River's Edge, Barguna District

After the Cyclone, the Flood

On the river's edge, Barguna District, southern Bangladesh, sandbags attempt to stall the inundation of the water. Damaged huts tilt towards the river. Whereas Cyclone Sidr caused devastation with very strong winds, in this area, Cyclone Aila brought with it massive water damage through inundation from nearby rivers and from the Bay of Bengal. Moreover, the Monsoon is altering with climate change: it commenced in Bangladesh this year at the time it normally concludes. Less predictable than before, the character of the Monsoon is also changing, disrupting traditional farming practices.

Khas Land Occupation

In the Kaliganj area - the poorest in Satkhira district in southern Bangladesh - shrimp nets lay idle on the khas land occupied by 12,000 families. Organised by the BKF, and occupied since 1998, families survive on fish and shrimp fishing. Cyclone Aila - an extreme weather event - damaged homes and inundated the land with salt water. As a result women have to travel for four hours a day to collect fresh water. Alerted by blowing whistles and flashing torches, families defend the island from goonda attacks using glass marbles fired from catapults and wielding bamboo lathis (sticks). In one of the attacks, Kisani Sabha leader, Jayada was killed. The government has yet to grant legal title to the poor and so the occupation continues.

Islands of the Occupation

Fishing boats at the tip of an occupied char. For a successful land occupation, the movement needs a strong occupation committe, whose leaders can withstand attacks by the landlords' goondas (hired thugs); a strong mass mobilization; a medical team who can provide medical treatment to those who suffer physical attacks; and a legal team to fight the legal cases brought by landlords in the local courts in an attempt to stop the occupation.

Monsoon Flooding

During the Monsoon, the river inundates the low lying land of the occupied islands (chars), creating problems in terms of protecting grazing cattle, growing food etc.

Ganges Delta

Travelling south through the Monsoon-swollen rivers of the Ganges delta. Peasant homes cling to the small crops of land not yet inundated by the river's swell.

Bangladesh Kisani Sabha

Members of the Lisani Sabha (Landless peasant women's association) in a meeting in Kurigram district, northern Bangladesh.

Rain Comes, then River

Meeting of the BKF and BKS, Kurigram District. Picture by Pathak Lal Golder.

'The sky has gone to bed" commented Pathak-bhai as we trundled by rickshaw down the dirt road from Bhurungamari, in Bangladesh's northern Kurigram district. Cloud filled, silver grey sky is reflected in the turgid river's flow. The Monsoon has finally arrived late, but with typical torrential elan: "Rain comes, then river" he adds, as roads become rivers before us. The border town - 3km from West Bengal in India - shelters from the rain. Jute rope hangs over bridges. Jute sticks are stacked in teepee cones. Jungle green and humid heat. The cadres of the Bangladesh Krishok Federation (BKF) move through the rain and the mud and the jungle. Past river, and padi, flooded field and peasant huts with their corrugated metal roofs, the resistance travels from village to village, meeting to meeting. And I move with them.

We stay in the simple homes of the landless peasants. Eat fiery chicken and fish curry with the peasant staple, rice. We drink well water turned muddy red with oxidizing iron, and black chai (tea) scented with cloves. At meetings I speak about food security and the changing climate: "Brothers and sisters, peace be to you.....". The mobile is the crucial activist organising tool of choice, and BKF activist mobiles ring-tone to the tunes of Bollywood and political songs: "The land is fertile, but there is no land for the peasant".

The BKF organise peasants for land occupations so that they may legitimately live lives of dignity, but they face constant attacks from landlords and their private goondas (armed thugs). Peasant activists are attacked, beaten, burned, jailed, and their homes burned. As Pathak bhai says: "That is the reality that we face. We need a strong organising committee, with leaders who can fight the goondas. We need a strong mobilization, with not just the peasants of the BKF and the Bangladesh Kisani Sabha (BKS), but also medical teams to treat those who are attacked, and a legal team to fight the legal cases brought by the landlords against our movement". The BKF will use strikes, and sit ins, gheraos (surrounding offices and local politicians), hunger strikes and mass actions...prior to the invasion of the land. And remember: the land occupied is khas land, i.e. land that was fallow and to which the landless are legally entitled according to the country's constitution.

