Sanitsuda Ekachai, Bangkok Post, Thailand – Leave the poor alone. That was the order from the country’s most powerful man when he ordered troops to evict encroachers to save the country’s fast-dwindling forests and return happiness to the country. The military’s current forest crackdown is anything but. Just ask 82-year-old Jantra Banghom, a villager of Ban Nong Wang in Sakon Nakhon’s Warichapoom district.
On May 15, a group of soldiers and forest officials stormed her 18-rai plot of rubber holdings and destroyed more than 2,000 mature rubber trees. Witnesses said the team hailed shouts of victory with every tree felled.
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