The struggle of villagers in the Chana district of southern Thailand to resist the construction of the Trans Thai-Malaysia gas pipeline and its various spin-off industries illustrates some of the ways in which questions of ethnic, religious and class conflict are tightly bound up with industrial development, the global financial sector and human rights abuses. While the Thai elite and international investors portray the project as `socially responsible', the protesting villagers have increasingly turned to Islamic principles of waqf — land designated as given over to God and therefore available for common use — to articulate their opposition.
Thanks to Ida Aroonwong Na Ayutthaya for helpful comments.
2.
English translations of much of the documentation referred to in this article can be found in The Corner House (ed.), The Struggle of Villagers in Chana District, Southern Thailand in Defence of Community, Land and Religion against the Trans Thai-Malaysia Pipeline and Industrial Project (TTM), 2002-2007 (Sturminster Newton , The Corner House, 2007), <http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/TTM2002-2007.pdf>; see also Suleiman Matyuso et al., Wakap: Muea thuuk klaay pen phit pharakit khue kaan taw suu [Waqf: when right becomes wrong, it is time to struggle] (Songkhla, Association of Southern Fishing Communities, 2007).
3.
English trust law may have developed under the influence of waqf, the idea of which is likely to have been brought back to England from the Middle East at the time of the crusades. See M.M. Gaudiosi, `The influence of the Islamic law of waqf on the development of the trust in England: the case of Merton College', University of Pennsylvania Law Review (Vol. 136, no. 4, 1988), pp. 1231-61.
4.
Supara Chanjitfah , `Enemies of the state?', Bangkok Post Perspectives (5 January 2003), p. 1.
5.
Major General Santhan Chayanan, Songkhla police commander, document SP 0020/3673 (13 November 2003), addressed to the governor of Songkhla, reporting a meeting on 8 November involving the Chana district head and representatives of TTM and PTT.
6.
According to a study by the Thai government itself, the southern provinces will not need new power supply for fifteen years.
7.
B. Missingham, The Assembly of the Poor: from local struggles to national protest movement (Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 2003).
8.
Kasian Tejapira , `Toppling Thaksin', New Left Review (Vol. 39, no. 3, 2006), pp. 5-37.
9.
The interpretation of violence in Thailand's south is chronically complicated by the fact that the provinces in question are also often battlegrounds for various gangs involved in smuggling and arms and drug dealings, and between such groups and the police, all of whom have an interest in characterising criminal activities as political separatism.
10.
Human Rights Watch and the International Harm Reduction Association estimate that the `extrajudicial killings' that Thaksin presided over during his war on drugs included the assassination of 2,800 people during a single three-month period at the start of 2003. Thailand's war on drugs (12 March 2008). A committee set up by the military government in 2007 found that `more than 1,000 of the victims had little or no connection to the drugs trade. Despite these findings, as well as evidence of written instructions by senior government officials to use heavy-handed tactics during the campaign, not a single government or police official has been brought to account for the killings in 2003.' Amnesty International, New Fear of Illegal Killings in Thailand Coincides with Thaksin's Return (27 February 2008).
11.
`PM: deaths due to religious fasting', The Nation (Bangkok, 27 October 2004).
12.
Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: the history of the geo-body of a nation ( Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
13.
D. Streckfuss , `The mixed colonial legacy in Siam: origins of Thai racialist thought, 1890-1910', in L. Sears (ed.), Autonomous Histories, Particular Truths: essays in honor of John R. W. Smail (Madison, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), pp. 123-53.
14.
Thongchai, op. cit, p. 170.
15.
Barclays Group, Statement on Human Rights (London, June 2004).
16.
Letter from Philippa Birtwell, Head of Public Issues, Barclays, to Ponglert Pongwanan, 21 September 2005.
17.
T. Demos, `Accounting for accountability', Fortune (12 November 2007), p. 52.
18.
Friends of the Earth, Barclays, Human Rights and the Trans Thai-Malaysia Gas Pipeline (London, Friends of the Earth, September 2005), < http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/barclays_thai_malaysia.pdf> ;.
