THAILAND-MALAYSIA: Building Gas Pipeline Will Ignite Rage – Activists

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 6 2003 (IPS) - Environment and grassroots activists are putting the Thai government on notice: Expect the political temperature in the country’s southern provinces to rise, now that work on a long-disputed gas pipeline project is due to commence.

”The local communities are opposed to the (Thai-Malaysian pipeline) project, and they will never give up their protests,” says Penchom Saetang, coordinator of the Campaign for Alternative Industry Network, a non-governmental organisation that champions environmental causes. ”The people still want the project to be reviewed.”

This opposition is reflected in the daily meetings and the 24-hour vigils the villagers have at a point along the path of the planned Thai-Malaysian pipeline, she says. ”They fear their environment will be destroyed once the pipeline is built.”

The announcement to build the pipeline will only harden the people’s resolve to mount a stronger struggle, adds Bantorn Ondam, a sociologist working with the Assembly of the Poor, an umbrella group of grassroots movements.

”There will be more tension in the south,” he says. ”People are discussing how to get their point across after the government ignored them.”

But this view of the political mood in southern Thailand is a far cry from what has been painted by the company that will build the pipeline, a joint venture of Malaysia’s Petronas and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT).

The communities in the southern Thai province of Songkhla have ”scaled back their opposition to the project,” a senior official of PTT told the English-language daily ‘The Nation’ on Tuesday.

”The project is being undertaken along with our campaign to explain to local people what is going on,” Prasert Boonsamphan, PTT’s deputy managing director, had told the ‘Bangkok Post’ on Tuesday. ”We think there will be no problem with construction because the project will benefit local people.

”PTT made this case in the wake of the announcement this week that it will begin constructing the Thai-Malaysian gas pipeline. The company expects this project, which has been beset by opposition for at least five years now and which will cut through Songkhla province, to be ready by mid-2005.

This project – for which joint contracts between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur were first signed in April 1998 and then in October 1999 – has stoked rage in Thailand’s four southern provinces due to concern over its environmental impact.

According to the company’s plans, the 225-kilometre offshore pipeline will carry one billion cubic feet of gas a day from the Gulf of Thailand into Malaysia. In addition, PTT aims to build a two-unit gas separation plant at a point along the pipeline in the Songkhla province.

The entire project, which was initially expected to be completed in 2003, is estimated to cost 565 million U.S. dollars, states a study by Thailand’s Working Group for Human Rights Defenders (WGHRD).

However, the project has run into a firestorm of protests from local communities in the south since the 1998 agreement was signed. The plans to build the project have ”been postponed again and again in view of the huge demonstration from the residents of southern Thailand,” the study adds.

December revealed the intensity of this struggle, when a peaceful demonstration by community activists in the southern Hat Yai district resulted in a harsh police crackdown, resulting in 38 demonstrators and 15 policemen being injured.

On that occasion, the villagers had wanted to hand over a letter to Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, asking him to listen to their concerns and conduct a review of the project.

”But the government is not listening to the people. From December till today, no attempt has been made to consult the people about their worries over this project,” says Ananta Boonsopon, a medical doctor and community leader in Hat Yai. ”This is unjust and people cannot accept it.”

Local residents are worried about the impacts of the pipeline project on their livelihood as fishermen, and about inland water pollution brought by industries expected to move into the area after the pipeline is ready.

The pipeline is expected to pass through 23 villages along its route, and the consequences, say activists, will affect the lives of some 10,000 people.

The pipeline will ”pollute the sea and marine resources and fundamentally change the character of these small fishing villages,” states the report by WGHRD.

”The government has never told the people nor answered the questions why we need the gas pipeline,” says Ananta. ”They have not done an environment impact assessment for the industries to be built.”

That charge is not aimed at Thaksin only, but to the government that preceded him, a coalition under the leadership of Chuan Leekpai of the Democrat Party.

”Since the days of Prime Minister Chuan, the governments have been reluctant to listen to the people,” says Ananta. ”And that is a violation of our constitution.”

Under Thailand’s 1997 constitution, the government is expected to conduct public hearings and seek the views of local communities before it embarks on development projects.

For Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, this week’s decision to start building the pipeline needs to be perceived from a constitutional perspective, too. ”The government is clearly ignoring the people’s rights recognised in the constitution,” says Pornpen of the WGHRD.

”In doing so, it may create political trouble in the south,” she adds. ”We are worried that villagers may be targeted by the government in its attempt to go after dissenters.”