The cadres of the BKF and BKS move through the rain and the mud and the jungle. And I move with them.

Bangladesh Krishok Federation

Barisal District Conference (2009) of BKF and BKS demanding khas land for the landless. Photo by Pathak Lal Golder, BKF.

The Bangladesh Krishok Federation (BKF), is the largest rural based peasant movement in the country, and was established in 1976. Since its inception it has been actively involved in land occupation struggles. From 1977 until 1991 the BKF conducted various types of struggles and movements e.g. hunger strikes, sit-in strikes, public meetings, the encirclements of the local administrative offices (gherao), demonstrations, and road blocks. Through different agitation programs, the BKF has been able to compel local government officials, at different times, to make commitments about the distribution of land amongst landless men and women. Despite these commitments no concrete action was taken. However, in 1987 the government introduced a land law called the "Land Administration Manual" which enabled landless people to occupy and farm fallow (khas) land. Because of this new land law, the movement gained momentum.

Since 1987 the BKF has demanded the distribution of khas land among landless men and women as stated in the land law. Because of ongoing government refusal to take any initiative on behalf of the landless, since 1992 the BKF has organised landless people to occupy khas land. This time over 22,000 acres of land on 4 chars (small islands) in the southern coastal belt were occupied. During the occupation movement, the BKF has encountered many impediments from the local big landowners and their goondas (armed thugs), and some local bureaucrats working in the Land Revenue Department. Local large landowners have made several attacks on the landless people's settlements on the chars. Every time, the landowners were defeated, but the landless people had to shed blood for their victories. In remaining in their settlements, the people have built their homes, cultivated their land, and grown different indigenous crops (e.g. rice, vegetables, and fruits). Since 1992, the land occupation movement has continued, and so far, under the leadership of the BKF, the landless people have been able to occupy approximately 80,000 acres of khas land, across Bangladesh. Most of the occupations are concentrated in the south of the country and land has been distributed to more than 107,000 of the poorest men and women living in the countryside. Currently 27 chars are occupied throughout Bangladesh.


The BKF now has 700,000 members and it belongs to the Aaht Sangathan (the Eight Organisations) which includes the Bangladesh Kisani Sabha (BKS, peasant women's organisation, 800,000 members); Floating Labour Union (100,000 members; Floating Women's Labour Union (150,000 members); Bangladesh Adivasi Samiti (indigenous committee, 50,000 members); Rural Intellectual Front (5,000 members); Ganasaya Cultural Centre (200 members); and the Revolutionary Youth Association 5,000 members). The total membership of the Aaht Sangathan is now close to 2 million members.

Dhaka Landing

Monsoon rains fall in the humid heat of Bangladesh's capital. We travel by bicycle rickshaw through the traffic past the highrise apartment horizon of speculative capital, now crashed like the rest of the global economy. In Bangladesh, the garment industry has been badly hit by the recesssion, as too those middle classes who gambled on the stock market, and the state sector. Food prices have risen, felt especially by the poor. For the rickshaw wallah, another day amongst traffic horns and exhaust fumes, dodging buses and traffic cops. For me, a meeting with the Bangladesh Krishok Federation (the landless peasants movement) to discuss issues of food sovereignty and climate change and to plan a programme for my visit.

Assembly of the Poor

In Northern Thailand, a meeting of members of the Assembly of the Poor - a network of farmers, anti-dam protesters, indigenous activists, students, and unions.

Thai Politics: the Yellow and the Red.

Note: This has been adapted from ‘The Voter’s Uprising’ by Junya Yimpraset, 2009.

