Banjong Nasae wakes up every morning with lawsuits and death threats in the back of his mind and an image of himself with wrinkles and a receding hairline.
Banjong Nasae has remained staunch in his efforts to protect marine resources from large trawlers using illegal fishing gear. His fight has brought him lawsuits and death threats. (Photos from Banjong Nasae’s Facebook)
But his spirit as a marine activist remains young and robust.
“I don’t care if it’s multinational companies or large conglomerates. If their business or projects hurt the little people living along the southern coastal areas and deplete their marine resources, I have to get involved,” Mr Banjong declares.
He is a Facebook personality whose views on the protection of marine resources and critiques of related policies are shared widely.
The activist was honoured for his campaigns to preserve the sea and fishermen’s livelihoods with the Santiprachadham prize in August.
The award was an exceptional one for Mr Banjong, a gung ho advocate known for his straightforward, even blunt, approach to getting his campaign message across.
In recent years, he has adapted his working strategy by talking directly to middle-class consumers, proving to them that once rules and regulations are properly in place to prevent the plunder and exploitation of the ocean, the people can have a sustainable source of protein from the bounty provided by the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea.
When Mr Banjong graduated from Prince of Songkla University’s Hat Yai campus in 1982, youthful society and intellectual circles were shaken by the return of young students from the jungle after the fall of the Communist Party of Thailand.
“I had been ‘romanticised’ by leftists and so was puzzled about what to do next. Thanks to some senior activists involved in community work, I was gradually introduced to non-government organisations,” said Mr Banjong, 59.
A fisherman holds a large fish caught with simple fishing gear.
Bamrung Boonpanya (Khon Kaen) Ruang Suksawad (Chainat) and Ka-ne Kittikowit are among his proteges. They are pioneering NGO workers in Thailand with close links to the first NGO in Thailand, the Rural Reconstruction Foundation founded by former Thammasat University rector Puey Ungphakorn.
The “answers-are-in-the-village” mindset has been a temptation for NGO workers, and it was this that drew Mr Banjong and his peers to the NGO fold. They have worked in many sectors such as community cultural appreciation, legal consultation and community empowerment.
“We were challenged again by the concept of natural farming that is reflected in Fukuoka Masanobu’s ‘Green Revolution’ as translated by Rosana Tositrakul and Pracha Hutanuwat,” he said.
“By that time I was already engaged in a small fishing village, Pakbangnathap in Chana district [of Songkhla].”
Through his experience with this tiny village, Mr Banjong grew intellectually and emotionally closer to the Muslim villagers and became connected to the wider community of small-scale fishermen along the 2,400 kilometres of Thailand’s coastline.
From 1989 to 1992 Mr Banjong was chairman of the Southern NGO Coordinating Committee.
His leading role during months of protest in 1999 against the light-luring fishing method for anchovies and squid in the Bay of Songkhla made him a familiar name to security authorities who saw him as an “untamed and hot-headed NGO leader”.
“It’s not easy to stage protests. The fishermen had to learn how to put their message across,” said Mr Banjong.
Sometimes their persistence in trying to get their message across can damage public peace and order, but it is necessary to get the authorities to listen to people’s problems.
From coastal districts to the interior, Mr Banjong feels it is important to win the hearts and minds of the people on the ground. He was instrumental in setting up the small fishermen network in 22 coastal provinces.
There have been times when he and his colleagues have faced death threats over their campaigns, such as when they blocked Songkhla Bay to the anchovy businesses accused of exhausting the sea of its natural bounty.
Another major rally he took part in was back in December 2002 when core Muslim leaders protested against the Thai-Myanmar gas pipeline and gas separation plant.
Mr Banjong: ‘We can restore bountiful marine resources.’ Tawatchai Kemgumnerd
“The image [the government] had of me wasn’t fancy. They thought we were mobsters who planned to picket inside the hotel [where the mobile cabinet was being held], but we just wanted to express our strong disagreement with the gas pipeline and present the ministers with flowers,” Mr Banjong said in a recent interview with the Bangkok Post.
The 32 NGO and student activists and villagers who were arrested and charged in connection with the gas pipeline protest have already won judgments in the lower court and the Appeal Court. They will hear the Supreme Court verdict next week, nearly 13 years after the protest took place.
Mr Banjong and other defendants arrested in the protest lodged a counter suit in the Civil Court and won in 2013. The Royal Thai Police were subsequently ordered to pay them 100,000 baht each in damages for using force to break the December 2002 protest.
Now all defendants are awaiting the final outcome of their criminal counter-suits they have filed against the police force and senior police officers, including former police chief Gen Sant Sarutanond, expected next month. The charges pressed against the officers pertain to the infringement of the protesters’ constitutional rights and liberty in staging a peaceful protest.
“With such a long, hard struggle, it’s natural that more than half [of the villagers and activists]
have backed off. So we have had to find other
ways to pursue the cause for democracy at the community level,” said Mr Banjong, referring to his participation in Rak Tha-Le Thai (Thai Sea Watch Association).
His advocacy of marine preservation also needs to bring consumers on board. Mr Banjong has resorted to social media by registering the Facebook page “Ruam Pol Khon Kin Pla” (lovers of fish meat club) with over 80,000 followers. And he has increased public awareness about conservation through a market set up by an NGO alliance which is open in central Bangkok.
“We bring fresh seafood products from the villages straight to consumers at the Root Garden and eliminate the middle man.
“We have hammered home the message that if we’re determined to give Mother Nature a break and tackle over-fishing, we can restore bountiful marine resources,” Mr Banjong said.
But things are never easy. Mr Banjong has yet to make gains in the campaign against granting amnesty to operators of large trawlers which deploy illegal fishing gear. But now is a crucial time for fishing problems to be brought to the fore of public attention as small-scale fishing networks have, since the beginning of the year, been pushing hard for more accountable management of marine resources.
Thanks to the European Union’s “yellow card”, the use of illegal fishing gear by large trawlers is being sorted out by the government, which is spending 700 million baht to help trawler operators change to suitable fishing equipment.
Mr Banjong said it may not be ideal to finance the fishing industry’s conversion of its equipment. But it was a good start for a positive change, he added.
“We still have to keep pushing and stay the course. Whoever is running the government must pay heed to small-scale fishermen,” said Mr Banjong.
He is not complacent about the state of national politics. In the past decade, despite walking in and out of court fighting lawsuits, he has joined mass protests by the yellow-shirt People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and the Network of Students and People for Reform of Thailand (NSPRT).
“I’m striving for ‘edible’ democracy... fighting for what is tangible and beneficial to the local economy, not the text-book democracy that politicians use to lure the little people,” said Mr Banjong, echoing his recent speech at the 42nd commemoration of the Oct 14, 1973 student uprising in Bangkok.
Mr Banjong presents a gift basket to Rangsit University rector Arthit Urairat for allowing a concert on campus to raise funds for small-scale fishermen.
Women pick through fish from the day’s catch in Pattani. More fish are being caught by locals as a result of the ban on illegal fishing gear used by larger trawlers.