SPEAK UP

Chao Lay Update

Over the past few weeks there have been some interesting developments in our casework for the Chao Lay in Phuket, Thailand.  Here's the latest...

(1) The Thammasat Law Center, the legal aid arm of the Thammasat University Faculty of Law, has agreed to take on the case for the Chao Lay on Rawai Beach.  This past Sunday night, three TLC employees braved the 12-hour overnight bus ride to Phuket to spend Monday meeting with the Chao Lay leaders and researching the case.  Withing the next week we'll meet to discuss our ongoing strategy.

(2) A local legal organization, the ChumChon Thai Foundation, has a lawyer on the case in Phuket.  On my recent visit to Rawai Beach, he told me the many struggles the Chao Lay are facing.  Besides being sued to be evicted from their homes in an illegal land grab attempt, they are facing difficult fishing restrictions in their ancestral fishing grounds.  The Thai government, in a goodwill attempt to protect the natural habitats around Phuket, has severely restricted fishing in the area.  Good news for the environment, perhaps, but bad news for the Chao Lay.  And many Chao Lay men have had their boats confiscated, and been jailed, over these disputes.  Add to this the lack of education in the community, and the lack of running water and electricity, and the Rawai Beach community is in a world of hurt.  Thanks to the work of ChumChon Thai, these needs are being addressed.  And Speak Up is doing what we can to help.

(3) Speak Up has discussed with ChumChon Thai the need to do legal training for the leaders of the many Chao Lay and other poor communities in Phuket who are facing similar legal challenges.  Starting in January, we hope to begin hosting a series of training events for community leaders to learn everything about their land rights, their rights under the Thai Constitution, and associated training issues.  In a poorly educated Thai community, where many people speak a different language than Thai and have little to no understanding of the legal system, the obstacles to their effective participation in the legal process are great.  Through a series of trainings, we hope to empower the Chao Lay to fight more effectively for the future of their villages.

And many thanks to my friends - you know who you are - whose generous targeted donation will fund these training events.  ChumChon Thai and TLC are providing the lawyers.  Speak Up is providing the money and trying to be the catalyst to make it all work.  Thanks, supporters, for doing your part!

Generosity Changes Lives

I received word from some friends today who are pledging $2,500 to help Speak Up establish a micro-loan program for the Chao Lay in Phuket, Thailand.  Speak Up is working on a lands right case for the Chao Lay who are threatened with being removed from their land by unscrupulous land developers, and we've recently learned that they are also victims of illegal loan-sharking from Bangkok based organized crime.  By providing the Chao Lay with micro-loans that will allow them to develop new businesses and achieve greater financial stability, we can free them from the clutches of the gangs that prey on the poor through ridiculous (20% a month), illegal and extortionate loans which are often backed up by intimidation and violence.

The great generosity of my friends will allow this project to take its first tangible steps.  One day, I hope that we'll have the money to empower many of the Chao Lay (there are 1800 people in the village we are working with) with micro-loans, and, combined with the securing of their land rights, help usher in a new era for their small but vibrant community.

There is no other way to say it - sacrificial generosity changes lives.  I hope that some of my readers will partner with Speak Up so that this $2500 is merely the start of a larger fund that will significantly change the face of poverty in Phuket, Thailand. 

Learn more about the Chao Lay, part of a larger group called the Moken, here.

Learn more about banking for the poor from Grameen, the world's most famous micro-credit organization.  And you can also help more of the poor in Thailand by giving to  Step Ahead, one of Speak Up's partners in SE Asia.   

P.S. Deep thanks to my wonderful friends who made this post possible.  The people in Thailand you are helping may never see you face to face, but your generosity will change their lives.  Thanks. 

Loan Sharks v. Sea Gypsies - Preying on the Poor

I just got word from Thailand that there are even more criminals preying on the Chao Lay - the Sea Gypsies - in Phuket.  Not only are greedy developers trying to steal their land, but now organized crime is trying to extort and steal from them with illegal loan sharking.  I have alerted my friends involved in micro-enterprise development in Thailand to see if we can help the Chao Lay with micro-loans aimed at their economic development.  With the right intervention and help, they can be empowered and freed from the clutches of gangsters.

http://www.phuketgazette.net/news/index.asp?id=7452

If we raised a few thousand dollars we could probably catalyze a whole new banking system for the Chao Lay village, liberating them from their exploiters. 