Since 1932 Thailand has had to face 21 military coups - 9 of them successful, 18 constitutions and 27 Prime Ministers. Only one elected Prime Minister has managed to complete the full 4-year term: the now convicted and self-exiled Thaksin Shinawatra. During the Cold War years Thailand’s military juntas concentrated on re-building and promoting the role of the monarchy - to legitimise the oppression of the rural poor. For the tens of millions of poor people in Thailand, it required the May 1992 uprising - that saw 48 citizens shot dead in the streets of Bangkok - to usher in the beginnings of democracy, and to establish, in 1997, a so-called People’s Constitution.
Thaksin Shinawatra a wealthy businessman, who had moved into politics in 1994, became Thailand’s first ever elected PM to complete a 4-year term in office (2001 - 2004). With a corporate style and approach to governance Thaksin was perceived as a threat to Thailand’s established, hegemonic order. This was exacerbated by his ‘rural-poor populist strategy’ which gave him his solid majority in the electorate. In 2001 he established Thailand’s first ever universal health-care scheme - the ‘30 Baht Scheme’. He oversaw the implementation of a ‘0ne Million Baht Village Fund’, a scheme that provided every village in Thailand with a one million cash bonus to be administered at will. He also attempted to promote village productivity and assisted farmers in managing their debt burden; and introduced cheap loan programmes for low-income people to buy houses. However, Thaksin was an enthusiastic promoter of neoliberal globalisation and negotiated Free Trade Agreements without popular consultation. Moreover, his War on Drugs’ saw 2 500 people lose their lives.

In February 2005 Thaksin won a landslide victory with 62% of the vote (19 million votes). In February 2006, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), was founded by the Bangkok media tycoon Sonthi Limthongkul. Allied with members of the Democrat Party, and dressed in yellow, PAD consisted of a wide assortment of NGOs, celebrities, intellectuals and civil servants - predominantly middle-class Bangkokians. PAD’s vision of a ‘New Politics’ included replacing most elected politicians with appointed “good people”.

A military coup was staged for September 2006 - when Thaksin was in New York, attending a meeting of the UN General Assembly. The King approved the military junta that replaced Thaksin’s government and thus also the restoration of Thailand’s customary feudal order.
Following the coup the Junta’s annulled the People’s Constitution of 1997, dissolved Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), and increased the military budget by 33%. General Surayud became Thailand’s 24th Prime Minister in October 2006 and scheduled a General Election for December 2007. Of the 377 elected Members of Parliament in the TRT Party (out of 480 in the Thai Parliament), 111 of the leading MPs were banned from politics for 5 years. Those not banned stood for re-election as the People Power Party (PPP).

The election of December 2007 saw the PPP taking 49% of the vote (14 million). The Democrat Party managed 34%. The PPP set up government under Samak Suntornvej. In response, in May 2008. yellow-clad PAD demonstrators laid siege to Government House. After 4 months of siege, on August 26 they occupied Government House and attacked National Broadcasting TV and the Ministry of Finance. In response, Samak gave the Premiership to Thaksin’s brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat. The PAD increased its attacks, assaulting several government offices; waging street battaes with the police in Bangkok, and shutting down Bankok’s international airport.

On 2 December the Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the PPP and also the two other main parties of Somchai’s governing coalition. Abhisit Vejjajiva, the leader of the Democrat Party, and active PAD supporter, became Prime Minister on 15 December, 2008.
In response the new United Front for Democratic against Dictatorship (UDD) – dressed in red shirts - was formed to protest the corruption of Thailand’s democracy, and called for mass mobilizations against the unelected government. On 26 March 2009 the red shirts began to assemble outside Government House. By 8 April half a million protestors, representing a wide spectrum of grass-root civil organizations, were holding peaceful assemblies in Bangkok and about 40 of Thailand’s 77 provincial capitals. Later that month 250 000 red shirts were mobilised in the capital, the largest number of protesters ever seen on the streets of Bangkok.
The UDD organised protests against , and forced the cancellation of, the ASEAN Summit (10 - 13 April) in Pattaya. In response, on April 11, Abhisit declared a state-of-emergency in and around Bangkok, and issued orders for demonstrators to be cleared from outside Government House within 4 days, and for all UDD communication channels to be cut, especially their on-line satellite TV, the so-called Democracy Station, ‘D-station’ or DTV, that had been set-up in January (2009) to counter the PAD’s Asia Satellite TV (ASTV).

On April 12 the Army attacked with tear gas and live ammunition, the ThaiCom building in north Bangkok where several hundred demonstrators had gathered to defend the ‘D-station’ transmission. The red-shirts set-up roadblocks and attempted to prevent the military advancing on Government House. The UDD leaders were arrested and charged, while the PAD leaders that had vandalised Government House and occupied the international airport now participate in the Abhisit ‘government’. Welcome to the land of smiles.

Alter-ego # 3

Bangkok Landing

The Royal Palace in Bangkok, loved by tourists and emblematic of Thailand's atrophied experiment in democracy.