta Dharm forest monastery that local investors wanted...

"...This is like the murder of Charoen. He was killed because of his role in opposing the power plant and the encroachment on public lands. However, there had been an attempt to make his death look like a personal conflict; that he was shot because of his verbal attack on the other side in the dispute. Attempts had also been made to cut short the case so as not to get to the mastermind...

"...Not only have we been victims of the investors, we have also then been victimised by state injustice with the lack of progress in the investigation. Worse still, it was state officials and the judiciary process that attempted to distort the cases. They are hopeless. We people have only ourselves to rely on."

Korn-uma Pongnoi

Wife of Charoen Wat-aksorn and Chair of the Bonok-Kuiburi Rak Thong Thin group.

"Phra Supoj's case is like many other. Another 18 cases met the same fate. It is important to dissolve local power as well as pressure central state power to have a clear policy to protect the people, and not big capital. I was alarmed by the recent visit of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont to Rayong, to receive money donated by Siam Cement Group and other companies for environmental conservation activities. Instead of visiting the local people to see how they have been affected by these companies, he still care more for the old network of big capital. It showed this government also does not care about people.

"In the case of Phra Supoj, we need to fight the war on different fronts so as to enable us to bring about justice and to get the local perpetrators punished."

Attajak Sattayanurak

History lecturer, Chiang Mai University's Faculty of Humanities

"Within the context of Thai society where local communities have long been dependent on natural resources for their livelihood, this state monopoly and centralisation has thus excluded community rights in the management of natural resources. Local wisdom was relegated into superstition by the state's scientific knowledge in resource management. State laws have replaced customary management by communities. Gradually, state agencies have taken over all the key roles formerly played by the community.

"In such a state, local communities' normal livelihoods that depend on natural resources are affected. At a much more severe level, state management totally denies the existence of villagers and communities and their rights and voice in issues affecting their own lives. Community life, thence, was condemned to struggle, t an uncertain future, and to never-ending conflicts with state agencies claiming ownership of natural resources.

"The state's concept of natural resource management strictly adheres to two types of management. One stresses state control, on the other emphasizes the role of the private sector. While the former often pushes the extension of areas reserved for the state, thus creating a series of conflicts between state and community, state has exerted little or no control over the management of natural resources by the private sector.

"Within the context of social and economic growth, natural resources have fully become "goods" as is clearly the case with land. Trade in land, for example, whether lawful or not, has resulted in the loss of land from poor farmers to investors who failed to cultivate the land productively.

"While excluding the community from resource management controlled and managed by the state and the private sector, the market mechanism is another principle that state is now considering as a proper way to manage water resources. Despite the establishment of local systems of weirs in almost all communities in the north, the state thought there needed be an agency to control and manage water usage effectively through the employment of the principle of user-fees. Precedents in land and forest management have shown this to be an effective way to exclude villagers' rights in favour of the rich and powerful minority.

"State management of natural resources reflects a different thinking from that of local communities which consider natural resources and the environment as "social capital" meaning resources that enable their peaceful livelihood based on participatory management. Under this principle, natural resources are used carefully and preserved.

"On the contrary, state management looks only at the economic value of resources. The state uses natural resources for economic development without caring how the community will be affected by state use of resources. State management has changed natural resources from community "social capital" into "economic capital." Such management considers only economic growth while ignoring people's participation in management, and the sustainability of natural resource use.

"In summary, unless the state solves these structural problems, there will remain conflicts in natural resource management in Thai society. Then many more lives of the protectors of natural resources may face the same deadly fate as Phra Supoj. This is not what Thai society wish to see."

Jessada Chotikitpiwat

Member, Democracy Group for Welfare State

"There has been slow progress in the investigation regardless of the transfer of the case from the local police to the DSI, and even with the change of investigators in the DSI. No one has been arrested.

"The Subcommittee on Land and Forest Management of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) has been assigned to look into two aspects. First, the progress of the investigation; the Subcommittee has been following this case since when it was under the local police in Fang, and later invited DSI officials to report on progress. Furthermore, arrangements were made for Phra Supoj's parents and Phra Kittisak (from Suan Metta Dharm monastery) to consult Ministry of Justice Permanent Secretary Charan Pakdeethanakul in June. The meeting was postponed due to inconvenience on both sides. The Subcommittee is now attempting to set upa new appointment.  

