'We'll open dam gates ourselves'
The Nation, July 12, 2007
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/07/12/national/national_30040478.php
The Assembly of the Poor vowed yesterday to open Pak Mool Dam's gates with their own hands to save their river-based way of life in defiance of a Cabinet order to keep the gates permanently closed.
The group issued a statement condemning the junta-appointed government for forcing Pak Mool villagers into more difficulties and destroying their livelihoods more than the previous government of Thaksin Shinawatra ever did.
Though distorting Ubon Ratchathani University's study on the impact of Pak Mool Dam, which suggested the gates could be opened all year round, Thaksin's Cabinet in June 2004 allowed the gates to open for four straight months a year.
But the current government ruined the occupations of Pak Mool villagers by ordering the gates shut forever, the statement said.
Some 70 Assembly members from Ubon on Tuesday night were forced to leave their position in front of Government House while waiting for the Cabinet meeting. Fifty special operations police clashed with the members, leaving four villagers including two elderly women - 70-year-old Mun and 80-year-old Porn - injured.
The villagers had come down to Bangkok after General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, chairman of the Council for National Security, promised them that the Cabinet would consider their appeal for the opening of Pak Mool Dam's gates in its meeting on Tuesday morning.
But government officials later told them their proposal had not been tabled.
The Pak Mool villagers left Bangkok last night and said they would fight all injustice and outlawed power to continue their existence on the Pak Mool River.
The Cabinet on May 29 agreed that the Pak Mool Dam's gates could be opened four months a year, but on June 12 it reversed that decision.
|
