Women Conquer Goliath

 There are many ways to travel and explore the world to add to our life experience and expand our understanding of different cultures. Slowing down my travels and spending time with people, eating with them, staying in their homes and getting to know them is priceless.  This is the kind of travel I love the best and my recent trip to Nanonbong Village in the Loei region of Northeast Thailand confirmed this. The people in Nanonbong and six other villages formed a community organization called “People Who Love Their Hometown" to fight Thung Kham Ltd, the company that operated a gold mine in their communities for years while government authorities stood by and did nothing to protect their right to freedom of expression or preserve their way of life.  In this fight they have struggled against health and environmental issues, including contamination of local water sources with cyanide, arsenic and mercury.  It’s been an uphill battle to get access to clean water, to recover from health issues due to farming and fishing in polluted waters, and to change their livelihood, which in the past has been growing rice and fishing in the rivers, making clean water critical beyond just drinking water.

We came to Nanonbong to learn how these villagers connected their struggle for a clean environment with human rights to stop the mining. This trip fit into our studies as we are a group of students studying human rights at Mahidol University.  While we drove all night through the countryside, we couldn’t see in the dark, but as the van swerved around curves we were aware that we were in the hills and forest of Northeast Thailand.  We arrived in the village at the meeting space just after sunrise. We started learning right away about the villagers’ struggles with an unresponsive business and a repressive government that ignored peoples’ needs, neither of which thought they had any environmental responsibility, and both lacked recognition of human rights. This story grabbed our attention for the next several days.

During the first meet and great it became clear women have strong leadership roles that form images   They host groups like ours to share their story which continues building a movement to protect villagers throughout Thailand. We stayed in the homes of people who each have their own story in this struggle against the mine, reminding me of trips I have done with Habitat for Humanity to build houses.  There is nothing more rewarding than living with people and listening to them tell their own story; these are the stories that one always remembers.

of fighting Goliath, a Goliath made up of the mining company and government authorities that supported the gold mine, with some wins, but some loses as well. We learned later that over 200 women were part of “People Who Love Their Hometown" forming a strong foundation for the organization. It hasn’t just been the women, but they have been the leaders and the strength behind this fight.

We were taken on a tour around the land as villagers continued to tell their stories, we saw dried up rice fields that could no longer be cultivated, standing contaminated waters just below the gold mine where plants were dying, and at the top we saw the actual mine. The only thing left was remnants of a mountain that once was forested and was left bare after the mining company left. One remembrance of Ms. Hongchai brought her to tears as she recounted the night that men in black masks attacked her and the other villagers as they blocked access to the mine by building a wall and setting up human shields.  What these men in black masks didn’t realize and the people who hired them to attack failed to plan fo,r was how this incident gave solidarity and strength to those fighting against the mine.

After the villagers fought off the men in black masks, the media picked up their story and a young woman from the village, Wanpen Khunna age 14, student in Loei, [S1] participated in a broadcast on the Thai Public Broadcasting System (PBS).  In this broadcast Wanpen reported that Thung Kham Ltd polluted the Huai River in her community, ruining their drinking water and a major food source.  We first met her on a tour of the land around the mine just downhill from the holding pond that leaks contaminated water.  She was accompanied by other youth from the village and they were all introduced as youth leaders that run environmental youth camps.  The story about her PBS broadcast came out later and we were told that the broadcast led to Thung Kham Ltd filing a criminal deformation suite against Wanpen.  She was not alone; Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) have been filed against other villagers and activist all over Thailand as an intimidation tactic to get activist to cease their protests against controversial development projects. 

Wanpen, as a youth, along with her parents in this criminal case were summoned before the Loei Juvenile Observation and Protection Centre to hear their testimony which would determine if there were grounds for the company to sue.  Wanpen’s mother cried out of concern because none of their family had ever been in trouble with the law before.  Wanpen’s mother asked her not to join any more extracurricular activities.  In the end this tactic of a SLAPP did not work in Loei and all the lawsuits against the villagers, including that of Wanpen, were dropped.  At 17 years old Wanpen was nominated by Amnesty International Thailand for the Child’s Rights 2017 International Children’s Peace prize to recognize her activism to protect her village.  The Child’s Right organization enables children to realize their great potential.  Needless to say, Wanpen did not take her mother’s advice and along with other villagers continues her struggle building a movement for free expression and the right to a good standard of living through her activism today. 

The mine, even though it has stopped operations, has left a village in distress not only in destroying the land but also health issues continue to plague the villagers. According to analysis by the Loei Provincial Office of Public Health and Wang Saphung Hospital, tests show about 100 people living around the mines have levels of cyanide, arsenic and mercury in their blood that exceed safety standards.  Unfortunately, this contamination, the government claims, cannot be linked to the mining operation.  The villagers experienced with the contaminated waters from the mine disagree with this conclusion.  As students of human rights, we interviewed several villagers who were having health problems.  One was Pa Pun Khangchampa, age 85, who rolled out of her house in what I would call a wheel chair platform because she can’t walk. Her house is in the village of Bang Kok Sathon “City of Canals,” down the hill from the mine’s holding pond, where it has been documented to contain contaminated water which still stands and is seeping chemicals into the communities’ water source.  Bang Kok Sathon village has 36 houses with 120 people.  Pa Pun Khangchampa talked about how she has lost most of her muscle strength in her legs and has recurring rashes. This all started four years after the gold mining operations commenced and many villagers have experienced similar health issues. 

We also interviewed Mae Boon Ma, 52 years old, the wife of Kenchaporn who is 57 years old and lives around the corner from Pa Pun Khangchampa. Mae Boon Ma spends her days taking care of her husband, because his kidneys are failing, and she has to perform a home style dialysis five times a day because there is no healthcare facility in the village. Mae Boon Ma is also having health problems because she has high levels of arsenic in her blood.  When we interviewed her, she was at home surrounded by members of her family and we learned that the people in these villages are a close-knit group of people that look out for each other. We saw that women are more affected by this contamination because they not only suffer from health issues, but they become care givers even when they themselves have health issues.

Ms. Hongchai and Wanpen Khunna, leaders in the village, continue their activism because even though the mining operations have been shut down the villagers are in the process of healing.  These two women and the community organization “People Who Love Their Hometown" share their stories and encourage people to speak up against injustice all over Thailand. The last night on our trip we celebrated our new friendships, eating together and singing songs, we were all so glad that we shared this experience. There is no doubt that the villagers will go on fighting and telling their stories to inspire people like me and my fellow students from all over the world to carry the message of how villagers can fight Goliath and win, a story so important to our future human rights work.  My hope is that sometime in the future all who travel get to experience local villages like Nanonbong hearing their stories and passing them on to make the world a better place for all of us.