"Secondly, it is important to continue the will of Phra Supoj in his operation of Suan Metta Dharm forest monastery for the purpose of forest conservation and dissemination of dharma. Several meetings had been held with involved agencies in Chiang Mai in order to settle the question of the legality of lands donated to the monastery. However, the Subcommittee reported that the Office of Land Reform for Agriculture needs to accelerate its work on this issue.

"Statistically, most cases of murder involving human rights defenders have no progress. The HRC study and found that after the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution until 2005, 21 human rights defenders had died. Eighteen of them were environmental activists; there still are many more unknown fighters who were threatened, arrested, or killed.

"It is important that the judicial process must be strengthened. No theories regarding the causes of the deaths of these human rights defenders must be neglected. Particularly the theory of conflict with influential people must get special attention. Justice must be done.

"Meanwhile, the state must strictly enforce the law against the real encroachers of the watershed like resorts or big tangerine orchards. The authorities must not arrest only small villagers. In many cases, villagers have been arrested even though the process of verifying their rights was in progress. It's not their fault as it is the state authorities who are to be blamed for not accelerating the process.

Sunee Chairos

Human Rights Commissioner  

"We see no work of the DSI. We have never been informed how much the DSI has worked on Phra Supoj's case. His relatives see no future for this case, no progress. They are almost hopeless.

"I remembered the HRC once invited DSI officials to report the progress of the case. However, they expressed dissatisfaction when we questioned them, as if we didn't have the right to do that. This has furthered discouraged us. I am not sure if transferring the case to the DSI is right or wrong as there has been no progress at all.

"I would like to see the present government headed by Gen Surayud Chulanont to push the DSI to report the progress of the case. At least, this prime minister, who is a student of dharma and who was ordained as a monk, should get himself involved in this case to see how the killing of a monk can be allowed to happen in Thai society.

Baramee Chairat

Subcommittee on Land and Forest Management, Human Rights Commission

"The murder of Phra Supoj is a capital crime. This is the murder of a monk in the compound of a Buddhist monastery. I believe that if no influential people were involved, the police should have been able to solve the case long time ago because this case received quite a lot of publicity and even international organisations have paid attention to. The United Nations is also aware that Phra Supoj was one of the monk and lay activists who fought to conserve the forest against local and national influential people.

"In the past, relatives lodged complaints with several agencies, be it police, government or DSI. Surprisingly, there has been no progress at all. This reflects high-level involvement of influential groups.

"Recently, we sent a letter to the Justice Minister asking about progress in the case; we have not yet got his reply. Unless the perpetrators are arrested, environmentalists and human rights defenders won't dare continue their work.

"The murder of Phra Supoj happened during the Thaksin Shinawatra administration when 29 human rights defenders were killed including the environmentalist Charoen Wat-aksorn, and the disappearance of Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit. These cases continue unsolved even now.

"The Surayud government is not interested in or has not yet resolved these cases because something else got their attention, the present political crisis. In addition, I believed that local influential power is still holding firm.

"Moreover, attempts by this government to reform the National Police Bureau seem to have produced no change; there has also been internal opposition to any change in that agency.

"Neither does the DSI provide any hope.

"Indeed, the DSI was established to solve special cases that require high expertise when police had failed. Such were cases that involved the local influential and political power that make the DSI necessary. However, it turned out that most of the DSI officials were the same group of policemen transferred from the National Police Bureau. Recent efforts to reduce the number of DSI officials who come from the police produced no fruitful result in terms of the progress into all major cases; Phra Supoj, Charoen, or lawyer Somchai, or the physical assault on Somchai's clients. Worse still, the DSI has been viewed as taking sides with the accused state officials.

"Thus, all sectors in society be it the news media or civil groups must help in closely checking and following up on these cases and the DSI's work in order to exercise and protect the rights of the people."

Somchai Homla-or

Secretary, Foundation for Human Rights and Developmnt