Lawyers calls for 'equal

More than 200 poor people have been defendants in land disputes with the government during the past decade, a lawyer revealed yesterday as he called for fair and realistic trials in such cases Lawyer Somneuk Toomsuparp was speaking to a seminar on land disputes from 1997 to 2007, at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science.

He urged that in tackling land disputes, the authorities' perspective should change from regarding villagers as foes of the environment to a more realistic view that villagers, with equal rights and dignity, needed to use the land where they resided to make a living.

This view would lower the incidence of land disputes submitted to courts, he said.

Citing a Network for Land....