<p>The military have visited the home of a community rights activist in the northeastern province of Sakon Nakhon after she campaigned for the right of rubber farmers whose rubber trees were cut down by the military under the policy to evict farmers from protected areas.&nbsp;</p>

<p>SAKON NAKHON – The ongoing clash between the government’s forest reclamation policy and community land rights in the Northeast came to a head on October 21st. Standing before the provincial court in Sakon Nakhon Province, nine villagers from Jatrabiab village — each convicted with encroaching on protected forests — listened as the judge handed down their sentences.</p>

<p><em>Eight months after the implementation of the Thai government’s Master Plan to reforest the country, villagers in Isaan bear the burden of a flawed policy at the cost of their livelihood and health.</em></p> <p></p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-4f081db3-6e13-8e8e-0386-583be20c52b7">Thailand’s northeasterners and a northern ethnic minority group who have been affected by the junta’s forest protection policies urged national human rights agencies to take action in cancelling the junta’s policies and allowing more public participation in forest management.</span></p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-abfc5ffe-5953-f331-937e-9786f4e827f5">Internal security officers in northeastern Thailand have filed a lawsuit against a man who allegedly posted a picture on Facebook of the officers trying to evict villagers. &nbsp;</span></p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d6c42da7-3aa7-355b-e84b-6d79815fe637">The Appeal Court convicted a Karen villager accused of illegal logging in northern Thailand to 1.5 years in prison. This is a result of the junta's ‘Return the Forest’ policy which has adversely effected the poor of the country.&nbsp;</span></p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-18496adf-351d-7488-26e9-6ec202ae1095">The Assembly of the Poor, a Thai civil society organisation, issued a statement condemning the Thai junta’s eviction of poor communities and urging international organisations to pressure the regime to protect human rights. &nbsp;</span></p>

<div>BANGKOK &nbsp;(11 &nbsp;March 2015) -The United Nations Human Rights Office for South East &nbsp;Asia &nbsp;(OHCHR) &nbsp;is &nbsp;concerned &nbsp;that &nbsp;the rights of poor communities in maintaining &nbsp;access &nbsp;to &nbsp;land and livelihood are not being upheld and urges the Government to comply with its international human rights obligations in pursuing its land polices.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>OHCHR &nbsp;is &nbsp;particularly &nbsp;concerned that the push of the National Council of Peace &nbsp;and &nbsp;Order (NCPO) for quick solutions to complex land issues has led to &amp;n </div>

<div></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <p>The NCPO claims to be reclaiming forest land from investors, but the poor continue to suffer. Junta policy introduced under martial law destroys livelihoods of thousands of forest inhabitants.</p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-989fc783-5c7a-e91a-7cc0-a37f984ee731">Community rights groups have urged the junta not to ignore community rights and to reconsider their forest protection policies after nearly 1,800 families, most of them in Thailand’s North and Northeast, have been severely affected.</span></p>

<div> <p>More than 100 farmers in a northeastern province face charges on land encroachment as a result of the junta's Return the Forest policy, after the military prohibited the farmers from holding a public discussion to voice their concerns to the military government.&nbsp;</p> <p>Laothai Nimnuan, the coordinator of Isan Farmers’ Federation of Thailand’s Northeast, told Prachatai that more than 60 military and police officers on Monday stormed into the venue planned for the public discussion on land rights and forced the organizers to cancel the meeting.</p> </div>

<div> <div>The military on Sunday detained four people, including Prapart Pintobtang, a political scientist from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, who organized a walking rally against the junta’s policy to reclaim protected areas, which has heavily affected the poor.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>After they started the rally by walking about 50 metres from Suan Dok temple in central Chiang Mai, the military detained the four in a military prison vehicle. </div></div>