Please let me know how you'd like to help with this tangible need. 

tanderson@speakupforthepoor.org

Here are some of my friends in the Chao Lay village.  Click on the picture to see more clearly these beautiful children whose families could use our help. 

Lawyer for the Sea Gypsies

BANGKOK, THAILAND  Last week I had the privilege of visiting my new friends, the Chao Lay, on the island of Phuket, Thailand.  The first time I went to Phuket, last November, I went as a tourist.  This time, I went to meet the Chao Lay to discuss their land rights dispute with them in hopes of helping them find a lawyer to represent their cause.  While I sat in the Chao Lay village - on a broken plastic chair in the mud with a Thai interpreter and another foreigner - I was struck again with the simple beauty of the call to speak up for the poor.  When I used to sit in the courtroom as a Deputy DA, my client was the People - the 40-million or so Californians who I represented as a prosecutor.  While I enjoyed that job in many ways, and learned a lot and grew as a lawyer, the joy it gave me pales in comparison to sitting in the mud with literally dirt-poor clients talking to them about how to fight for them andfor justice.  Trying to be a voice for the Chao Lay makes me feel like a lawyer for the People to a whole new degree - it's exactly what I want to do with Speak Up and why I went to law school.

The Chao Lay, Sea Gypsies as they are know in English and on tourist signs, come from a group called the Moken who occupy many of the islands and beach areas around Phuket.  Their name comes from their historic role as, if I understand it right, semi-nomadic fisherpeople.  Just like many of the gypsies that Westerners are more familiar with in Europe, these Gypsies are relatively poor and outside of the mainstream of society.  In Phuket, the community of 1800 people or so lives in a crowded village right along the beach, really not much more than a slum, with no running water or power.  They fish, sell fish and trinkets to tourists, and exist on the edge of society.  They are very kind, a bit suspicious of yet another foreigner, but welcoming and gracious to the core.  And once I started talking to them about their situation, and promised to help, they seemed like old friends.

Their land is worth a fortune.  The island of Phuket is filled beyond capacity with hotels, luxury resorts and beachfront developments.  But the developers always hunger for more.  And the Chao Lay sit on a parcel of land that, according to a recent attempted sale, is worth upwards of two-and-a-half million US dollars, a fortune in Thailand.  While the Chao Lay claim to have lived uninterrupted on their land for nearly 100 years, they seem to not have legal ownership of their land in their name.  Somewhere along the line it seems that three other people - one of them their former chief - obtained land titles in their own names.  Now, coveting the value of the Chao Lay beachfront property, these "owners" are trying to assert their flimsy property rights, kick the Chao Lay out of their own homes, and sell to a developer.  Their own ex-leader is even trying to sell them out!  It's the same cycle seen all over this part of the world, particularly after the 2004 tsunami when unscrupulous developers literally stole land from several beach-dwelling peoples who were washed away in the flood. 

The Chao Lay, however, were not washed away in the tsunami.  Masters of living in concert with the sea, the Chao Lay correctly read the signs of the impending tsunami - the rapidly receding sea, the strange behavior of sea animals, the indescribable sound of a changing sea - and escaped to safety.  You can read and watch online some amazing accounts of these people talking about how they read the signs and escaped danger.  They have been on their land for 100 years, were there through the tsunami, and want to remain, like any group of families simply wanting to live and work in peace on the land they have long called home.

But this time, a tsunami of greed and exploitation, bearing the face of developers and compromised former-leaders and corrupt local politicians, is something that they cannot escape on their own.  They do not have the voice, the legal training or the money to fight the powers that want their land.  They are, in every sense of the words, a people who cannot speak up for themselves.  They need our help.

That is where Speak Up comes in.  I am trying to find a law firm in Thailand to help provide the Chao Lay with legal aid.  I am trying to find human rights and land rights organizations who will take up the cause.  And I am looking for people of good will who can, in any number of ways, help  me advocate for my new friends in Phuket.  I'm trying to be a lawyer for the people, and I need your help.